JAFFERPHON

JAFFERPHON was a record label from Yemen starting in the 1930s until 1953.

The Jafferphon company which was created in the name of a Sayyid Ǧaʿfar and sons, is the result of the industrial and commercial adventure of a remarkable family who had played a great role in the introduction of modern forms of entertainment to Aden: the grandfather, the sayyid Ḥamūd Ḥasan al ‑ Hāšimī, who came from Muḫa and settled in Aden in the ʿAydarūs district, introduced silent cinema there in 1911. In 1925, he and his son Muḥammad had marketed the first gramophones in Aden and the first imported Arab and foreign records, that is to say the very year of the arrival of electricity.

Through his son Muḥammad, Ḥamūd had, among many others, two grandsons, one named Ǧaʿfar, and the other Ṭaha. The first family-controlled record company therefore took the name Ǧaʿfar, one of the elders, as Ǧaʿfar fūn (English: JAFFERPHON).

The imprint of the founder, the grandfather, nicknamed "Master Ḥamūd" persisted for a very long time, as shown by the numerous vocal announcements at the beginning of the recording, mentioning him in this somewhat enigmatic form: "Master Ḥamūd".

Unlike Aden Crown, JAFFERPHON managed to continue his activities beyond the war, despite the transport difficulties caused by the war, and even after the war. In the series of numbers there is clearly a gap between 526 and 1024. This break in the digital series therefore seems to mark a stop between two temporal periods of production: one clearly linked , it seems, before the war and the other rather after the war (resumption of the publication of records in 1950 pubishing about 200 records (Nr. 1024 - 1236)). This cut would therefore have been caused by World War II, which is very plausible. 

Source: journals.openedition.org