Catalogue       Group                                                                 A side/B side                                                        Year

Number

BAHA 001    Bahari Boys                                            Bado Tu/Msinzili

BAHA 002    Bahali Boys                                             Utanchoka/Emmy

BAHA 003    Bahari Boys                                            Pekeshe/Mangale

BAHA 2001  Bahali Boys                                            How Long/Christine

BAHA 001 surfaced on Ebay in March 2009, while Sofiane of Groovy Record in Paris alerted me to the existence of BAHA 003 in November 2013. Both are by a Mombasa-based band led by Joseph Ngala that was active in the 1960s and 1970s. It combined local bar gigs with ones at resort hotels along the coast.

The A-side of BAHA 001 is in Kiswahili and the B-side in Kikamba. BAHA 2001 appeared on the Discogs website, as did BAHA 02 in April 2015. Both are credited to the Bahali Boys but are undoubtedly by the same group.

At first, I thought the label might be a subsidiary of Sawa Sawa Sound for the simple reason that the label says “distributed by Studio Sawa Sound”, but the PO box numbers for the two labels are different so this must have been just a business arrangement.

The label name, incidentally, means “ocean” in Kiswahili.