Early Recordings Association Journal, Volume 1

Why a journal on early recordings? Research that either uses early recordings (say, pre-1945) as a key source or has them as their principal object of study is certainly not a novelty anymore. As happens with the genealogies of recorded sound itself –often dated back to Edison’s presentation of the phonograph in 1877, but complicated by the increased recognition awarded to Charles Cros (who in the same year described  a similar machine he never got to build) and Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (who twenty years earlier was the first to record sound, which however could not be played back)—, the genealogies of research into it are often difficult to trace and disentangle. Within the realm of musicology, the first examples of work looking into early recordings as sources for performance practices of the past (Will Crutchfield, Robert Philip) can be found in the 1980s and early 1990s; still, they took a while to take hold in a discipline which until recently was largely built around the notion of the work and its composers, and lacked sophisticated tools for the study of performance. In parallel, though, another intellectual tradition around early recordings –one that was not so concerned by the performing styles contained in early recordings, but rather on their material and cultural significance— was developing in the field of Media History (Emily Thompson, Lisa Gitelman, Jonathan Sterne), which in turn fed into the then-nascent discipline of Sound Studies. 

These two scholarly traditions were not, in themselves, the first contexts in which serious research enquiry was directed into early recordings: it would be perhaps more accurate to say that they were the first academic or institutional contexts. For the study or early recordings is rather unique in that it is enthusiastically cultivated, at a high level, outside academia too. For decades, collectors and enthusiasts of early recordings preserved, not just the recordings themselves, but also knowledge about them: the engineering of talking machines; the history of record labels; repertoires (with the latter two sometimes informing major discography works such as those by John R. Bolig, Richard K. Spottswood, and Allan Kelly). These kinds of knowledge were all, in a way, the kinds of knowledge that facilitate and support collecting: gauging the rarity and therefore value of a recording; repairing an old machine so that it can be brought back to life. In this, collectors were not substantially different from musicologists or media historians: early recorded sound –perhaps more so than most sources— has an extraordinary potential to be different things to different people, who will find different nuances in them depending on their training and interests. To Popular Music scholars, early recordings can be the business and cultural foundation on which the structure that made possible their very object of study was built. To curators and Material Culture Studies scholars, they can be objects with specific material properties, which invite certain kinds of material engagement and have specific conservation needs. To sociologists of music, they can be artefacts around which distinct types of sociability are constructed. Certainly, early recordings are not simply about music.

For a significant length of time –although things seem to be getting better in this respect lately–, several of these traditions coexisted in parallel, without much cross-fertilization among them: a study of a specific set of performance practices would not always engage with the materialities of sound recordings and machines, focusing instead on the sound contained therein; a media historian might not have been overly concerned about who was playing in a recording, and how. I hasten to say that I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing: scholars have instead tended to remain firmly ensconced within the discipline they feel allegiance to –whether Musicology, Performance Studies, Media History, Popular Music Studies, etc.—, and this has allowed them to put historical recorded sound on the table at which disciplinary discussions are conducted. This has likely prevented the study of early recordings from remaining a silo, instead allowing each discipline to develop methodologies to tackle early recordings that are still grounded in strong disciplinary traditions. However, we at ERA (the Early Recordings Association) believe that more forums are needed that allow those who research early recordings under any perspective to come together and enrich each other: the study of historical performance practices in recordings, for example, has already significantly benefitted from the critical perspectives coming from Media History and Sound Studies; and the mass digitization of early recordings undertaken in the last ten years by archives and collections around the world could not have happened without engineering and technical know-how. The journal, therefore, intends to provide one more such forum that allows researchers and enthusiasts to easily access a snapshot of current research in the field, coming from different perspectives and disciplines.

