scholarly journals ‘Total trash’. Recorded music and the logic of waste

Popular Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-107
Author(s):  
Elodie A. Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
British India ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Synthetic Materials ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThis article introduces three situated moments – or plateaux – in order to partially uncover the particular affinities between popular music and the ‘logic of waste’ in the Anthropocene Era, from early phonography to the present digital realm (with a focus on the UK, United States, and British India). The article starts with a ‘partial inventory’ of the Anthropocene, outlining the heuristic values of waste studies for research in popular music. The first plateau retraces the more historical links between popular music and waste, showing how waste (and the positive discourses surrounding it) became a defining element of the discourse and practices of early phonography. It aims to show how recorded sound participated in (and helped define, in an emblematic manner) a rapidly expanding ‘throwaway culture’ at the turn of the 20th century. The second plateau presents a more global panorama of the recording industry through a focus on shellac (a core, reversible substance of the early recording industry). Finally, the third plateau presents some insights into the ways in which popular music may ‘play’ and incorporate residual materialities in the contemporary ‘digital age’. I argue that the logic of waste defined both the space and pace of the early record industry, and continued to inform musical consumption across the 20th century – notably when toxic, non-recyclable synthetic materials (especially polyvinyl) were introduced.

Japan in Japan: notes on an aspect of the popular music record industry in Japan

Popular Music ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toru Mitsui
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Japanese Companies

The record and tape sales figures of the Japanese record industry have exceeded those of the industries of all other capitalist nations, except the USA, since the mid-seventies. In 1980, Japan's share amounted to 13.9 per cent of all sales in the capitalist sphere according to surveys by Billboard. The USA had 35.8 per cent, West Germany 11.6 per cent, the UK 11.6 per cent and France 7.3 per cent (Kawabata 1977, p. 22; 1982, pp. 91, 199). The output of foreign records, recorded and pressed by Japanese companies, to foreign records, pressed by Japanese companies from masters recorded by foreign companies primarily for their own consumers, has been about three to two. A good many of these foreign records are of American and European popular music, and in this field one can perceive a new and interesting tendency to promote and succeed with artists who are or were less successful in their own country. The tendency, whose background I am going to discuss here, started in the mid-seventies; one of the early examples is provided by Kiss, a New York group, which was shrewdly promoted and achieved wide popularity in Japan before succeeding nationwide in America.

Video in the machine: the incorporation of music video into the recording industry

Popular Music ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Banks
Keyword(s):  
Music Videos ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Important Form

Music video has become an increasingly integral component of the music recording business over the past three decades. Major US record companies with international divisions have made music clips since the 1970s to promote their acts in the UK and continental Europe where television shows were a more important form of promotion for recording artists. However, record labels did not make a full commitment to music clips until after the premiere of MTV in August 1981 as a 24-hour US cable programme service presenting an endless stream of music videos. As MTV's popularity blossomed in the early 1980s, music video revitalised a troubled record industry suffering a prolonged recession by prompting renewed consumer interest in pop music and successfully developing several new recording acts like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Boy George with provocative visual images.

Brazilian Popular Music during the First Half of the 20th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Sandroni
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Music Publishing ◽  
Radio Broadcasting ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Musical Genres

Commercial recordings in Brazil were first made in 1902 in Rio de Janeiro. During the first two decades of the 20th century, however, the recorded repertoire centered around the same musical genres established in the final decades of the previous century: for sung music, this meant modinhas, lundus, waltzes, and cançonetas; for instrumental music, this meant polkas, maxixes, marches, and tangos. During this period, sheet music for pianos and musical bands played a greater role in disseminating popular music than did mechanical recordings. This included dissemination by the medium of radio, which had begun in the country in the early 1920s but only expanded when its commercial operation was authorized in the 1930s. Of the leading musical genres of the period, samba and carnival marches (always sung) came into their own during the 1930s. Rio de Janeiro, at that time the capital of the republic, the cradle of the burgeoning phonograph recording industry, and the center of the still extant sheet music publishing business and radio broadcasting, is key to understanding Brazilian popular music of the time. During the entire period, however, migrants from other regions, especially from the northeastern states of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Ceará, made crucial contributions to popular music. These contributions became particularly significant during the final years of that decade with the success of baião, a sung musical genre with a distinct northeastern flavor whose influence would stretch into the 1950s.

