ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the larger philosophical questions concerning "modernity" as an analytic or descriptive term and provides an analysis of modernity as a form of self-understanding manifested—sometimes only implicitly—in early uses and depictions of sound reproduction technology. It offers a brief discussion of the concepts of "modern" and "primitive" in their historical contexts before turning to examines in turn an enduring fascination with watching people who are understood as primitives listening to sound reproduction technologies. The chapter also examines the desire to preserve the voices of "primitive" cultures for future, "modern" listeners, through the emergent practice of anthropological sound recording at the turn of the twentieth century. Modernity—even when used in specific reference to self-description or self-consciousness—suggests several different, contradictory tendencies. The chapter describes the Matei Calinescu's phrase bourgeois modernity best captures the sense of modernity. The phonograph was instrumental in scientific and theatrical imaginings and narrations of racial difference via the primitive/modern dichotomy.