We believe that this first issue is a good example of this. It is noteworthy, for example, that two of our five articles do not focus on music recordings at all, instead exploring the role that early recordings played in the preservation of minority languages (Stephen Miller) and budding dance forms (Ben Macpherson). This reflects that early recording technologies, indeed, were about more than music –they shaped our relationship to sound forever, in ways that still influence us. And, indeed, this “shaping” effected by recording technologies is pretty much a key focus of the rest of the articles. Yorgos Evaggelou’s piece on the development of the tsibiti guitar style in rembetiko –perhaps the most ‘classical’ in this issue in its detailed attention to performers and repertoires—discusses how the recording industry shaped approaches to performance, rather than simply document them. João Silva discusses how the first recording technologies shaped the emergence of the field of musicology, not necessarily because they provided the field with primary sources, but because they articulated a new set of relationships between listening, science, technology and Empire, carving a space for a new academic discipline to develop. Jonathan Thomas also resorts to notions of Empire when he explores how phonography shaped relationships between Fascist Italy and its colonized subjects. Together, these five articles demonstrate not only the vastness and diversification of present-day research into historical recorded sound –they show that early recordings are not just items from the past to be understood: they are artefacts that help us to understand the past, and perhaps the present (Empire, globalisation, science, technology, sound, and more), in all its complexity. 

Professor Eva Moreda Rodríguez

Abstract

This article examines the development of the tsibiti guitar style through the work of three Greek musicians: George Katsaros, Gust Dussas, and Kostis. Drawing on discographic and historical evidence, it outlines their individual stylistic characteristics and the broader cultural context of their activity, shaped by migration, urbanisation, and the recording industry. Following this discussion, the article addresses the recurring stereotype of a connection between rebetiko and the blues, critically assessing the validity of this perceived association. Through analysis of performance techniques, tuning practices, and repertoire, it argues that the similarities between the two traditions arise less from direct influence and more from shared sociohistorical conditions, such as marginalisation and oral transmission. Ultimately, the article contends that genre boundaries are fluid and often retrospectively constructed, and that these guitarists exemplify a form of musical hybridity situated within broader transnational cultural networks.

Biography

Yorgos Evangelou is a Greek musicologist and musician. He holds a BA in Folk and Traditional Music from the University of Ioannina and an M.Mus. in Performance from the Department of Music Science and Art at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2022, he earned a PhD in Musicology, focusing on exoticism in Greek commercial 78 rpm recordings (School of Music Studies, University of Ioannina, Arta, Greece). For his research, he created a large electronic database for data and metadata management, which includes nearly all songs in the Greek-speaking 78 rpm discography in which elements of exoticism can be identified. His interests include the study of the historical discography of popular Greek music (urban folk and light music), with an emphasis on exoticism. He is currently a scholar, lecturer, and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music Studies, University of Ioannina. His postdoctoral research focuses on the Greek-speaking discography produced in the USA. He also participated in the “Research–Create–Innovate” project, a consortium of three universities and two private companies that developed an open-source music cultural management platform with a specialized Music Ontology based on internationally recognized models such as FRBR. The project created a National Archive of Musical Entities, cataloging approximately 10,500 unique musical entities. Since 2022, he has worked for the Kounadis Archive Virtual Museum on issues concerning discography, documenting and annotating historical 78 rpm records, postcards, and commercial musical scores. His latest monograph, Exoticism in Greek Discography, was published by Fagotto Books, Greece.

Keywords

Rebetiko, Blues, Popular music traditions, Musical cross-cultural relations.

