Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (Music in American Life) Review

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Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (Music in American Life) ReviewA few pages into this book, one realizes the title is a double entendre. The recorded sounds documented here - which include popular music, ragtime, jazz, cabaret, classical, spoken word, politics, poetry, and more - are not merely "lost" in the sense that their existence has been uncelebrated. They are also in danger of being lost to us forever if immediate steps are not taken to preserve the fragile materials upon which they live.
Additionally, U.S. copyright laws have made it nearly impossible for anyone to reissue them as CDs. According to the author, there were approximately 800 recordings made by African Americans prior to 1920, the majority of which are still intact but half of which are owned by successor corporations like Sony and BMG who will neither reissue them nor allow anyone else to do so. Which explains why the majority of this material ends up being released overseas.
The book documents more than 40 artists chronologically, assessing their work and skillfully placing their biographies within the context of a complex and tumultuous era. It covers the famous (Bert Williams, Eubie Blake, Fisk Jubilee Singers) and a host of lesser-knows. The Discography provides a listing of CD reissues (if available) for each chapter, plus web sites where you'll most likely find them.
While seemingly an exhaustive tome, the author himself reminds us it's intended to stimulate preservation and future research: the final chapter "Miscellaneous Recordings" examines unissued recordings, "custom" noncommercial recordings, rumored but unconfirmed recordings, records by artists sometimes misidentified as black and more, in the hopes that future research will turn up more information.
Though massive at 656 pages, the book is highly readable and entertaining, very well organized and indexed making it easy to zoom in on particular aspects of interest. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the era of early recording in general, or African American studies in particular, and feel no library shelf should be without it. It's a wonderful resource for interdisciplinary studies.Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (Music in American Life) Overview

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