ABSTRACT

The famous photograph portraying Thomas Alva Edison and his tinfoil phonograph: it was shot in Washington in April 1878; Edison had patented his invention at the end of February. The key for understanding if and how the Estudiantina Española’s music can be related to popular music is the process by which, in the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries, the ideas of ‘classical music’ and ‘folk music’ were invented, and ‘popular music’ became the conceptual space where music not belonging to the classical canon or to the Romantic idea of folk could be placed. Studying popular music implies considering a large body of music practices with a historical perspective, spanning over at least two centuries; it also implies considering those practices in relation to non-strictly musical practices and conventions. Popular music studies were established with an explicit reference to interdisciplinarity, as indicated in the Statutes of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.