Welcome

The flatint blog is an informal sister project of the flatinternational South African Audio Archive. Both sites are non-profit projects developed to explore aspects of South African audio history. This blog will feature various highlights from the larger flatinternational archive as well as other audio related projects. 

The flatinternational website is dedicated to establishing a visual archive of rare and sometimes unusual South African audio documents. The aim of the project is to provide a searchable database as a resource for those researching South African audio history. The database is by no means exhaustive—these are still early days. But data will accumulate in time and hopefully the archive will provide researchers with valuable information currently unavailable on the web, such as discographies of many lesser known South African artists, labels, and companies.

Over the last few years a number of great websites dedicated to South African music have emerged including Matsuli, Electric Jive, Soul Safari, 3rd Ear Music, music.org.za, SA Rock Encyclopedia, SAMAP and ILAM, amongst others. It is hoped that flatinternational’s South African Audio Archive might operate as a respectful complement to those valuable research resources.

Given the nature of an archiving project, much of the material on this site has been sampled from many sources. While the intention of this website is purely non-commercial and for research purposes exclusively, it is understood that—in spite of this sampling being done in a nonprofit-making, sincere and information-sharing spirit—some may object to particular materials being included in this forum.

Please feel free to contact us if you feel that images or content have been incorrectly included in this site.

Welcome and enjoy!