A collection that causes nostalgia

By Kabeer Yousuf — For those who were born in the 2000s, a gramophone may be something totally confounding. Growing up in a time when technology allows for music to be carried in a thumbnail drive, the bulky music player may as well be as alien and ancient as the pyramids.

Introduce these youngsters to the black discs — the gramophone records — that carried the songs of the bygone generation and many of them will absolutely have no idea what to do with it. The scary truth is, they might even easily mistake it as the grandfather of Frisbee.

Here at the Amerat Park where the Muscat Festival is gaining momentum as days pass by, an Omani youth is offering a nostalgic flavour to the celebration. His collection, totally unfamiliar to the young ones, include HMV discs, the disc shaped analogue sound recording medium and gramophone players which allow those who’ve grew up with these items to reconnect with their not so distant past.  It’s a welcome trip down memory lane which manages to still collect its own audience.

Jamal Juma al Balushi, an Omani youth who has an unwavering passion for old music and music players is boasting of having more than 300 of such records and a number of players in his collection.

Whether it is a worn and torn disc of ‘Gone with The Wind’ of 1939 or of a Hindi or Egyptian movie which trigger an elder’s memories of a time when he was in his youthful prime, Jamal is proud to say ‘Yes, I have them all’.

“Indeed, yes. I have a collection of some of the best movies in English, Hindi and Arabic — a result of the hard work put up in more than two decades. I travelled to different countries, Mumbai, Cairo and elsewhere hunting for such discs and pieces of memories,” said Jamal.

Some of his Hollywood collections include The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); All About Eve (1950); City Lights (1931); The African Queen (1951); All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Intolerance (1916); Psycho (1960); Ben-Hur (1959); Lawrence of Arabia (1962); Citizen Kane (1941); North by Northwest (1959); The Ten Commandments (1956); Casablanca (1942); It’s a Wonderful Life (1946); and 12 Angry Men (1957) among others.

He said, some of the discs in his vast collections are not named and only when he plays the disc can he know its content.

The Bollywood films collections is comprised of Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1973); Maa (1952); Night in Calcullta (1970); Nikah (1982); Maa (1976); Maa Aur Mamta (1970); Maa Baap (1960); and Night in London (1967), to name a few.

“Most of the disxs were collected from some of my elders — great grand uncles who had a passion for movies back in the days. Knowing my craze for antique pieces, my friends, to,o help me by bringing their collections to me,” Jamal said.

When it comes to gramophones, Jamal has a limited collection at the festival grounds due to space constraints but he said he can arrange any gramophone that one would want to own.

Some of his copper pieces of music instruments include the Berliner Gramophones, those from Deutsche Grammophon, and those produced by Gramaphone Records, a music store in Chicago, known as the hub of House Music in that city.

“I keep cleaning them and apply brasso to keep its sheen which is a hectic task as some of these antique pieces are more than six or seven decades’ old. However, I enjoy collecting the old pieces and keep them spic and span”, said Jamal.