An early Ska / Reggae label, owned and run by Terry Nelson. Most of Halagala's records featured Nelson either as artist, composer and / or producer. The majority of them came out during the period 1964 to 1967 but the company enjoyed something of a revival during 1969-70, putting out singles on its Rude Boy, Guyana International (q.v. both) and Booma Rock offshoots as well as on Halagala itself. Initially numbering was in a HG-0 series; it reached HG-36, but quite a few numbers seem not to have been used. Singles from the '70s revival were numbered in the HALA-000s. Nelson returned to his native Guyana in 1970, bringing an end to his activities in the UK. He did however launch Halagala in his home land, along with a recording studio and a pressing plant.
Halagala used five basic label designs here. The first was straightforward, having the company's name at the top but no logo as such. It came in several different colours, including silver-on-green, silver-on-red, silver-on-black and silver-on-various-blues as well as the one shown here (1). From HG-15 the range of colours shrank to two: silver-on-black and green-on-yellow. A small logo was added with HG-18 (2); it moved to the centre and grew hugely in size with HG-27 (3). From that point the green-on-yellow labels lost the label name but their logo enjoyed another increase in size (4). The sole Halagala from 1969 was given a completely new design, with the name running down the left-hand side of the label and the logo shrinking to its original size and moving to 2 o'clock. The 1970s issues also had a new design, with the name at the top in an elongated font (5). There were only two of them: HALA-003 was issued in Barbados and featured the same tracks as HALA-002, while HALA-004 appears not to have got past the 'white label promo' stage. The 'discography' below only shows the 1970s singles. The others can be found on the 45Cat site. Thanks to Charlie Chalk of that site for the use of the second and fifth scans here, and to Klepsie of that site for letting me know that Halagala made it into the '70s. Thanks also to Nicholas Hough for the picture of the red-and-white sleeve - a very similar sleeve can be found in green-and-white.
Copyright 2022 Robert Lyons.