Catalogue                   Group                                                         A side/B side                                                  Year

Number

OK 601                  Victoria Jazz Band                            ?/?                                                    1972

OK 608                  Shirati Luo Voice Jazz Band               ?/?                                                    1974

OK 608                  Shirati Luo Voice Jazz Band               ?/?                                                    1974

OK 608                  Victoria Jazz Band                            ?/?                                                    1974

OK 612                  Victoria Jazz Band                            Oluoch Kanindo/D Osienyo                  1973

OKP 1B                  Hi-Fives Mpete wa Mpete                  Kabala Gala/Uipe Ni Kupe

The first two of these discs are by Dr Collela’s Victoria Jazz dating from the early 1970s. The band also recorded for Kilo, Lolwe, Melodica and POK.

Can it be a coincidence that at least one - and possibly both - of these records was produced by Oluoch Kanindo, whose initials happen to be OK?

OK 601 contains no song title details on the label.

Michiel van Ooosterhout provided details and the label scan of OKP 1B, another Kanindo production, but this time by the Hi-Fives, a group of Congolese musicians based in Kenya.

In all, these may be two entirely different labels that both have a Kanindo connection.

Update, May 2012: three more singles in the OK 600 series turned up on Ebay this month - OK 605, 608 and 611 - and in all three cases the song titles are missing. This seems to indicate that the label was used for exports to Angola, where for some reason it wasn’t felt necessary to include song titles for the local market. All are dated 1974, which doesn’t fit well with OK 612’s 1973 date.