Without main modifications: touring from the nineteenth century to the current | Culture | EUROtoday

In the celebrated phrase of novelist LP Hartley, “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” I remembered it whereas devouring a voluminous e book, The music after the music (La Droguería Music), by Chemi López. Take the subtitle The acoustic period 1878-1926 and it’s a detailed examine of flamenco recordings; It additionally works as an interesting overview of the takeoff of the Spanish recording trade. It is value clarifying the time period “record company”: all of it started with the cylinders of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, later surpassed by the plates (with one or two engraved sides) of Emile Berliner.

The factor is that, as I progressed in that story, I observed that these founding fathers weren’t a lot completely different from the nice document labels that I knew within the courageous instances, earlier than the helms of the businesses handed to these aseptic managers who, shielded by their MBA, at this time reduce the slack. Nor do they imagine that such pioneers have been beings of sunshine. They have been adventurers, in lots of circumstances battered within the colonies (Cuba, Philippines), retailers in optics, toys, medicines or, that different nice novelty, pictures. There was no scarcity of politicians, troopers, avenue distributors…

Characters who, partially, come again to life due to the truth that Chemi López recovers their photographs in a full-page coloured model (the my fellow man, my brother). If we’re to imagine in psychogeography, it additionally helps that many labored within the Madrid streets of Barquillo and Preciados, marked by the sale of sound gear or information. The extraordinary factor is to see how superior they have been. The launch of the Girl with the Combs pivoted on the picture. The ARs, accountable for Artists and Repertoire, already existed. Pseudonyms have been used: document label Juan Dessy Martos, artistically Mr. Reyna, additionally served as decide. They made performs advertising and marketing How to present Christmas lottery tickets with the acquisition of a document. They superior the idea of a musical journal with the Valencian Phonographic Bulletin (1900). The idea of contractual exclusivity had not been applied and artists have been fortunately flying between completely different document labels.

Those precursors have been concerned in battles over the helps, a tough difficulty on condition that five-, seven- and 10-inch discs coexisted, to not point out the completely different speeds (the completely happy RPM). Equally bloody have been the disputes over the idea of authors, even earlier than the founding of the present SGAE, in 1899. And radio had not but appeared, competing with dwell music however a grasping invention for its fundraising potential.

there was not expertise exhibits, however festivals have been used to launch artists, if we apply that definition to the legendary Granada Competition (1922-1923), the place the completely different ideas of Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla relating to what have been pure creators and “corrupt artists” collided: the “eruditism” of the traditionalists clashed with the practices of “modern times.”

The conclusion: it reaffirms that what goes round comes round. One appears ahead to the subsequent installments of The music after the music that Chemi López proclaims in his prologue. The dedication of somebody who – only one instance – is ready to delve into the municipal registers to find out the id of these superior is admirable. Honor to the pioneers.