“Your reflective writing focuses on the lack of a shared physical space which curiously is one of the defining characteristics of sound culture since the invention of recording in 1877.” – Ed
Recommendation by Ed
This was an interesting opening observation to open with. I think I was mostly talking about shared physical space of performance and how ‘performance’ has changed so much in this time. With most radio shows being prerecorded and even ‘live shows’ streamed online being a series of people filming and recording themselves, then cumulatively collecting these abstract performances and piecing them together. It is true though that in a way the forms of recorded music and distribution of music goes widely unchanged. Maybe one exception I can think of being Bandcamp showing charity on artists by occasionally waving their fees… But I guess that is more business orientated than listener’s experience. Recorded music since it’s wider distribution into the lower classes as with it brought masses of experiences to people who would never have been given the opportunities to hear certain sounds. I have been interested in the availability of music to the working classes before recorded music since watching Elephant Man and the scene where Joseph Merrick gets taken to the theatre.
I think this is perhaps a more extreme example of someone not being accepted by society experience a night of acceptance, but perhaps before the availability of recorded music, were these high brow experience not for the working class? Did folk music exist in an entirely difference sub-system of existence, was their shared influence? I am not really sure but interested in investigating further.