bajakhana MICHAEL KINNEAR'S WEBSITE INTO EARLY SOUND RECORDINGSbajakhana

GULSHAN

Bajaj & Co., (Nowshera) Peshawar

History from ‘The 78 rpm Record Labels of India’
by Michael Kinnear, 2nd Edition Published 2016

GULSHAN DISCOGRAPHY
Author: Michael Kinnear

Prior to the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan (East and West), Lahore was a major recording centre for the North-west region, with the earliest recordings being taken there in 1905 by The Gramophone & Typewriter, Ltd.

Over the next couple of decades regular recording sessions were held at Lahore, providing a large selection of recordings in the Urdu, Punjabi, Multani, Pushto, Sindhi dialects along with Persian and Afghani repertoires, were added to the catalogues of “His Master’s Voice” releases.

By the early 1930’s Columbia Graphophone Company, Ltd., had undertaken recording sessions at Lahore and The Gramophone Co., Ltd., had signed up a number of their clients to the ‘Private Recorders’ scheme which considerably enhanced the variety of recordings available of the North-West region.

Among these ‘Private Recorders’ were Janki Nath Kumar & Bros., of Lahore (‘Jien-o-phone Record’); The Frontier Trading Co., of Peshawar (‘Banga-phone Record’); Bajaj & Co., of Peshawar (‘Gulshan’) the West End Phono, of Lahore (‘New Excelsior Record’) and a couple of smaller traders.

In 1942, The Gramophone Co., Ltd., acquired a record factory at Chheharta, near Amritsar, which supplemented the supply of discs from the Dum Dum factory intended for the North-west region. By 1947, the Chehharta factory had been abandoned, and shortly afterwards The Gramophone Co., Ltd., had acquired the rights to the recordings of the ‘Jien-o-phone Record’, ‘Banga-phone Record’, and ‘Gulshan’ labels, the bulk of which they reissued on the “His Master’s Voice” label.