David Marks and 3rd Ear Records Collection

David Marks works as a musician, songwriter, sound engineer, and producer of South African music.
In 1971 he took over as the director of the 3rd Ear Music Company, a small independent record company interested in recording,
promoting and producing music that was not considered as commercially viable or seen as too political by the major record companies.

Through his work as a sound engineer and the director of the 3rd Ear Music Company,
Marks amassed a collection of material that documents South African music from the mid 1960s to the early 2000s.
In 1990 Marks formed the Hidden Years Music Archive Project to safeguard and preserve the material he collected.
The collection has been estimated to contain around 175 000 items, amounting to seven tons of material that documents
diverse musical styles ranging from urban folk to township jazz, country rock, choirs, maskanda and traditional musics.

This collection was donated in 2013 and contains documents, photographs, programmes, posters, vinyl records, and live
recordings on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes.

This collection has been partly digitised and is in the process of being uploaded online.
Please see finding aids for more information.
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Lloyd Ross and Shifty Music Collection

Lloyd Ross set up a recording studio in 1982 in an old caravan calling it the Shifty Mobile Recording studio.
By the 1980s, 3rd Ear Music established by David Marks had become less active and Shifty Music provided the
alternative recording space for alternative and protest musicians.

The first band that Shifty recorded was Sankomota, a band based in Lesotho. Shifty became known for recording
South African protest music during the 1980s, including the Kalahari Surfers, the Genuines, the Kêrels, Illegal
Gathering and the Cherry Faced Lurchers. Their work also included documenting the Voëlvry tour of Afrikaans
protest music.

This collection was donated in 2021 and includes photographs, documents and live recordings donated by Lloyd Ross
as well as digitised content provided by the South African History Archive.

This collection has beenpartly digitsed and is in the process of being uploaded online.
Please see finding aids for more information.
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Darius and Catherine Brubeck Collection

Darius and Catherine Brubeck moved to South Africa in 1983 where they worked together promoting jazz and jazz
education from 1983 to 2006. At the University of Kwazulu-Natal they were instrumental in establishing the first
Jazz Studies degree program in Africa, followed by the creation of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music with
Christopher Ballantine.

Catherine Brubeck writes that “we were deeply involved in the complicated cultural politics of the 80s and 90s
and consequent institutional transformation”. Darius Brubeck’s Africa Cool Concept, featuring some of South
Africa’s premier musicians, played throughout southern Africa, Europe and the USA.

This collection was donated in 2019 and brings together their work in South Africa through recordings,
photographs, programmes and documents.

This collection has been partly digitised and is in the process of being uploaded online.
Please see finding aids for more information.
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