Chapter 1 The Sound of Modernity

yamomo, meLê

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-69176-3_2

meLê yamomo⁵

Part of the book series: Transnational Theatre Histories ((TTH))

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Abstract

This chapter explores methodologies of ‘hearing history’ and the theoretical enquiries of acoustic epistemology, putting into question how modernity was heard in Manila and Asia Pacific. The chapter presents theoretical frameworks and methodologies to analyse sonic understandings of modernity in Manila and the Asia Pacific region. The overlapping issues of cultural sociology and economics in how modernity brought about (1) aesthetic autonomization, and (2) cultural commodification in the act of listening is presented here. By drawing from and synaesthetically comparing contemporary visual and performance theories with sound studies, this chapter proposes the conceptual framework Anthropology of Sound.

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Notes

1.
Mark M Smith, “Introduction: Onward to Audible Pasts,” in Hearing History: A Reader, ed. Mark M. Smith (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2004), x.
2.
Veit Erlmann, “But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses,” in Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, ed. Veit Erlmann (New York: Berg, 2004), 4.
3.
Marcus Cheng Chye Tan, Acoustic Interculturalism: Listening to Performance (Chippenham/Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
4.
Bart Barendregt, ed., Sonic Modernities in the Malay World: A History of Popular Music, Social Distinction and Novel Lifestyles (1930s–2000s) (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014).
5.
Joseph Earle Stevens, Yesterdays in the Philippines: An Ex-Resident of Manila (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 94.
6.
Dita Kinney, the Superintendent US Army Nurse Corps described the public trams during her four week visit in Manila: ‘Manila’s rapid (!) transit facilities consist of a car drawn by ponies which, by contrast, look hardly larger than rats. The following graphically and truthfully describes this service: “It starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and runs when and where it pleases. Nobody who is interested in reaching any particular point at any particular time ever thinks of using it.” The approach of the car is announced by a peculiar little whining whistle blown by the driver. To the uninitiated this sounds like one of those toy combination whistles and balloons which children inflate with breath.’ See: Dita H Kinney, “Glimpses of Life in Manila,” The American Journal of Nursing 3, no. 1 (1902): 32–38.
7.
Benito J Legarda, After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Change & Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century Philippines, 1st ed. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press in cooperation with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002), 329.
8.
Joseph Earle Stevens, 1898, Yesterdays in the Phil, 55.
9.
Ibid., 86.
10.
Kinney, “Glimpses of Life in Manila.”
11.
Hillel Schwartz, “Chapter 05. On Noise,” in Hearing History: A Reader, ed. Mark M Smith (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 51–53.
12.
Ibid., 53.
13.
Joseph Earle Stevens, 1898, Yesterdays in the Phil, 31.
14.
Henry T. Ellis, Hong Kong to Manilla and the Lakes of Luzon, in the Philippines (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1859), 243.
15.
From J. Mallat , translated and reprinted in: Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. XLV (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1906), 272.
16.
The Straits Times (2 June 1877), 21.
17.
The notion of cognitive dissonance is coined by Leon Festinger to refer to psychological discomfort felt in response to two or more conflicting cognitions such as values, beliefs, ideas, or cultural practices. See: H.J. Eysenck, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol. 7 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963).
18.
Ellis , Hong Kong to Manilla and the Lakes of Luzon, in the Philippines, 243.
19.
From J. Mallat Blair and Robertson , Blair, Robertson 1905 – The Philippine Islands 149, vol. XLV, 272.
20.
Peter Bailey, “Chapter 03. Breaking the Sound Barrier,” in Hearing History: A Reader, ed. Mark M Smith (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 24.
21.
Ellis , Hong Kong to Manilla and the Lakes of Luzon, in the Philippines, 112.
22.
R. Murray Shafer , The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1994 © 1977), 11.
23.
Fredric Jameson, Foreword to Noise: The Political Economy of Music, by -->Attali, Jacques. (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xiii.
24.
J. Mallat in Blair and Robertson , Blair, Robertson 1905 – The Philippine Islands 149. 273.
25.
Joseph Earle Stevens, 1898, Yesterdays in the Phil, 19.
26.
Jose Rizal, The Social Cancer (A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere from the Spanish c.1885), trans. Charles Derbyshire (New York: World Book Company, 1912), 72.
27.
Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (Verso, 1998).
28.
The notion of the ‘acousteme’ and ‘acoustemology’ was coined in: Steven Feld, “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea,” in Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith. H. Basso (Sta. Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996), 91–135.
Although he first applied the term within the context of the experiences of knowledge making from the acoustic ecology of the indigenous people in Papua New Guinea, I want to extend the application of acousteme and acoustemology further into a general experience of sounds (including music) and its relationship with the understanding of modernity.
29.
From J. Mallat , translated and reprinted in: Blair and Robertson , Blair, Robertson 1905 – The Philippine Islands 149, vol. XLV, 272.
30.
Joseph Earle Stevens 1898, Yesterdays in the Phil, 31.
31.
Schafer explains:

