Ex-Mango Groover launches Lalela Music

2 Oct 2009

Lalela Music (Zulu for “listen”), a music library for film and television recently launched in Johannesburg. The library will be promoted internationally as a source for film and TV music. Alan Lazar, composer of “African Dream” and ex-Mango Groover is the driving force behind Lalela. Now based in Los Angeles, Lazar has composed music for top shows such as Sex and the City and Emmy-nominated An American Crime.

At present, most South African broadcast media pull a majority of their background music from international music libraries composed by English and American artists. Ironically, African sounding tracks are often pulled from international music libraries created by international composers.

More than 50% SA

Lazar said: “More than 50% of the music in the first volume of the Lalela music library is composed by South African artists. It includes artists like African jazz maestro Themba Mkhize, Afro house king Lungelo Lubelwana, Jerome Bezuidenhout, traditional musicians Mosoeu Ketlele and friends, Marilyn Nokwe and Mango Groove's penny whistler Mduduzi Magwaza. It also includes a percussion ensemble led by Godfrey Mgcina and compositions I recently composed for the South African hit movie, Jerusalema.”

For the first time, these artists will be available for use extensively as background music on South African television and other media.

International promotion

Lazar said: “We also intend to promote the library extensively in the US and Europe, so that for the first time South African artists will be used as a credible source for film and TV music internationally.”

The library also includes some work by acclaimed international composers like Golden Globe nominee Antonio Pinto (Love in the time of Cholera and City of God), Doug Cuomo (Sex and the City main theme), Billboard dance artist Photek, Matt Mariano (Grey's Anatomy) and Elvin Ross (Madea Goes to Jail, Diary of a Mad Black Woman).

Forty categories covered

The library covers more than 40 categories commonly used in film and television, from drama to chill, romance to house music and, kids to kwaito beats.

The library loads into iTunes software and is fully searchable. Hard drives of high-quality WAV files, available in multiple durations are provided on request.

A full service website www.lalela.com, will be up and running by January 2010.