Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Ed. by Paul D. Greene and Thomas Porcello. pp. viii + 288. (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn., 2005, $65.95/$24.95. ISBN 0-8195-6516-4/-6517-2.)
Simon Zagorski‐Thomas · Music and Letters · 2006
This book is yet another welcome pointer to the recognition of the study of record production and music technology in contemporary musicology. Whether it’s the funding of CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music) by the AHRC in the UK, the success of the Art of Record Production (ARP) Conference in London in September 2005, or the proliferation of articles, conference reports, and books on the technological mediation of music, it’s gratifying to see that musicologists of all disciplines are moving beyond simplistic characterizations of technology in music. While ethnomusicology has acknowledged the complexities of technological mediation, it has tended to do so by reference to opposite extremes. The cliché of music technology as the choice-flattening weapon of the forces of globalization is contrasted with it as the empowering tool of localized communities via the global village on the internet. The book is an example of a growing trend that seeks to draw attention to the subtleties and complexities of the effects of technological changes on music in the past century or so. The range of ethnographic studies extends across six continents (although Europe is only approached tangentially through Harris Berger and Cornelia Fales’s examination of heavy metal guitar timbres) and offers some fascinating insights into the ways that electronics are used to manipulate sound in various culturally specific musical environments.