encountering recorded music for the first time


78 Blues: Folksongs and Phonographs in the American South

When … records first circulated, the very notion of recorded music was still a novelty. All music had been created live and tied to particular, intimate occasions. How were listeners to understand an impersonal technology like the phonograph record as a musical event? How could they reconcile firsthand interactions and traditional customs with technological innovations and mass media?

Recorded music at home was a radical discontinuity in musical practices!

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