United States Library of Congress: Expanding in Three Directions

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
Deanna B. Marcum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
Us Army ◽  
The Third ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
The City

Visitors to the United States Library of Congress will find it in the midst of major expansions of three kinds – expansions to preserve what otherwise might be lost, to protect what it already has, and to make what it has more readily and widely accessible. One current kind of expansion takes the form of constructing a new complex of four buildings in the side of a mountain near the city of Culpeper in the state of Virginia, about an hour's drive from the library's main facilities in Washington, DC. This complex, named the Library of Congress Packard Center for Audio-Visual Conservation, will provide safe storage and new preservation and access systems for the film, video, and sound collections – 5.7 million items – administered by the library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. The library's second major current expansion consists of constructing off-site storage modules for other collections on the site of Fort Meade, a US Army installation in the state of Maryland, less than an hour's drive from Washington, DC. On this site, the library and its partners are finishing the third and fourth of a projected 13, high-density storage modules, designed to extend the life of parts of the library's holdings by a factor of six. The third major current expansion of the Library of Congress is on the Internet, where the library's website now offers some 10 million digitized items. Through financial and other partnerships, the library will continue to add to its online resources, and is working with UNESCO on a project to create a World Digital Library. This will be a collaborative virtual repository through which libraries worldwide provide access to rare, primary source materials, illustrating cultures in all parts of the globe, for the potential benefit of people everywhere.

Hot swing and the dissolute life: youth, style and popular music in Europe 1939–49

Popular Music ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-163
Author(s):  
Ralph Willett
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Record Industry ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Newspaper Articles

In the late thirties, the syncopated rhythms of American jazz swept through Europe, an event encouraged by both the US record industry and Hollywood. In Germany, Fascist resistance to jazz culminated in the imposition of a ban by the Reich Chamber of Music on ‘jazzified, judified dance music’, a convenient way of dealing with American competition. Nevertheless Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson were still entered in Brunswick's German catalogue for 1939, and German bands continued to swing (on radio and records) into the forties. It is not wholly surprising to read of Goebbels and Goering dancing, in uniform, to the swing music of Jack Hylton and his Orchestra at the Berlin Press Ball in 1937. Among the young, however, swing was already beginning to symbolise a resistance to authority and non-cooperation with the Third Reich. Even newspaper articles intended to demonstrate the demoralising and corruptive effects of jazz whetted the appetite. Thus, a Frankfurter Zeitung article on ‘The Jitterbug’ attacked the bandleader Harry James, but also explained the latest swing terms such as ‘jive’ and ‘hep-cat’.

scholarly journals Nuovomondo, Ellis Island, and Italian Immigrants: A New Appraisal by Emanuele Crialese

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Marie-Christine Michaud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Ellis Island ◽  
The Third ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
No Man's Land

Ellis Island remains in the American collective consciousness a centre of immigration where thousands of Europeans who expected to enter the United States between 1892 and 1954, went through. As such, Ellis Island was a symbolic bridge between the Old World and the New. It is the vision of this bridge, or rather a no man’s land between the two worlds that Emanuele Crialese wants to give of Ellis Island in his movie Nuovomondo (Golden Door in the international version). It deals with the journey to America of a Sicilian family at the beginning of the 20th century. It is divided into three parts, one in Sicily dealing with the departure; the second one is the journey on the ship; the third one extensively deals with the arrival on Ellis Island. The film is rather realistic in the sense that it is widely based upon archival material, which becomes apparent when comparing photographs taken at the turn of the century and the scenes from the movie taking place in Ellis Island. By being realistic Crialese first associates Ellis Island to an alienating island, a devilish place where immigrants experienced trauma and humiliation, even possible deportation. The study of the staging reveals that the place is often seen as a prison and that it is linked to confusion and misunderstanding between the immigrants, their dreams and the requirements of the American immigration officers. Nevertheless, the movie is optimistic and displays a hopeful image of Ellis Island. The main characters manage to be admitted in America then seen as a Promised Land. But, the United States is never presented in the film, which provides a feeling of unreachability, as if Emanuele Crialese had wanted to challenge the myth of “il Nuovomondo” as a Promised Land.

scholarly journals America’s Automobile: Affection or Obsession, Myth or Reality?

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-55
Author(s):  
David Arthur Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Third ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Trade Wars

Mythology plays an important part of the role of the American automobile, less so in terms of its primary function that is transportation, more so in terms of an ancillary purpose: its metaphorical significance to both owner or operator and the onlooking public. Across much of the 20th century and continuing now into the third decade of the 21st century, the American automobile has undergone many design changes that have buttressed its metaphorical significance: become streamlined, gained then lost then partially regained size together with a colorful exterior, and in the 21st century become focused on an array of interior gadgets, some cast into hibernation because of an electronic chip scarcity resulting from trade wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Americans seem to have almost become besotted by automobiles, including their own and those driven by others, because in some respects the American automobile has come to define its driver. Automobiles in the United States that are visually appealing symbolize affluence, material success, preoccupation with speed, including the rapid pace of social change, as well as, at least arguably, a lesser regard for protecting the environment. On balance, in the mindset of many Americans, the automobile is larger than life, “a mode of signification, a form” in contrast to a mere machine. Change in automotive design has been heralded as the talisman of a new generation of drivers. However, what is cause and what is effect? American automobiles conflate myth and reality; that which is together with that which might be sometime temporal frustrations with the American Dream.

