The recording of the non-classic blues genre, 1923-1942

Abstract

It remains as historical coincidence that the invention of a recording and reproduction machine occured at a time when the blues, as the first black American secular music, had developed to the stage where the term was in common parlance within black communities.
The irony of this coincidence is that an industry which steered close to the segregation and discrimination of white American society, had, in part, to turn to the discriminated to help it survive. In the decades that followed the industry grew to an incredible size, merging with other industries to become a powerful force in the entertainments industry of America. Such was the political and economic might that it occasioned Federal intervention on a number of occasions. For the black citizen two things changed: he/she moved from belonging to an audience in a small community to becoming a consumer in an industrial society and on a continental scale. As a performer, he or she had the potential of becoming totally absorbed in the white-controlled entertainment world. Because this entertainment was exclusively for members of its cultural group, the place of blacks living and working in a dominant culture cannot be ignored.
The basic understanding of this study is that music is more than sounds made to vibrate the air, that extramusical forces acting on the music and its performer, its performance and its consumption are equally vital. The process of recording was a dynamic one. From embryonic ignorance it learned quickly, reaching a position where it could return some of what it had assimilated. Yet once recording was a permanent feature on the musical landscape, that landscape remained forever altered.