When our team had the honor of speaking to Joshua Bello, recordist for Global Recordings Network (GRN) Nigeria, he shared an incredible story about the long-term and far-reaching influence of GRN’s phonette, or gramophone as it was known by some of the people we served in Nigeria.

The phonette was a little hand-crank record player for listening. It was designed in the 1960s in collaboration with the Australian office for use in the field where electricity was not available. The hand crank action was based on other spring-wound players, which were too bulky for the field. GRN’s phonette differed from the phonographs of the time because it was powered manually and the sound was produced acoustically.

We invite you to listen in as Joshua explains what happened when he encountered a local Muslim leader more than 30 years after GRN’s phonette first entered Nigeria. ■