MEXICO CITY, March 28 (EL UNIVERSAL).- The book “The grooves of memory. Talking machines and commercial recordings in Porfirian Mexico”, which was coordinated by the researcher and musician Francisco Fernando Eslava Estrada, and which was published by the National Sound Library and the Faculty of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), is one of the few publications on the subject that have been launched in the country.
“In fact, the historiographical void was one of the incentives for the creation of this book,” explains Eslava and specifies that, in its six chapters, the book provides a lot of information: “For example, that at that time musical piracy already existed or that the popular strata used phonographs to have fun listening to songs, unlike the discourse that states that these popular strata were amazed by the invention and thought it was a matter of the devil. In a certain way, said historiographic discourse even affirms that the sectors subordinates were not participants in this story and were limited to being surprised. But it turns out that, from this investigation, we realize that this is not the case, but that the participation of these social sectors was decisive for the advancement of the manufacturing industry. recording in the country. There were traveling phonographs in common use in urban spaces.”
He explains that, in the case of Mexico City, there were dozens of traveling phonographers; The operators rented each of the pieces that were heard for a cent: “That was the way in which the subaltern sectors were able to approach these sound technologies.”
In Mexico, the first recording brands – he continues – began to produce songs, comic sketches and pictures of customs and history to supply traveling phonographs. “The participation of the popular strata caused the opening of these repertoires and American companies, such as Columbia, Víctor and Edison, realized this and sent their specialized teams, with all the necessary paraphernalia to make the recordings. They also sent the specialized technicians who recorded the songs or audios, which implied, properly, the birth and rise of the recording industry in Mexico.”
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In the researcher’s words, the three companies mentioned came to Mexico 14 times, between 1903 and 1910, to record artists of the time who were already known. “Now it is said that the industry can make an artist famous, but in those times the industry, rather, took advantage of the pre-existing popularity of the artists; they played it safe, they already knew that they were famous and that people, then , I was going to buy the cylinders and records recorded with these performers,” he points out.
The above information, which sheds light on a little-known moment in the history of Mexico, serves as an example that “Los surcos de la memoria” summarizes and addresses different topics through its chapters: from recordings of mariachi music , the relationship that exists between the oral tradition, the lyric and the sound recording (it is substantial to say that “the songs that were on the records had come from the flyers and songbooks that were printed throughout the 19th century” ) to the mechanized criers that can be heard at the beginning of the recordings and indicate the name of the song, the impulse of a modern image, the rise and extinction of phonographic charts and certain advertising strategies that still survive and can be detected in that type of distant link between Porfirio Díaz and Thomas Alva Edison.
“In the first chapter, precisely, I analyze street listening practices, through traveling phonographs and from the discovery of eight cylinders of the Morales Cortazar brand,” continues Eslava and details that this led to competition between brands, accusations of piracy and a blow of realism: the impossibility of competing with foreign giants.
“There were no professional recording studios, as we know them today; they were small studios where, on some occasions, street musicians were hired to produce a cylinder and sell it to traveling phonographers. So, here we are, talking about power relations. It’s a story that resonates from the social, the cultural, the objects and the sensibilities of the Porfirian era,” he concludes.
“Los surcos de la memoria” was presented yesterday at the National Sound Library (Francisco Sosa 383, Barrio de Santa Catarina) by Gladys Zamora Pineda, Ana Lidia Domínguez Ruiz, the aforementioned Francisco Fernando Eslava Estrada and Tito Rivas Mesa, director of the Sound Library .
