"Parakansalak gamelan and dancers at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago" [Bancroft 1893]
The Benjamin Ives
Gilman Collection Recorded at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago
Benjamin Ives Gilman,
recorder
101 cylinders
1893
In 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was
held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the
Americas. This 600-acre fair entertained 27,000,000 visitors in its year of
existence. It vaunted American scientific and industrial know-how, but included
46 pavilions showcasing nations from around the world.
As a part of this cultural exchange, musical performers came
to America and shared their work with visitors. Benjamin Ives Gilman, psychologist
and amateur cultural anthropologist, record 101 cylinders of music from the
participants, including music from Fiji, Samoa, Java, and Turkey.
Like the recordings of the Passamaquoddy tribe, these
recordings are unavailable to the general listener. However, whereas the
Passamaquoddy have some say over their tribal heritage – where are the Gilman
recordings? Do they also hold sensitive material not meant for casual auditors?
Are their makers’ descendants being tracked down for permission to use the
recordings? Not even the documentation telling us what’s there is available.
Why?
The National Recording
Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in
the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: The
Laughing Song.
For the first time in this survey, the audio material in an entry of the National Recording Registry is unavailable; however, it’s for a very satisfying reason.
It’s unclear how hard it will be find many of these recordings in advance. I have faced this problem once already in my older, similar “National Film Registry Project” at Film Patrol. (Here is the entry onthe missing item, the 1909 film “Lady Helen’s Escapade.”) Normally, I’d again be irritated that I couldn’t access and evaluate the recordings. I’m not. But, the back-story first:
Anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes was slated to join a folklore- and –life-gathering expedition to the American Southwest in 1890. He sought to test out his crank-powered cylinder recording device closer to home beforehand, so the Bostonian visited the Passamaquoddy people of the Maine/New Brunswick region. There, Noel Josephs and Peter Selmore told tribal tales, sang songs, and recited vocabulary, all in Passamaquoddy, for Fewkes on a set of 30 cylinders.
They represent the first field recordings, as well as the first recordings of Native Americans. Initially, the recordings joined the heap of other materials gathered from American natives, snatched from oblivion just as the “taming of the West” was completed. As such, they were the province of folklorists, ethnologists, and linguists – everyone but the people to whom the sounds belonged.
Finally, in 1985, the American Folklife Center completed its safety transcription of 10,000 cylinders-worth of data, and began repatriating the recordings to the tribal descendants of the respective recording artists.
It turns out there’s a lot of sensitive data on these recordings. There are sacred songs on these cylinders, never meant to be recorded, or even heard by the uninitiated. The Center staff visited more than 100 tribes, letting them know about the recordings, making them available, and turning over control of them as well. Here are two excellent essays about the process, one by Judith Gray of the American Folklife Center and the other by Peggy Bulger and Michael Taft of the same institution.
Today, permission from the Passamaquoddy is needed to access these recordings, as it should be. Do we have a right to peer into the secret souls of those around us? Nope. Nor should we. The fact that we can’t pore over these represents an evolution in the treatment of native people in the United States. Treasure your heritage, Passamaquoddy – there are many other songs to be heard.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: The Benjamin Ives Gilman Collection Recorded at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
This episode is not so much about the message, but the
medium.
Emile Berliner was an inventor who came up with the innovation
of the disc record. Until then, cylinders were deemed the best way to record analog
sound, with grooves that transmitted signals vertically. Berliner’s idea in
1887 was to create a groove that spiraled inward around the surface of, first a
hard rubber, then a shellac disc, transmitting signals laterally.
The chief virtue of this innovation was that it was cheaper
to manufacture. As well, these new discs could be stamped out in mass
profusion, without loss of sound quality. This was a big relief for performers
who had to repeat performances over and over on cylinder, creating only 10 to
150 recordings at a time. Despite resistance from Edison, discs gradually
overtook cylinders in popularity. Berliner’s Victor Records made money. By
1929, cylinders for recordings were no longer manufactured. The sound industry
created its first obsolescent technology.
The two tracks featured here document the new technology.
Again, content creators were trying to make records that would appeal to the broadest
possible public – the well-to-do owners of record players as well as those who
paid a nickel to listen to audio selections in “phonograph parlors” – a brick-and-mortar
proto-Spotify.
Religious material was something that could be played for
the edification of the entire family without raising objections – a perfect way
for the technology to insinuate itself into the home. Nursery rhymes were a
safe bet as well.
Berliner doesn’t have the most distinctive voice, but we can
hardly begrudge him to leave his sonic mark. Thanks to him, collectors have
piles of vinyl records, instead of stacks of cylinders.
The National Recording
Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in
the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Passmaquody
Indian field recordings.
Commercially recorded music starts off painfully white. These
two pieces are samples of the first commercially available recordings. As such,
they were chosen for the widest possible popular appeal, as well as the ability
to translate effectively for playback. Brass and drums went over fine, as well
as strong, high pitches. Subtlety was out.
So what do you, you mythical world’s first music producer,
program?
“The Pattison Waltz” dates from 1877, and is named for its
composer, J.N. The post-Civil War, pre-recording age in music in America consisted
mainly of people making their own music at home, via “parlor songs,” hymns, and
commercial hits from minstrel shows, including a remarkable number of racist
“coon” comedy numbers -- and was dominated by sheet music. My research has not
determined whether this piece originally ornamented a New York show, the usual
path for success for pre-Tin Pan Alley hits such as “After the Ball” and “The
Bowery.”
This rendition is performed in sheer vocalese, but there are
lyrics by E.A. Valentine. They are in Italian, with English lyrics below (“I
would like/If we could/Here alone/with no other . . . “). The American art song
was a long, long time in coming (Charles Ives was 15 in 1889), and it was
considered proper for upper-class Americans to ape European culture, even if it
meant singing something “in translation” to class it up and increase its sales
appeal that was probably first written in English.
Effie Stewart is referred to only once, via the non-profit
compendium project the Internet Archive, as a soloist at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral. She is introduced by a male voice that stops and coughs out three
ironic barks during his identifying spiel. Is he mocking her? Is SHE mocking
her?
What erupts is a trill-laden, swooping kind of gay and
lighthearted waltz that was a good solid bet to be enjoyable, more or less, to
the entire family. It’s the kind of kitschy, operetta-influenced piece that
would be ruthlessly parodied in films and cartoons to come. The opera-gushing,
pigeon-breasted, lorgnette-wielding pretentious grande dame was the
indispensable foil for comic from Chaplin on down. And this was the kind of
insufferable crap she would sing.
“Fifth Regiment March” is much crisper and more distinct.
Issler’s Orchestra, a small combo led by local music teacher and pianist Edward
Issler, cranked out a number of early “hits” for Edison before being superseded
by more “name” bands such as John Philip Sousa’s.
Marching band music was seemingly made to overcome the
limitations of early recoding, muscling its way through the stylus onto the
cylinder. The march is really a medley, running from “Goodnight, Ladies” to
“Mary Had A Little Lamb,” Stephen Foster’s “Some Folks Do,” and others. The
bandsmen give a collective hurrah at the end.
So there you have the distaff sides of early recoding – the
frilly, silly doings of ladies and the martial music of men.
The National Recording
Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in
the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ‘The
Lord’s Prayer’ and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star.’