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A Most Valuable Medium
The Remediation of Oral Performance on Early Commercial Recordings
Richard Bauman (Author), Patrick Feaster (With)
9780253065186
Paperback / softback, published 14 March 2023
238 pages, 10 b&w photos - 10 Halftones, black and white
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.34 kg
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. This spirited and well-researched book is a must-read for many audiences, including scholars and students of media history, media anthropology, and sound studies; linguistic anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers of performance; and Americanists and historians of various stripes. Bauman's status as eminent anthropologist and author of books on cross-cultural intertextuality and language ideologies situates his discussions within a broader world of inquiry and his mechanisms for analyzing the behaviors of history feel current and intellectually rigorous, an obvious outcome of experience.
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.
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