About us

The Network Media Cooperative was set up in October 1979 – in April 1980 we issued the first 19 media packages, then in the form of 1-2 sound cassettes with an accompanying little booklet in a small sliding box. The layout table for the Letraset and strips of composed text used to be on a bath tub. Conceived as a project in an oppositional public sphere, our themes focussed on social conflicts which today – 30 years on – have become even more potent: among them, unemployment and business crises, nuclear power and the disposal of atomic waste, major construction projects such as Frankfurt’s new airport runway, youth subcultures in search of direction, migration and xenophobia …

In those days, only a small part of our programme consisted of music from faraway cultures, which was later to become the primary focus. In collaboration with the radio and television broadcaster WDR, we initiated the World Network series, with a total of 49 releases, including more and more co-productions. The discovery of the upright format with two CDs and more space for texts and photos opened up whole new presentation possibilities. With 3 x 2 CDs of Desert Blues we created a new genre, Golden Afrique (vol. 1, 2, 3) documents the golden era of African pop music in the 70s and 80s, anthologies (like Road of the Gypsies, The Soul of Klezmer, Balkan Blues) and musician portraits (Sexteto Mayor, Bratsch, Djivan Gasparyan) became permanent bestsellers. Our musical expeditions and recording trips have taken us to more than 80 countries. The result is a wide and resonant kaleidoscope of the most diverse musical cultures on our planet. The important thing for us – this side of the familiar middle-of-the-road sounds, which are mostly imitations of Anglo-American pop music – was to track down the unpredictable sides of music. These are more likely to be expressed in lively acoustic pieces with a lot of improvisation or in highly emotional ballads.