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Abstract

Tap dance is a predominantly visual and embodied art form, yet its capture on sound recordings paradoxically renders it sonically disembodied, raising questions about modality, mediation, and archival presence. Drawing on sound studies, dance scholarship, and media archaeology, this article examines the presence and implications of tap dance on early musical theatre recordings, focusing particularly on the first recorded tap dance by Fred Astaire, the 1926 recording of ‘The Half-of-it-Dearie Blues’. The article identifies the characteristics of Astaire’s recording as an aesthetic and technological ‘time capsule’ (Maslon 2018), capturing both the improvisatory energy of the Jazz Age and the evolving practices of musical theatre performance during the early 20th century. Through close listening, it explores how early electrical recording technologies enabled the sonic capture of percussive dance and how performers like Astaire utilised rhythmic spontaneity to integrate tap within musical textures. The article introduces the concept of tap on record as a ‘dual-modality’ performance – operating simultaneously as percussive music and embodied dance – and challenges traditional hierarchies in musical theatre historiography. Further, it repositions early recordings as disembodied archives that may also serve as re-embodied ‘records’ with application and agency in contemporary listening and performance practice. By interrogating the racialised lineage of tap dance and its appropriation within white theatrical institutions, the study advocates for critical re-engagement with historical recordings by contemporary students, scholars, and practitioners as acts of examination, interpretation and reclamation. This article argues that early recordings of tap dance offer more than nostalgic or historical curiosities –they are dynamic interlocutors in the cultural memory of musical theatre. Their study opens new pathways for understanding sonic heritage, embodied archival research, and the political implications of listening anew to tap dance mediated through sound.

Biography

Ben Macpherson is Reader in Vocal Theatres at the University of Portsmouth. He researches at the intersection of voice studies and musical theatre. He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies (Intellect) and the Routledge Voice Studies book series, which was launched in 2015 with the groundbreaking edited collection Voice Studies: Critical Approaches to Process, Performance and Experience (with Konstantinos Thomaidis). He is lead investigator on the project ‘Musical Theatre on Record’ which to date has received funding awards from the British Academy and the Arts & Humanities Research Council UK. Other publications include the monographs Singing Utopia: Voice in Musical Theatre (Oxford University Press, 2025) and Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre 1890-1939: Knowing One’s Place (Palgrave, 2018). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9543-0334

Keywords

Listening; early recordings; musical comedy; tap dance; disembodied archive; media modalities.

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Abstract

The Manx Language Society (founded 1899) purchased an Edison Phonograph in 1904 in order to record the last native speakers of Manx in the Isle of Man and to promote the revival of the language. Sophia Morrison (1859–1917), the pan-Celtic enthusiast par excellence, was the figure behind this initiative, one which has left remarkable documentation of the Society’s early endeavours with the phonograph.  Described as “an inanimate member of this Society,” discussed here, amongst other topics, are the planning of its purchase, the subsequent deployment in the field, the material known to have been recorded, the names of the last native speakers, issues that arose around the material to be taken down, and the question of preserving the cylinders themselves. Rudolph Trebitsch also collected in this period in the Island on behalf of the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv showing the transnational nature of ethnographic sound recording in the 1900s. The cylinders are now in the main lost, and a number of questions remain open about the activities of this “inanimate member,” but a good number have been raised and answered.

Biography

Stephen Miller recently held posts at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna. Research interests are the Isle of Man—its language, folklore, and folk song, the Scottish folklorists the Rev. Walter Gregor (1825–97) and William George Black (1857–1932), and the institutional history of The Folk-Lore Society. Work is presently underway on the  English folklorist, Edward Lovett (1852–1933), and the folk singer and bell-ringer Henry Burstow (1826–1916).

Keywords

Isle of Man; Manx Gaelic; Manx Language Society; Sophia Morrison; Edison Phonograph

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Abstract

This article examines the transformations in the study of music between the 1860s and the 1910s, tracing the relationship between Enlightenment and Romantic ideals with objectivity through early phonography. The advent of evolutionism and positivism engendered a paradigm shift in nineteenth-century thought, thereby establishing the foundations for new modes of engaging with the world. This intellectual transformation resulted in the emergence of academic disciplines such as acoustics, otology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, and musicology, a process that took place simultaneously with the intensification of colonialism, through which a heterogeneous set of people interacted across the world. The advent of devices associated with a new perspective on mechanical objectivity, such as the phonograph and the gramophone, contributed to the efficient establishment of comparative methodologies shared by many approaches. My article examines the connection between the establishment of academic musicology and early phonography, an intersection that is especially audible in ethnographic cylinders. The fundamental argument of this study highlights the tensions that haunted this process, striving to reexamine fundamental aspects in the historiography of musicology, a discipline that has articulated multiple types of knowledge from its inception.

