Talking Machine Empires

At the turn of the twentieth century, sound recording corporations from the United States and Europe pursued repertoires and consumers from all over the world. Latin America and the Caribbean were a crucial part of the puzzle. As a modern imperial age unfolded and these businesses capitalized on old and new colonial maneuvers, phonograph culture thrived and recorded sound became a matter of everyday life. All these processes took place at the intersection of convoluted imperial networks, mundane interactions between corporate delegates and local artists, improvisations in matters of music and technology, emerging economic paradigms, and unprecedented cultural formations mediated by new ideas about modernity and entertainment.

Talking Machine Empires offers a fascinating cultural and colonial history of the dawn of the sound recording industry in Latin America and the Caribbean in the acoustic era, before microphones and loudspeakers. The details in that history reveal unambiguous imperial practices: sending recording expeditions to the realms of the cultural Other, mobilizing performers from one continent to another, taking their labor and talent for granted, extracting sound and natural resources along with material and immaterial culture, and profiting from all of that by virtue of the imbalances of global capitalism and the enduring strength of coloniality. At the same time, it is a history full of intercultural exchanges around and through recorded media, just as it is a history of musical innovation, resistance, and cultural autonomy despite and because of the unevenness of corporate imperialism and the resilience of coloniality.

Using a vast array of primary resources, including original recording ledgers and travelogues, Talking Machine Empires explores not only the swift globalization of recorded sound in the early twentieth century but also the asymmetries that continue to shape the worlds of music and entertainment today.