A Minimum 700 Word Paper on “Thinking About Technology and Popular Music”
NOTE: This assignment is to be a minimum of 700 words in length and due no later than 11:30 PM EDT on Friday, May 30, 2014.
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THINKING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat,
The deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
–Walt Whitman “I Hear America Singing” from Leaves of Grass, 1867
When Walt Whitman wrote “I Hear America Singing” it was more than a poetic allusion or metaphor. In the 1860s, Americans of all stripes sang and did so alone and
in groups, to themselves and to one another, for money, for pleasure, and, perhaps most important, to simply express being alive. For most Americans of the 19th
century, the singing of songs was a central facet of life in America because it gave them a sense of social cohesion and solidarity, helped them to understand who they
were, and allowed them to express themselves in a way that seemed terribly American and democratic. Songs, especially our songs, were available to all and practiced
by many.
However, the days of “America singing” were numbered even when Whitman wrote his poem. Less than fifty years after his death in 1892, Americans would become a
nation of listeners rather than singers and the world where each of us sang “what belongs to him or her and to none else” would become a part of America’s past rather
than its present. Most of us now “lift our voices in song” only in the relative anonymity of the singing of the National Anthem before sporting events, at church, or
in the private seclusion of our showers and automobiles. Although America can still be thought of as “a musical nation,” our sense of music both as individuals and in
a social context has changed dramatically and will likely change even more in the future.
The principal reason for this extraordinary change was and is a direct result of technology. Initially, we were a nation of people who made music. We sang and
played instruments as a normal and expected part of life in America. In the 19th century, the availability of relatively cheap sheet music, musical instruments, and
the parlor piano made the playing and singing of songs the most popular entertainment in the country…until technology brought recorded music into our lives.
Of Thomas Edison’s more than one thousand inventions, his favorite was the phonograph. “…I’ve made some machines, but this (the phonograph) is my baby. I expect
it to grow up to be a big feller and support me in my old age.” Although the phonograph would contribute to Edison’s support in his old age, it would make only a
modest contribution, especially in comparison to the riches that came from his other inventions and patent holdings. Nonetheless, he continued to see it as his “baby”
and he worked on and improved it for over fifty years.
However, not everyone saw the phonograph as a positive benefit for the American public. John Phillip Sousa, America’s most famous composer and conductor of band
music, hated the phonograph and was very public in his condemnation of what he called “these infernal machines.” Sousa warned that because of the phonograph, “The
time is coming when no one will be ready to submit himself to the ennobling discipline of learning music. Everyone will have their ready made or ready pirated music
in their cupboards.” In a submission he made to Congress in 1906 to seek copyright protection for composers, Sousa argued:
“These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings,
you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a
vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.”
Of course, John Phillip Sousa was not motivated solely by his concern about “the artistic development of music” in the United States. He was, after all, a
performer, composer, and bandleader who saw recorded music as a threat to his livelihood and his status as one of the county’s most successful musical celebrities.
Nevertheless, his fear that the phonograph might mean that “in front of every house in the summer evenings” we might no longer find “young people together singing the
songs of the day or the old songs” was prophetic and we have long lived in the world that he feared.
Edison’s tin foil cylinder recordings gave way to more durable wax cylinders, which, in turn, gave way to Berliner’s flat discs. Decades later, the phonograph
record was replaced by magnetic tape, which was replaced by the compact disc, and now most recordings are distributed as digital files. Each technological advance in
sound recording improved the quality of recorded sound and each made the distribution of recorded music simpler, cheaper, and more profitable. However, each
technological advance also changed the very nature of how we listened to music and the role that music played in our lives. Perhaps most important, each of those
technological advances also changed what music meant to us as a people.
In the not too distant past, most Americans knew the “old songs” that stretched from the time of Stephen Foster to those of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the young
Stephen Sondheim. The hundreds of songs that made up The Great American Songbook were common knowledge and presented us with a common vocabulary of songs from before
the Civil War to the mid-1950s. However, from the time of the emergence of rock and roll to the present, that connection to one another though our shared musical
heritage has diminished to a point where it is almost nonexistent. Most of us are unfamiliar with many songs from ten or twenty years ago let alone those “old songs”
that once upon a time were known by one and all.
Today, the fragmentation of the popular mainstream has grown to such an extent that few of us are familiar with all of the songs and artists that now make up the
Top Ten in any given week. The “popular mainstream” is no longer a reflection of our common musical interests as a people and, instead, has become a collection of
increasingly disparate interests whose only common denominator is that those interests happen to be musical and recorded. We don’t listen to and often don’t come in
contact with music outside of our own narrow enchantments and have lost that connection to one another that once came through our shared musical background. The
democracy of the popular mainstream is actually an allusion to or an illusion of another time.
Similarly, we don’t listen to music in the same way that we did in the past and seldom share that experience directly with others. Even when the phonograph
replaced the singing and playing of songs as our primary source of musical entertainment, we still most often listened to records in the presence of others. If there
was a recording that one wished to share with someone else, that sharing usually took place as a social event where people listened together. However, the advent of
personal portable music players and the Internet once again changed how we listened to music. We now listen to music most often in isolation from one another, as an
private rather than a social experience, and when we do share our music it is most often as a digital file rather than as an experience shared with another individual.
Of course, change always brings about more change and we tend to see the time before all those changes took place through the distortions and filters of nostalgia.
We see life in the past as “simpler” and somehow better. Our sense of those days when young people sang songs together on summer evenings is likely colored by our
nostalgia for times when the world seemed to be less complicated and life easier…times that were different, but not necessarily better.
With change there is always something gained and something lost and whether the gains outweigh the loss is a matter of importance. The technologies that gave us
access to Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Elvis, The Beatles, and Radiohead also made music into a commodity that was owned by the few,
sold to the many, and, like all commodities in the marketplace, governed by commercial considerations rather than worth or merit. The technologies that made it
possible for us hear Robert Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Carter Family, and Fats Domino also made their music and their contributions easy to set aside and be
forgotten in favor of the market’s insatiable desire for “something new and different.” Most of all, the technologies of recorded sound and the advances in those
technologies have created a world dramatically different from that of Walt Whitman and, whether for good or ill, the songs of the mechanics, the carpenter, the mason,
the boatman, and the shoemaker “singing as he sits on his bench” are of his time and not ours.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT
The gains and losses that result from technological change are always matters of consequence and trying to determine whether the gains outweigh the losses is
important. For this assignment, examine a major technological change in the way music was created, recorded, distributed or marketed and discuss the gains and losses
that came about as a result of that change. What is of most importance is to discuss those “gains and losses” in terms of how they changed us as listeners and how
they changed us socially and culturally as a people. Put another way, the most important thing is not how the technology changed the way we listened to music but how
the way we listened to music changed us. Similarly, the most important aspects of a technological change from a social and cultural viewpoint are not in how our
social and cultural behavior changed but in how that change in behavior altered our culture and society. As example: when Elvis was first promoted to the public on
television, the way he looked – and, more important, the way he moved – had as much to do with his success as they way he sang. The result was that it changed our
notion of what was acceptable behavior in a pop star and made “overt sexuality” an important part of rock and roll and popular music. Equally, the fact that he sang
“black music” on television helped to break down racial barriers and changed the way we thought about African American music and culture in the popular mainstream.
There are hundreds of technological changes to choose from: the player piano, the jukebox, the phonograph record, the compact disc, the iTunes Store, the long
playing album, the Walkman, the iPod, the music video, MTV, Shawn Fanning’s Napster, and the list goes on. Pick one change, describe the “gains and losses” that were
a result of that change, and examine what those “gains and losses” meant to us as individuals and as a people.
It is, of course, advisable to cite outside sources for support and frame your argument in the form of a formal essay (Look over “Presenting Arguments,” “Tips On
Writing Papers,” and “Critical Thinking” in the Syllabus).
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