Description
Insurgent Noise
Book Summary
This essay reveals how the confluence of electrical recording, global capitalism, and traditional music during the 1920s triggered an unprecedented cultural revolution. The reader will discover how beguine, salsa, calypso, and other now-familiar rhythms were born from the tension between commercial speculation and popular creativity, forever transforming our relationship with sound.
What is it about?
Michael Denning analyzes the historical moment when major record labels set out to capture vernacular music from around the world to turn it into commercial products. The work explores how new electrical recording techniques, combined with the socioeconomic geography of the movement of goods and workers of the era, allowed sounds previously tied to a specific time and space to detach from their origins and circulate globally. The author shows how this process not only generated new musical genres, but also transformed cultural perception and gave rise to forms of expression that we now consider natural.
Main themes
- History of electrical recording and its impact on music production during the 1920s.
- Relationship between speculative capitalism and the appropriation of traditional music.
- Birth of global musical genres such as beguine, salsa, and calypso.
- Mobility of workers and goods as a driver of cultural exchange.
- Transformation of listening and musical experience in the age of technical reproduction.
Who is it recommended for?
Aimed at readers interested in the cultural history of the 20th century, popular music, and globalization studies. It will also be of great interest to those seeking to understand how commercial and technological dynamics have shaped our contemporary sonic experience.
What this book contributes
- An original perspective on the origin of musical genres that we take for granted today.
- Understanding of the link between capitalism, technology, and cultural creation.
- Detailed analysis of a key historical moment in musical globalization.
- Narrative that connects social history with the evolution of the recording industry.
- Tools to rethink the relationship between tradition, modernity, and the market.
Technical specifications
- Author: DENNING, MICHAEL
- Publisher: LA OVEJA ROJA
- Language: Spanish
- Subject: MUSIC, LITERARY ESSAYS, HISTORY, CULTURAL STUDIES
- Collection: BANDASONORA
- Binding: Paperback
- Publication date: December 2019
- Number of pages: 448
- Weight: 550 g
Editorial review
A rigorous and revealing work that places music at the center of the historical and economic processes of the 20th century. Denning manages to articulate with clarity how technology and capital transformed local cultural expressions into global phenomena, offering an essential read for those who wish to understand the origins of our current sonic culture.