Voices of Black Folk
Voices of Black Folk

Author: Terri Brinegar

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1496839269

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In the late 1920s, Reverend A. W. Nix (1880–1949), an African American Baptist minister born in Texas, made fifty-four commercial recordings of his sermons on phonographs in Chicago. On these recordings, Nix presented vocal traditions and styles long associated with the southern, rural Black church as he preached about self-help, racial uplift, thrift, and Christian values. As southerners like Nix fled into cities in the North to escape the rampant racism in the South, they contested whether or not African American vocal styles of singing and preaching that had emerged during the slavery era were appropriate for uplifting the race. Specific vocal characteristics, like those on Nix’s recordings, were linked to the image of the “Old Negro” by many African American leaders who favored adopting Europeanized vocal characteristics and musical repertoires into African American churches in order to uplift the modern “New Negro” citizen. Through interviews with family members, musical analyses of the sounds on Nix’s recordings, and examination of historical documents and relevant scholarship, Terri Brinegar argues that the development of the phonograph in the 1920s afforded preachers like Nix the opportunity to present traditional Black vocal styles of the southern Black church as modern Black voices. These vocal styles also influenced musical styles. The “moaning voice” used by Nix and other ministers was a direct connection to the “blues moan” employed by many blues singers including Blind Willie, Blind Lemon, and Ma Rainey. Both Reverend A. W. Nix and his brother, W. M. Nix, were an influence on the “Father of Gospel Music,” Thomas A. Dorsey. The success of Nix’s recorded sermons demonstrates the enduring values African Americans placed on traditional vocal practices.

From Keroncong to Xinyao: The Record Industry in Singapore, 1903–1985
From Keroncong to Xinyao: The Record Industry in Singapore, 1903–1985

Author: Ross Laird

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd

Published: 2023-04-01

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 9811864985

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From Keroncong to Xinyao presents a captivating and groundbreaking exploration of Singapore’s vibrant record industry from 1903 to 1985, revealing how Singapore was once a significant recording centre in Southeast Asia. The book highlights the pioneers and innovators of the industry, from performing artists to recording engineers. Records made during this musical heyday covered diverse genres, from Malay keroncong to Chinese opera and pop songs, and, from the 1950s, the rock ’n’ roll wave that was sweeping the world. Beautifully illustrated with photographs, record album art and archival images, this book takes readers on a fascinating journey through the music industry’s triumphs and challenges, revealing its resonating contributions to Singapore’s cultural heritage.

Talking Machine West
Talking Machine West

Author: Michael A. Amundson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2017-04-13

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0806157771

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Many associate early western music with the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but America’s first western music craze predates these “singing cowboys” by decades. Written by Tin Pan Alley songsters in the era before radio, the first popular cowboy and Indian songs circulated as piano sheet music and as cylinder and disc recordings played on wind-up talking machines. The colorful fantasies of western life depicted in these songs capitalized on popular fascination with the West stoked by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian, and Edwin S. Porter’s film The Great Train Robbery. The talking machine music industry, centered in New York City, used state-of-the-art recording and printing technology to produce and advertise songs about the American West. Talking Machine West brings together for the first time the variety of cowboy, cowgirl, and Indian music recorded and sold for mass consumption between 1902 and 1918. In the book’s introductory chapters, Michael A. Amundson explains how this music reflected the nostalgic passing of the Indian and the frontier while incorporating modern ragtime music and the racial attitudes of Jim Crow America. Hardly Old West ditties, the songs gave voice to changing ideas about Indians and assimilation, cowboys, the frontier, the rise of the New Woman, and ethnic and racial equality. In the book’s second part, a chronological catalogue of fifty-four western recordings provides the full lyrics and history of each song and reproduces in full color the cover art of extant period sheet music. Each entry also describes the song’s composer(s), lyricist(s), and sheet music illustrator and directs readers to online digitized recordings of each song. Gorgeously illustrated throughout, this book is as entertaining as it is informative, offering the first comprehensive account of popular western recorded music in its earliest form.

Eco-Sonic Media
Eco-Sonic Media

Author: Jacob Smith

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0520961498

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The negative environmental effects of media culture are not often acknowledged: the fuel required to keep huge server farms in operation, landfills full of high tech junk, and the extraction of rare minerals for devices reliant on them are just some of the hidden costs of the contemporary mediascape. Eco-Sonic Media brings an ecological critique to the history of sound media technologies in order to amplify the environmental undertones in sound studies and turn up the audio in discussions of greening the media. By looking at early and neglected forms of sound technology, Jacob Smith seeks to create a revisionist, ecologically aware history of sound media. Delving into the history of pre-electronic media like hand-cranked gramophones, comparatively eco-friendly media artifacts such as the shellac discs that preceded the use of petroleum-based vinyl, early forms of portable technology like divining rods, and even the use of songbirds as domestic music machines, Smith builds a scaffolding of historical case studies to demonstrate how "green media archaeology" can make sound studies vibrate at an ecological frequency while opening the ears of eco-criticism. Throughout this eye-opening and timely book he makes readers more aware of the costs and consequences of their personal media consumption by prompting comparisons with non-digital, non-electronic technologies and by offering different ways in which sound media can become eco-sonic media. In the process, he forges interdisciplinary connections, opens new avenues of research, and poses fresh theoretical questions for scholars and students of media, sound studies, and contemporary environmental history.

The Talking Machine
The Talking Machine

Author: Timothy C. Fabrizio

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13:

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An incredible variety of antique record players is documented, including those with external-horns as well as internal-horn devices, collectively known as "talking machines." The authoritative text and up-to-date value guide complement hundreds of photos to provide in this one volume a veritable library on the subject.

Shellac and Swing!
Shellac and Swing!

Author: Bruce Lindsay

Publisher: Fonthill Media

Published: 2020-05-29

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13:

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'Shellac and Swing!' tells the story of the gramophone's 'golden age,' from 1900-1955, when it helped to shape Britain's culture from the arts to warfare. The story focuses on the gramophone, the invention of Emile Berliner in the 1880s, but begins with a brief outline of the first attempts to record the human voice and of Edison's invention of the cylinder and the phonograph. It uses primary evidence, images and interviews with DJs, fans, musicians and historians to explore this fascinating and often eccentric tale. Each chapter ends with 'On the Record,' a discussion of a record that relates to the chapter's themes. Although the gramophone and its fragile shellac discs were vital to Britain's music scene-opera and music hall, the Jazz Age, the crooners, early rock'n'roll-its impact was far more extensive. Its place in British history encompasses advertising and design, fraud and piracy, phallic symbols, talking books, the threat from radio and TV, the contrasting worlds of the Salvation Army and adult 'party' discs, the creation of a parliamentary insult, new political strategies and the seditious activity of the Mau Mau. From the establishment of the Gramophone Company in London in the late 1890s to the end of shellac record production in the 1950s, the British public bought the machines and the discs in their millions and the record labels made stars of performers like Caruso, Harry Lauder, Al Bowlly and Dame Nellie Melba. 'Shellac and Swing!' explores the ways in which the gramophone helped these singers to achieve stardom but it also explores in detail and for the first time many other stories of not-so-famous performers, of the gramophone in political electioneering and of forgotten technology: the first pirate radio broadcasters, the soldiers who took their 'Trench Decca' portables to the Western Front, the invention of the Flame-O-Phone, the People's Budget recordings and the pioneering label owner and producer of 'blue' discs. The gramophone's heyday ended with the rise of rock 'n 'roll, teenagers, the 45 rpm single, the LP and the record player, but it survives today as part of a vibrant contemporary music, fashion and lifestyle scene.