I have published many articles on the politics of Sékou Touré, whose endeavours to instil his vision of the Guinean nation is clearly evidenced in his cultural policy, known as authenticité. To provide a brief overview, one of the key aspects of authenticité was realised through government funding of orchestras and ensembles in each of Guinea's 35 regions, so as to give a broad and equal representation to all of the nation's language groups and cultures. With respect to the music of the Fulbé, however, a language group who represent 40% of Guinea's population, only 3% Syliphone recordings were performed in Fulfuldé, the language of the Fulbé. Surely this is not an accurate reflection of Guinea’s cultural policy, which proclaimed to represent “the music of the nation”! As I suggest in my publications, the cause of this marginalisation of Fulbé music resides in the decades long power struggle in Guinea between the Fulbé and the Malinké. Prior to independence in 1958, Guinea's Fulbé population represented a voting bloc who had opposed Sékou Touré and his political party, the PDG. From the early 1960s, a struggle unfolded agaagainst the increasingly autocratic President and the PDG, whereby multiple conspiracies and attempted coups we were proclaime and thwarted. Touré regularly singled out the Fulbé as being behind these "plots", and Fulbé politicians, traders, merchants and citizens were subsequently targeted and imprisoned. The intimidation of any domestic opposition to government rule, coupled with the increasingly dire economic restraints, resulted in over 1,000,000 Guineans fleeing to neighbouring countries or abroad: some 20% of the population, many of whom were of Fulbé ethnicity. The 3% of Syliphone songs which are performed in Fulfuldé reflects not the harmonious nation under the guise of an "authentic" cultural policy, but that of a marginalisation of the Fulbé voice... Yet, here in the RTG archive, were hundreds of reels by the nation’s best Fulbé musicians, most of which had never been heard outside of Guinea.

On occasion, I would come across reels of music which had "n "not for broadcasting" written on the cover. An example of this is below (note "A ne pas diffuser", near the bottom, a "Folklore Pular", or "Fulbé folkore" musical recording). During the Sékou Touré years (1958-1984), the government employed numerous censors who approved music held in the RTG archives prior to broadcast. The RTG was the only radio station in Guinea for close to 40 years, and its large transmitter broadcast throughout the nation and to neighbouring states.

With November 2012 approaching, I had nearly completed the archiving of the 1/4" tapes, thus the end of the archival project was in sight. Given this, I enquired about the existence of an additional sound archive that I had been shown, just once, briefly, in 2009. It was a room adjoined to the RTG building complex close to the local Guinean army barracks. Upon enquiry, the senior RTG staff informed me that this archival room "no longer existed". Quite odd, as it clearly existed: one could see it! Upon further enquiry, RTG management’s response changed: "The archive does in fact exist, but it doesn't contain any music, just speeches by Sékou Touré and recordings of PDG conferences". With time, and upon further enquiry, this also changed to: "There was music in the archive, but not very much, and it contains only copies of music from the main archive".

Nearing the end of the project, however, the attitude of the senior RTG staff altered. Their earlier indifference and recalcitrance dissipated, coinciding, as it were, with the publicity that the archival project was increasingly attracting. To blunt their entrenched oppostion to the project, wherein they had not received any personal funds as part of the overall project budget (my reckoning), I had garnered the wide support of Guinean musicians, staff at the National Library (led by the wonderful Dr Baba Cheick Sylla, may he rest in peace), and former Ministers and public servants. I had also promoted the project on many of Conakry's public radio stations (where the DJs tried their best to test my knowledge by playing random songs!). Thus forearmed, I officially requested access to the "mysterious" second archive, which as it happened was widely known by all at the RTG (!) as "the annexe".

Granted access, upon entering the annexe I was aghast to see perhaps 10,000 audio reels of 1/4" magnetic tape, arranged in perfectly neat rows. These, I was told, were recordings of Sékou Touré's speeche and of PDG conferences. In the corner of the annexe room, however, were two long rows of reels of tapes, very poorly stored. Many of them had no cover to protect them, and if they possessed a cover nothing was written on them at all. Some of the tapes, however, were clearly marked and were of Guinean orchestras and ensembles. Many others were entangled in spaghetti-esque and serpentine entwinements. These audio reels all required archiving, and I realised that I would be in Guinea for a lot longer than I had planned...

I had completed the archiving of all the audio reels in the RTG's main archive, so comcommenced to archive those in the "annexe". These annexe reels, as I soon discovered, were predominantly of Fulbé music. It was very odd, I thought, that so much Fulbé music existed in this "annexe" room, hidden, as it were, from my access. The annexe room was in a dismal state, too. It lacked the 24 hour air-conditioning that had sustained the main archive for the past 40 years, and it was also regularly flooded, ankle deep, as I often witnessed in the monsoon. The air in the annexe room was thick with the stench of mould, and the occasional worker I saw there would drink milk to obviate any sicknesses caused by it. The humidity and moisture were surely steadily destroying everything. The "annexe" desperately needs climate control to save the many hundreds of hours of speeches and other materials in the room (for example, 24mm films by Syli-Cinema, stored in rusting canisters). I transported all the music reels from the annexe to the main archive. Many were in very poor condition. Though inadequately stored and archived, there were only a handful of reels whose state had become so deteriorated that they were unable to be preserved and digitised.

A typical reel from the "annexe", with many metres of tape at the beginning of the reel left un-wound and loose. 
Such poor storage causes creases and wrinkles in the tape which affects and distorts its sound. Other reels in the main archive were never stored in this fashion.

No climate control in the annexe caused mould to grow on the reel covers and tapes. Many reels in the annexe were in a very poor condition. 


No climate control also allowed termites to eat the covers and the reels. 


Spot the difference: the reels containing political speeches are on the right, while the reels of music are on the left.

In the annexe: there was so much loose magnetic tape spilling over that reels were often entwined together.

It took many weeks to sift through the unlabelled audio reels in the "annexe", as each required comparison to the 6,000 or so other songs already archived, to avoid duplication. At last, though, in early 2013, after three major archival projects spanning six years, there were only 50 or so audio reels left to archive... But, such was the new-found enthusiasm for the project, RTG staff would locate more! And so the project continued... . This occurred many times. It was impossible to know when the work would all be done. But, in January 2013, satisfied that the original audio reels of tape had been located, archived, preserved and digitised, I called an end to the project. My friend and my translator, Aly Badara Fofana, celebrated together with a nice cold bottle of Pastis.

For this 2012-2013 project, 5,210 songs from 827 audio reels were preserved, archived and digitised.

The total number of songs archived over the three Endangered Archive Programme projects (2008, 2009, 2012-2013) amounted to 9,410 songs from over 1,200 audio reels of 1/4" magnetic tape. This equates to over 55,000 minutes of Guinean music.