Description
Unsound Supplies explores the complex and often hidden provenance of the raw materials that underpin the rich musical cultures of modernity. Each of the book's ten chapters focuses on one material used in musical instrument making and the audio communications industry in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries--from African ivory and transatlantically traded rubber to Manila paper, Brazilian Pernambuco wood, tropical mahogany, Indian jackfruit trees, and steel, aluminum, wax, and shellac sourced from around the globe. Together, the chapters trace the geographically diverse and frequently colonial origins and extraction processes of these materials, while also revealing their shifting values and meanings along supply chains. The authors critically examine the logistics, large-scale infrastructures, working conditions, and political, economic, and epistemic forces that have facilitated this material diversity. Employing a variety of methods and approaches, Unsound Supplies reflects on the narratives and historiographical challenges that arise when discussing the material underpinnings of modern soundscapes, which are so often obscured and morally sanitized by modern musical and sonic aesthetics. The volume unleashes a noisy materiality marked by myriad contradictions, global connections, and uncertainties.
Table of Contents
IntroductionPart I. Rethinking Sonic Perfection1. Phonographic Imperfect: A Network Archaeology of Shellac, Elodie A. Roy2. High Energy for a Great Modernity: Musical Instruments Made with Aluminum, Rebecca WolfPart II. Writing Against the Chain3. Keyed In: Ivory, Slavery, and the Colonial Networks of the Piano, 1850-1931, Edward J. Gillin4. Pernambuco: Listening for "the Very Substance of America", Michael SilversPart III. Paying Attention to Noisy Matter5. Paper: A Sonic Archaeology of Some Vegetable Fibers, Matthew HockenberryPart IV. Conducting Material-Oriented Provenance Research6. Forging Acoustic Precision, Fanny Gribenski and David Pantalony7. Sounds in Wax: Comparative Musicology, Chemistry, and the World as a Resource, Viktoria Tkaczyk8. The Troubling Sound of Mahogany: Sugar, Slaves, and Square Pianos, Panagiotis PoulopoulosPart V. Tuning In to Sound Cultures Beyond Extractivism9. Kautschukmelodie: Blood Rubber, Epistemic Murk, Song Properties, James Q. Davies10. Sweet and Sound: Crafting Jackfruit Kattai in South India, Thamarai Selvan Kannan
