Book Review

Canada and the United States

When Thomas A. Edison created his first machine to mechanically reproduce the human voice, the famous inventor amplified more than mere sound; he accelerated complex cultural processes identified as "circles of resonance" by historian William Howland Kenney. In this comprehensive study, Kenney provides a long-overdue update of histories such as Roland Gelatt's The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity (1955). Kenney traces multiple factors in the evolution of recorded music from 1890 to 1945, including technological innovation, the establishment of a fledgling musical entertainment industry, and the impact of influential performers, audiences, and entrepreneurs.

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Structuring his interpretation around three interrelated processes, Kenney asks innovative theoretical questions about how recorded music helped construct individual and collective memory in the first half of the twentieth century. He first examines decisions shaping the "political economy" of recordings (p. xvi). Using a 1921 Edison company survey of consumer satisfaction, as well as trade publications from several decades, Kenney provides new insights concerning market projections of phonograph and recording manufacturers. Second, Kenney considers how audiences shaped this economic exchange. Finally, he reads for content, or the musical "inscriptions" of selected recordings (p. xvi). These later two areas of analysis are difficult to document, but Kenney assembles a persuasive wealth of material from performers, producers, and entrepreneurs describing the likely relationships between producers and consumers. Kenney argues that successful recordings combined "authenticity" (sounds the audiences recognized) with "inauthentic" or surprising new sounds (p. xvi). Kenney draws on the work of theorists like Maurice Halbwachs and Walter Ong to establish the relevance of aural repetition to collective memory. This framework allows Kenney to situate recordings broadly in American life.

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