Between 1895 and 1920, the United States saw a sharp increase in commercial sound recording, the first mass medium of home entertainment.
As companies sought to discover what kinds of records would appeal to consumers, they turned to performance forms already familiar to contemporary audiences-sales pitches, oratory, sermons, and stories. In A Most Valuable Medium, Richard Bauman explores the practical problems that producers and performers confronted when adapting familiar oral genres to this innovative medium of sound recording. He also examines how audiences responded to these modified and commoditized presentations.
Featuring audio examples throughout and offering a novel look at the early history of sound recording, A Most Valuable Medium reveals how this new technology effected monumental change in the ways we receive information.
By:
Richard Bauman
With:
Patrick Feaster
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780253065186
ISBN 10: 0253065186
Pages: 238
Publication Date: 01 June 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments Note on Transcription Listen to the Records 1. Introduction: ""A Most Valuable Medium"" 2. ""Come in Here and Hear Them Speak!"": Campaign Speeches and Political Publics, with Patrick Feaster 3. ""Accordin' to the Gospel of Etymology"": Aural Blackface and New African American Poetics 4. ""We Always Enjoy a Good Story"": From Monologue to Audio Theater 5. ""Talking Machine Story Teller"": Cal Stewart and the Remediation of Storytelling 6. ""Somebody Stole My Tune!"": Charles Ross Taggart and Country Communicability 7. ""I Don't See No Mans"": Bridging the Schizophonic Gap Discography, by Patrick Feaster References Index"
Richard Bauman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, of Folklore, and of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. He is author most recently of A World of Others' Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality and (with Charles L. Briggs) of Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. He is editor (with Patricia Sawin and Inta Gale Carpenter) of Reflections on the Folklife Festival: An Ethnography of Participant Experience. Patrick Feaster is Cofounder and Lead Researcher at First Sounds Initiative and former Media Preservation Specialist for Indiana University's Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative. He is a specialist in the history, culture, and preservation of early sound media and a three-time Grammy nominee.
Reviews for A Most Valuable Medium: The Remediation of Oral Performance on Early Commercial Recordings
Bauman is a master of his craft. A Most Valuable Medium enables us to benefit from his vast accumulated knowledge and insights as he explores the early world of phonographic recordings of spoken genres, from street-corner sales pitches to country store tall tales. His is a decidedly important contribution to understanding the rise of broadcasting, which has been widely assumed to begin with the advent of radio in 1920. It is also a major contribution to our understanding of the discourse processes of decontextualization and circulation that are central to the constitution and maintenance of modern public spheres. -- Greg Urban, University of Pennsylvania
