A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” [1940], Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn. New York: Schoken Books, 1968, (253-64), 257-58.

Acknowledgements

The information included here is based on the scholarly work of many researchers and enthusiasts, to whom all music lovers are indebted. A huge amount of music was recorded in the 78rpm era, most of it is very competent, and much of it is fine in quality. Yet, to this day, information about how much, and what precisely, was recorded remains fragmentary and difficult to find out. Therefore, a situation has resulted in which even knowledgeable music lovers have an incomplete, inaccurate, or approximate notion of the recordings made by any given musician. These lists are a small contribution towards changing this situation by sharing information about the 78rpm legacy as widely as possible, giving due credit to those who have made the original efforts to prepare lists and discographies.  Special thanks to:

Alain Danielou for A Catalogue of Recorded Classical and Traditional Indian Music (Unesco, 1952),

Michael Kinnear and his many contributions to the discography of Indian music,

and the Society of Indian Record Collectors, based in Bombay, and its journal, The Record News.  The group is doing pioneering work in compiling discographies of Indian music, and in the dissemination of information about the music and musical culture of the 78rpm era. All music lovers owe the SIRC a great debt of gratitude, and are encouraged to contact the SIRC Secretary Suresh Chandvankar at chandvankar@yahoo.com