Biography

João Silva researches popular entertainment and its relationships with modernity, nationalism, historiography, technology, and everyday life in the Portuguese Empire. He is Editor of the Journal of World Popular Music and is a program annotator for Portuguese concert halls l, where he develops music appreciation programmes and digital learning platforms. Silva teaches in specialist music schools and participates in the Scientific Board of Museu Nacional da Música and the artistic direction of the Festival Internacional de Música de Espinho (FIME).

Keywords

Recorded sound; social sciences; objectivity; musicology; historiography.

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Welcome to the Early Recordings Association Journal!

The Early Recordings Association (ERA) is proud to launch its online-only, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal in November 2025. The journal explores historical recorded sound across Musicology, Performance Studies, Sound Studies, Popular Music Studies, Ethnomusicology, Cultural Studies, Sociology, the History of Science and Technology, Information Studies, and related fields.

We are now accepting submissions of articles, special issue proposals, and review proposals for consideration in future issues of the Journal. Articles will be published on a rolling basis, and each issue will close at the end of the rolling year.

Please send all submissions and queries to: earlyrecordingsassociation@surrey.ac.uk

Articles

• Articles must be original and must not have been published elsewhere. They can cover any aspect of the history, analysis or present-day applications of historical recordings, recording technologies, recorded sound and/or recorded performance.
• The recommended length for an article is 6,000 to 8,000 words, exclusive of references and other apparatus. Articles shorter or longer than this might still be considered, but please check with the editors before submitting your article.
• The intended readership of the Journal is one which is interested in and knowledgeable about the history of recording technologies and recordings. In preparing your submission, though, you are also invited to consider that it is also a varied readership, comprised of academics and non-academics (e.g. collectors, curators, sound engineers), with varying levels of knowledge of specific bodies of terminology and theory: please try to write your article with this readership in mind.
• Article submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis. Authors are welcome to contact the editors by e-mail to check their proposed article’s fit before submitting the full manuscript.

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References

Early Recordings Association Journal uses the Chicago referencing style. Recordings should be referenced with basic details (matrix number, composer, performer, date, if known and applicable) along with article-specific information as required.

ISSN: 3049-7868

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Special issue proposals

Recommended length of special issues is 4 to 6 articles, which must be original and must not have been published elsewhere. The roundtable as a unit should aim at covering an original aspect of the history, analysis or present-day applications of early recordings, recording technologies, recorded sound and/or recorded performance.

The recommended length for the introduction is 2,000 to 4,000 words, with each article being 6,000 to 8,000 words. If the roundtable as a unit is shorter or longer than this, it might still be considered, but please check with the editors first.

The timeline for special issue proposals is as follows:

Submit a special issue proposal at any time. Each proposal should include a rationale for the roundtable (500–1,000 words) and abstracts for each individual contribution (300 words each).

The editorial team will review proposals on a rolling basis and notify applicants of acceptances as soon as possible. Once accepted, we will discuss a timeline for submission and revision. 

Please note that special issues are not expected to occupy an entire journal issue. Typically, a journal issue will include several articles grouped under a special issue (clearly identified on the journal webpage), alongside stand-alone articles and/or reviews.

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The Journal will also publish reviews of significant new monographs and digital resources about any aspect of early recordings. Reviews will typically be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

If you are the author of a monograph or digital resource you would like to see reviewed, please contact the editors with details.

If you would like to be part of our reviewer pool, please contact the editors with details of your expertise and the kinds of monographs/resources you would be happy to review. 

Patrick Feaster (First Sounds Initiative, ARSC)

Nikos Ordoulidis (Kounadis Archive)

Eva Moreda Rodríguez (University of Glasgow)

Inja Stanović (University of Surrey)