This tag was created by Helena Colindres. The last update was by Jennifer Fraser.
The Phonograph
The invention of the phonograph, which allowed sound to be recorded for the first time, changed the way people conducted research within the fields of musicology, ethnology, and anthropology, thereby laying the groundwork for the field that would come to be known as ethnomusicology. Prior to this technological invention, the only way that people could capture sound was through written transcriptions which at the time often utilized “Western” staff notation.
The first phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison and was built by John Kreusi in December of 1877. This machine utilized a stylus which recorded sound vibrations as indentations onto a piece of tin foil which was wrapped around a metal cylinder. The vibrations were made in a vertical groove pattern. This phonograph had two needles, one for recording and the other for playback. Thomas Edison went on to establish the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company in January of 1878. His phonograph machine was an instant success due to the fact that people could now take notes without having to write them down. A drawback, however, was that it was difficult for the average person to operate and the tin foil would cease to function after just a couple of playbacks. These are the main reasons leading to Volta Laboratory creating the first “graphophone” in 1888.
The graphophone was invented by Alexander Bell because he believed that the phonograph needed to record sound onto something less fragile than tin foil. He was the first to record sound onto wax cylinders. These early wax cylinders had the capacity to record two minutes of sound which was significantly more than Edison’s original tin foil model.
In the 1890’s Emile Berliner invented the technology which recorded the sounds onto flat discs. He coined the term, “gramophone”, and made the record player popular.
All three of these inventions played a pivotal role in the fields listed above because they made it possible for academics and field researchers alike to record music and and the languages of people all over the world. This is an important colonial legacy within the context of the United States because it was a tool that researchers and ethnologists relied on heavily within the practice of what is called today “salvage ethnography.” Both White and Indigenous people recognized that it was beneficial to record these musical and linguistic practices because they were threatened. These recordings offered documentation which could be passed down to future generations. It is interesting to explore the differential investments and rationales for engagement in this practice between settler ethnographers and Indigenous participants.
The academics and researchers in the fields of ethnology who recorded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often did this work because they wanted to save and preserve these practices by presenting their findings in museums and putting them on display for people. The reasons that Indigenous people took part in these projects was because they wanted future generations to experience a moment frozen in time from their cultural history. Other people, such as Laura Boulton, who was a collector in the mid-twentieth century, wanted to have these recordings for their own personal libraries of cultural artifacts. These collectors were not interested in sharing these materials with the communities from whom they were collected.
The original phonograph recordings have been kept in libraries, archives, and museums, sites which were inaccessible to many Indigenous communities. Sometimes they were eventually copied onto other means such as records, tapes, and CDs. It was not until the later half of the twentieth century that copies of these recordings started being repatriated to the Indigenous people--or their descendants-- whose voices were recorded on them.
By the time that these recordings started to be repatriated, these recordings have already gone through a great deal of mistreatment and neglect. For example, the recordings that Frances Densmore made from 1907 to 1941 by traveling to Indigenous lands were almost entirely forgotten about in the Library of Congress for almost fifty years! These recordings were often mislabeled and distorted as well.
The invention of the phonograph has made it possible for us to have access to the voices of Indigenous people from over a hundred years ago whether we are looking for ways to connect with the traditional songs or languages that in some cases have died out or are slowly dying. But just like any colonial tool, they were also a way that White settlers were able to take sacred objects and music away from the communities thereby further disrespecting Indigenous cultures.