Venezuela

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Aymara Gerdel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Trade Partner

The United States and China currently constitute the world's two biggest hegemonic and emerging economic powers. Venezuela maintains commercial relations with both powers in the oil trade. Since the latter 20th century, the United States has been its main trade partner, followed by China, who in the 21st century became the second largest buyer of Venezuelan oil in the world. Venezuela is also the third largest supplier of oil for the United States and the seventh for China. In spite of this close, prolonged, and strategic commercial relationship, Venezuela has recently been designated an “Unusual and Extraordinary Threat to US National Security and Foreign Policy.” In contrast, an alliance with China exists, called the Strategic Partnership Integral. President Donald Trump has already expressed special interest in the situation of Venezuela, just within his first 100 days. This is a country that represents, as said before, an Unusual and Extraordinary Threat to National Security according to an Executive Order dated March 9, 2015.

The Mosasaur collections of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris

2012 ◽  
Vol 183 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Bardet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Type Specimen ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The Third ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century

AbstractTaking advantage of the venue in Paris of the Third Mosasaur Meeting (May 2010), the mosasaur collections of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) have been entirely checked and revised. The French holotypes have all been restored and most specimens kept at the MNHN have been placed in the Paleontology Gallery as part as a small exhibition organized especially for the meeting. The MNHN mosasaur collections include specimens from the 18th, 19th and 20th century from France, The Netherlands, Belgium, the United States of America, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Niger. Most of the mosasaur specimens discovered in France – including most holotypes – are kept in Paris. Besides the French types, the MNHN collections include several important historical specimens from abroad, the most famous being undoubtedly the Cuvier’s ‘Grand Animal Fossile des Carrières de Maestricht’, type specimen of Mosasaurus hoffmanniMantell, 1829, recognized as the first mosasaur to be named. This work aims to briefly present most of these specimens, with special focus on those found in France. The MNHN mosasaurid collections as a whole reflects the development of palaeontological researches in this Institution, from its foundation at the end of the 18th century up to the present time.

The Zaydi Manuscript Tradition: Virtual Repatriation of Cultural Heritage

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-128
Author(s):  
Sabine Schmidtke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Open Access ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Third ◽  
South Arabia ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
State Library

The manuscript tradition of the Zaydi branch of Shiʿism, which since the 9th century has been preserved primarily in Yemen, is nowadays dispersed over countless libraries in Yemen and the Middle East, Turkey, Europe, and the United States, of which only a fraction has been digitized and is available for open access. Its treasures came to the attention of scholars outside Yemen at a relatively late stage. Whereas the bulk of Arabic manuscripts nowadays housed in the libraries of Europe were acquired between the 17th and 19th centuries in centrally located cities and regions such as the Ottoman capital Istanbul, Syria and Palestine, and Egypt—all strongholds of Sunnism—the collections of Zaydi/Yemeni manuscripts were established only at the end of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century. Among the European explorers and merchants who collected manuscripts in South Arabia and later sold them to libraries in Europe was Eduard Glaser, who visited Yemen on four occasions between 1882 and 1894. After Glaser sold the manuscripts purchased during his first and second journey to the Königliche Bibliothek zu Berlin in 1884 and 1887, Wilhelm Ahlwardt made them the last acquisition to be included in his Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts, published between 1887 and 1899. The third Glaser collection was purchased in 1889 by the British Museum in London—with the exception of the Lane collection that was purchased in 1891 and 1893, it was the last acquisition to be included in Charles Rieu's Supplement to the Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts published in 1894. The fourth Glaser collection was sold in 1894 to the Kaiserlich-Königliche Hofbibliothek in Vienna, constituting the most important acquisition of Arabic manuscripts by the library at the time—unlike the Berlin and London Glaser collections, the Vienna Glaser manuscripts were never described in a published catalogue. An even larger collection of Zaydi/Yemeni manuscripts was brought together by the Italian merchant Giuseppe Caprotti during his sojourn in South Arabia from 1885 to 1919. Portions of the Caprotti collection now belong to the Bavarian State Library in Munich and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, while the majority of the collection is owned by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. European libraries and increasingly US libraries have continuously purchased manuscripts of Yemeni provenance during the 20th and 21st centuries.

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