The cassette industry and popular music in North India

Manuel, Peter

doi:10.1017/s0261143000004505

Cited by 70 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…Of course, the cassette is an important (even underestimated) format (cf . Laing 1990, Manuel 1993. Since 1973, the standard substrate of cassette tape has been polyester terephthalate (PET).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such developments, which represent a marked change from the earlier 'cassette culture' described by Peter Manuel (1993), are attributed to the 'increasing affordability of multimedia-enabled phones and voice/data plans and wider penetration of mobile coverage' and mean that 'the mobile phone has quickly become the 27 most prevalent digital music device' (Kumar andParikh 2013, p. 2863). The rise of the mobile phone and digital music -which may be considered part of India's 'pirate modernity' (Sundaram 2010) -is linked to an alarming rise in local e-waste generation (e.g.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decomposed: a political ecology of music

Devine¹

2015

Pop. Mus.

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IntroductionModern development, consumption and waste have strained the environment to the point of crisis -and music is part of the problem. Consider the poisonous petrochemicals used to manufacture LPs, the non-biodegradable plastics in CDs, the energy-guzzling server farms that power streaming MP3s, and the toxic graveyards of obsolete consumer electronics around the world. But these earthy and potentially ugly material realities typically go unnoticed in musical discourse, probably because they clash with a longstanding but mistaken belief that music is somehow an immaterial phenomenon.Indeed, even though we are accustomed to the accusation that certain types of music are 'disposable', we rarely think about what happens to recordings when they are actually disposed of. And while commonsense tells us that the 'music industry' is in the business of making records, we rarely think about what those recordings are actually made of. Correspondingly, the environmental impact of recorded sound is almost completely 2 unaccounted for in cultural studies of music and media, which treat the musical commodity principally as a product of musical labour, an object of capitalist exchange, or a text for audience consumption. Questions about the actual material composition and decomposition of the musical commodity -about what happens to music before production and after consumption -have been largely ignored. Yet without confronting the relationship between music's cultural and economic value, on the one hand, and its environmental cost, on the other, the field of music studies forfeits the opportunity for a fully interdisciplinary engagement with -and a holistic democratic ethics of -its object of study. One step toward achieving that goal is to formulate a political ecology of the evolving relationship between popular music and sound technology since 1900.This article inscribes a history of recorded music in three main forms of materiality:shellac (1900-1950), plastic (1950-2000) and data (2000-present). These three broad phases in the material history of recorded music correspond to this article's three main sections. They also encompass the five most prevalent recording formats since 1900: 78s (shellac); LPs, cassettes and CDs (plastic); and MP3s (data). I subject these three materials to a double-headed investigation, examining the dynamics of manufacture and obsolescence that mark the shifts between them. As a backdrop to the sections on shellac,

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Decomposed: a political ecology of music

Devine¹

2015

Pop. Mus.

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“…Minangkabau commercial cassettes and VCDs chronicle the Minangkabau ethnic group's past and contemporary cultural dynamics in the engagement with the outside world, in which foreign and indigenous elements are constantly competing. I am not simply examining the effects of cassette and VCD technologies on the changing nature of the local music industry, as has been studied by some experts (for example, Manuel 1993Manuel , 2012; far beyond that, I argue that regional recording industries, through which the mediation of ethnic cultures has greatly increased and the (re) production of local cultural sounds has continued to accumulate since the early twentieth century, have moulded the traits and existence of ethnicities all over the contemporary world.…”

Section: Focus Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Introducing a dramatically new form of media culture in Indonesia and elsewhere, "VCDs have clearly increased the sheer amount of popular music production, while enriching it with a visual element that can serve as a vehicle for local, decentralized creative expression" (Manuel 2012: 234). Unlike "old" media such as cinema, television, and radio, which are one-way, monopolistic, and homogeneous, cassette and VCD tend to be decentralized in ownership, control, and utilization patterns (Manuel 1993(Manuel : 2, 2012. Such decentralized media are popular in developing countries (see Wallis and Malm 1984), including Indonesia, where the political character of the state tends to be restrictive.…”

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confidence: 99%

The recording industry and “regional” culture in Indonesia The case of Minangkabau

Suryadi¹

2015

Wacana

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“…Because audio-and videocassettes were inexpensive and easy to distribute, they could be used to develop an alternative musical space alongside the hegemonic musical cultures of the state or the mainstream market (Abu-Lughod 1989;Manuel 1993;Miller 2007).…”

Section: Shas and The Teshuva Movement Cassette Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Use of the Teshuva Cassette Culture in Israel

Leon

2011

Cont Jewry

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The present work of ethnography describes the political uses of audiotapes and videotapes by religious fundamentalists in Israel during the 1990s. The article deals with the use of the teshuva cassette culture in constructing Shas's political message in the 1999 Knesset elections. Shas presented the videoand audiotape ''J'Accuse'' as a way of contending with the crisis of confidence that resulted from the criminal conviction of its political leader. But the content of the cassette was not the only message. The cassette replicated the way the teshuvamovement tapes undermined and criticized the mainstream media discourse during the 1990s in Israel. In fact the cassette itself was the message. And this message should be studied in relation to the way the teshuva movement designed the cassette culture as a source of religious truth as well as political truth being concealed from the public.

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The cassette industry and popular music in North India

Cited by 70 publications

References 4 publications

Decomposed: a political ecology of music

Decomposed: a political ecology of music

The recording industry and “regional” culture in Indonesia The case of Minangkabau

The Political Use of the Teshuva Cassette Culture in Israel

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