Honest Jon's is a British independent record shop based on

Portobello Road Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is ...

Ladbroke Grove Ladbroke Grove () is an area and a road in West London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, passing through Kensal Green and Notting Hill, running north–south between Harrow Road and Holland Park Avenue. It is also a name given to ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, operating since 1974. The shop is owned and run by Mark Ainley and Alan Scholefield, who took over from one of the original proprietors, "Honest" Jon Clare. Their record label of the same name is run in conjunction with

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtua ...

, who has been quoted as saying: "I don't really like the term world music. Wherever it comes from, it's all just music, isn't it? Hopefully that's what Honest Jon's is about - to open a few minds to what's out there". The shop sells a multitude of genres of music on vinyl and CD, specializing in jazz, blues, reggae, dance, soul, folk and outernational. It runs a mail-order business. Formed in 2002, the label has released

compilation album A compilation album comprises tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several performers. If by one artist, then generally the tracks were not originally intended for rel ...

s such as its ''London Is The Place For Me'' series, excavating the music of young Black London, in the years after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

("a fascinating archive of material from the 1950s and 1960s, chronicling a time when diasporic rhythms were more or less the sole preserve of the small communities responsible for bringing them to these shores");Dave Stelfox
"Various Artists: London Is the Place for Me: Part Four. Honest Jon's; 2007"
''Pitchfork'', 14 February 2007. also collections of British folk, Port-of-Spain soca,

Afro-Cuban jazz Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm.{{cite web, Cuba: Son and Afro-Cuban ...

from

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...

, Jamaican dancehall; and retrospectives of artists including Moondog,

Maki Asakawa was a Japanese jazz and blues singer, lyricist and composer. She was an important voice of the Japanese urban counterculture. It is written in ''The Japan Times'' that she "made her name in 1970" with ''The World of Maki Asakawa'' and is know ...

Bettye Swann Betty Barton (born Betty Jean Champion, October 24, 1944), better known by the stage name Bettye Swann, is a retired American soul singer. She is best known for her 1967 hit song " Make Me Yours". Career Swann was born in Shreveport, Louisiana ...

and

Cedric "Im" Brooks Cedric "Im" Brooks (27 April 1943 – 3 May 2013) was a Jamaican saxophonist and flautist known for his solo recordings and as a member of The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, The Sound Dimensions, Divine Light, The Light of Saba, and The Skatal ...

& The Light of Saba. It has released original music by

Candi Staton Canzetta Maria "Candi" Staton (, ) (born March 13, 1940) is an American singer–songwriter, best known in the United States for her 1970 remake of Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" and her 1976 disco chart-topper " Young Hearts Run Free". In E ...

Actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

, T++,

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is an eight-piece, Chicago-based brass ensemble consisting of eight sons of the jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran. Their musical style ranges from hip hop to jazz to funk and rock, including calypso and gypsy music. They call th ...

, Mark Ernestus,

Trembling Bells Trembling Bells were a Scottish folk rock group formed in 2008 by drummer Alex Neilson, a musician with a history of free and improvised playing with several artists. Based in Glasgow, the group released three albums through Honest Jon's Records ...

The Good, the Bad & the Queen The Good, the Bad & the Queen were an English art rock supergroup composed of singer Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, bassist Paul Simonon of the Clash, guitarist Simon Tong of the Verve, and Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. They released t ...

Simone White Simone White (born February 7, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter. Life and career Simone White appeared in the 1984 comedy-drama " The Wild Life" written by Cameron Crowe and directed by Art Linson. Eddie Van Halen and Donn Landee compos ...

, Shackleton, Michael Hurley, Terry Hall, DJ Sotofett, and the

Moritz Von Oswald Moritz von Oswald (born 1962) is a German record producer and percussionist from Hamburg and based in Berlin. He is a co-founder of the production duo and record label Basic Channel. He has collaborated with Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, and Nils P ...

Trio, Vladislav Delay Quartet, Insanlar & Ricardo Villalobos, Kassem Mosse, Pinch, Don't DJ, Tribe Of Colin and many more. It recorded the

chaabi Chaabi ( in Arabic), also known as Chaâbi, Sha-bii, or Sha'bii meaning "folk", refers to different music genres in North Africa and the Middle East such as Algerian chaabi, Moroccan chaabi and Egyptian Shaabi. Chaabi music just means 'music ...

orchestra of Abdel Hadi Halo on location in

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques d ...

;

Lobi Traore Lobi may refer to: *Lobi, Estonia, a village in Estonia *Lobi people The Lobi belong to an ethnic group that originated in what is today Ghana. Starting around 1770, many Lobi peoples migrated into southern Burkina Faso and later into Côte d'Ivoi ...

and Kokanko Sata Doumbia in

Bamako Bamako ( bm, ߓߡߊ߬ߞߐ߬ ''Bàmakɔ̌'', ff, 𞤄𞤢𞤥𞤢𞤳𞤮 ''Bamako'') is the capital and largest city of Mali, with a 2009 population of 1,810,366 and an estimated 2022 population of 2.81 million. It is located on the Niger Rive ...

; and Tony Allen in

Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national capital of Nigeria until December 1991 fo ...

. In 2008, Honest Jon's began a run of compilations of early recordings — mostly drawn from the EMI Archive in

Hayes, Hillingdon Hayes is a town in west London, historically situated within the county of Middlesex, and now part of the London Borough of Hillingdon. The town's population, including its localities Hayes End, Harlington and Yeading, was recorded as 83,564 ...

— stretching back to the start of the twentieth century, covering all corners of the world: from the break-up of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...

more than a hundred years ago, to 1950s

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, to late-1920s

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

, to 1930s East Africa.

References

External links

Official site
British independent record labels Indie rock record labels {{UK-record-label-stub

See also

References

External links