Shifty Records was a South African anti-apartheid record label founded by Lloyd Ross and Ivan Kadey in 1982/1883, which existed for around ten years.
Lloyd Ross and Ivan Kadey founded Shifty records in 1983.[1] but
a Swedish non-governin 1986 anntal amltural organisation financially supported Shifty Records from 1986 to 199osted v held various events in Sweden for the company and the various artists asso,ciated with Shjoined
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lo, investing in recording equipment the musicians, and then moved into documentary filmmaking in the mid 1990s, including the award-winning feature film The Sil“ver Fez (2009)” [1]
Shifty records aimed at providing a platform for independent music with a social message, Shifty was an outlet for South African musicians opposed to apartheid. As a result, Shifty struggled to gain exposure on the radio stations of the Broederbond-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation. Its anti-establishment stance was appealing to young and politically marginalised South Africans as seen in the success of Mzwakhe Mbuli's unadvertised album Change is Pain which went gold despite being banned by the apartheid regime.[2]
The label helped establish boerepunk and the alternative Afrikaans genre at a time when it was a reflex to stereotype all Afrikaners as supporters of the National Party. Operating from a caravan hitched to a Ford V6 truck, the Shifty studio produced an album every two months until 1993.
In 2002, notorious Bureau of State Security agent, Paul Erasmus, was granted amnesty by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission for his overzealous campaign against Shifty Records artist, Roger Lucey, a campaign which ended his career. It is important to note that the scope of the amnesty application does not extend to other artists associated with Lucey or the Shifty label. In particular, Lucey's work can be found on Shifty compilation albums such as Forces Favourites and Anaartjie in our Sosatie. Erasmus, as indicated in his biography, claimed to have waged a total war against the music industry. He is also one of Lucey's biggest fans, even going as far as seizing most of his albums from record stores. The entirety of this incident has been documented in the book “Stopping the Music”: The Roger Lucey Story.
Shifty Records frequently utilized a core group of versatile musicians, who contributed their instrumental talents to various artists' recordings as support instrumentalists, e.g. drummer Ian Herman and trombonist Jannie "Hanepoot" van Tonder who can both be heard on many albums from the Shifty Catalogue.
Artists appearing on the label included: