Music and Technology: a Very Short Introduction by Mark Katz
Author:Mark Katz [Katz, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199947003
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-22T00:00:00+00:00
Fugitive music: X-ray records and El Paquete Semanal
Trenchcoated black marketeers sold them in back alleys in cities across Russia. They could cost a dayâs or even a weekâs salary, or the equivalent in vodka. The government flooded the market with fakes to depress sales, but demand continued. Dealers were arrested, sometimes imprisoned. Made and circulated between the mid 1940s and mid 1960s, these items were an ingenious and macabre form of bootlegged records. Often referred to as bones (коÑÑÑк) or ribs (ÑебÑа), they were recordings made out of used X-ray film. With bony fingers splayed across the surface of the disc or ghostly skulls staring eyeless, the discs trapped nightmarish creatures within their grooves. The music, however, was full of life, often jazz and rock and roll from the West, all the more thrilling for being so scarce in the Soviet Union.
After World War II, when most of the raw material for making records in the USSR was reserved for the state record label, Melodiya, someone, somehow discovered that used X-rays could be a serviceable substitute. (The material resembled that of flexi discs, thin plastic recordings that often accompanied magazines or books, which had their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.) Bootleggers retrieved them from trash bins behind hospitals or obtained them by bribing technicians. The discs were usually seven inches in diameter, the size of a 45 rpm record, but they were recorded at 78 rpm, usually holding a single song. Rather than being pressed, as with traditional discs, X-ray records were inscribed with cutting tools, or lathes, often copying commercially made discs that were smuggled into the country. Underground record labels emerged, the most famous being the Golden Dog Gang. (The name was a reference to Nipper, the dog depicted in the iconic logo of the British label HMV, His Masterâs Voice, which showed the canine staring into the horn of a gramophone as he listened to his owner speaking from it.) X-ray records could not be mass produced, and they often sounded terrible, degrading with every play. Nevertheless, these records circulated by the thousands for nearly twenty years. (Demand largely vanished after 1964 when Soviet citizens could obtain reel-to-reel tape machines and, with them, easier means to copy music.) During those years, dedicated music fans persevered, tolerating the risk, expense, and noise that accompanied these bony discs. Manufacturing the records required considerable labor and ingenuity. A phenomenon fueled by scarcity, secrecy, and passion, X-ray records reveal one of the fascinating ways in which music travels through the world, sometimes through contested territory and at great risk, driven by technology and desire.
Several decades later, another ingenious form of musical dissemination arose in what had been one of the USSRâs staunchest allies. Cubaâs El Paquete Semanal, or the weekly package, is a form of what is called a sneakernet. It is an offline form of the Internet, a tongue-in-cheek term to describe the circulation of digital content by physical, in-person distribution, often transported by footâthus sneakernet. El Paquete supplements,
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Appreciation | Blank Sheet Music |
Composition | Conducting |
Exercises | Instruction & Study |
Lyrics | MIDI, Mixers, etc |
Philosophy & Social Aspects | Songwriting |
Techniques | Theory |
Vocal |
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