African Record Centre - Record Shop in Brooklyn

Founded 1968 to build the biggest African music selection in New York.

Shop

African Record Centre

Address

1194 Nostrand Avenue

Town

Brooklyn, United States

Established

1968

Formats

Vinyl, CDs, 7"

Crates

World, Soul, Funk, Reggae, Jazz, Latin

Brothers Roger, Rudolph and Roland Francis started the African Record Centre in 1968 with the explicit aim of assembling the largest selection of African music in New York and establishing the music in the United States at all. They had come to it through a folkloric ensemble they formed in the early 1960s, and began importing from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, becoming distributors for Makossa, the first African music label in the country. The first shop was in Harlem, followed by Nostrand Avenue, and at its height the business ran three storefronts with a deep Afro-Caribbean catalogue. It later widened into books on the Black diaspora and spirituality through the Yoruba Book Center.