THE PHONOGRAPHIC ALBUM AND THE DIGITIZATION OF CULTURE

FRAGMENTATION AND MEMORY CREATION AND COMPOSITION

Abstract

This text, along with the images and sounds (web links) that accompany it, constitutes a hybrid "cultural production" in the form of a modest academic experiment in co-authorship. It stems from a reflexive dialogue taking place between two research processes that have been dealing with music collections and the relationship between music, memory and sociality. The procedure consisted in employing the "theoretical model" used in the doctoral dissertation of one of the authors to generate the vocabulary for and the interpretative approach of the second author's work, when considered in the specific field of phonographic collections. The narrative thread is that of the "ethno-(phono)graphic encounters" which resulted in the argument essayed herein. As we understand it, the analogue LP-album format constituted a unique way of making phonograms of musical performances and, symmetrically, of creating musical performances with phonograms. We show that the articulations of technique, art, and rituality set around music-making and record-making are of equivalent complexity to the bonds involved in listening experiences and in research and re-memoration efforts, in making the albums (re)circulate. Based on this realization, we affirm that, despite what we call the "fragmentation of the analogue album" which results from the migration to digital media, a pervasive memory of the "album format" nonetheless remains, potentially shaping contemporary and politicized ways of experiencing digitized Brazilian popular music.