‘We are also disadvantaged in the pursuit of a historical perspective . While we may have numerous photographs taken at different times, and before them drawings and maps to show us how a scene changed over the ages, we must make inferences as to the changes of the soundscape. We may know exactly how many new buildings went up in a given area in a decade or how the population has risen, but we do not know by how many decibels the ambient noise level may have risen for a comparable period of time. More than this, sounds may alter or disappear with scarcely a comment even from the most sensitive of historians. Thus, while we may utilize the techniques of modem recording and analysis to study contemporary soundscapes, for the foundation of historical perspectives , we will have to turn to earwitness accounts from literature and mythology, as well as to anthropological and historical records.’

Schafer, The Soundscape, 17–18.
32.
Ibid., 9.
33.
Anthony D King, “The Times and Spaces of Modernity (or Who Needs Postmodernism?),” in Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone et al. (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1995), 113.
34.
See: Bayly, C. A. The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914, Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, Massachussetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2014).
35.
While, I am aware of the particular usage of ‘cultural industry’ posited by German Marxist critical theorist Theodore Adorno, I intended to use the notion of ‘cultural industry’ here in the contemporary British application of the phrase, which refers to cultural practices as a professionalized industry.
36.
Attali , Jacques, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 10.
37.
For related literature on the notion of ‘Industrious Revolution’ see: Jan de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 (1994): 249; Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Consumption, Social Capital, and the ‘Industrious Revolution’ in Early Modern Germany,” 2009, 197–200; Gregory Clark and Ysbrand Van Der Werf, “Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (1998): 830.
See for example: de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution”; Ogilvie, “Consumption, Social Capital, and the ‘Industrious Revolution’ in Early Modern Germany”; Clark and Werf, “Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution.”
38.
S.N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities in an Age of Globalization,” Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 24, no. 2 (1999): 283–295; and S.N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000): 1–29.
39.
Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1991), 5.
40.
Rafael Lamas, “Zarzuela and the Anti-Musical Prejudice of the Spanish Enlightenment,” Hispanic Review 74, no. 1 (2006): 39–58.
41.
Ibid.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Chapter 6 Article 49 of the Reglamento de asuntos de imprenta stated:

Con el fin de que en los Teatros de esta Capital existentes ó que puedan existir, no se ofenda á la moral y decencia y se guarde el decoro que se merece la sociedad, y en armonía con lo dis- puesto en la Real cédula de 12 de Agosto de 1705 y 6 de Setiembre de 1814, no se podrá representar ninguna composición en español ó en idioma del país sin previa censura y permiso de esta Superioridad.

See: Wenceslao Emilio Retana, Noticias Histórico-Bibliográficas de El Teatro En Filipinas Desde Sus Origínes Hasta 1898 (Madrid: Librería de V. Suárez, 1909), 75.
45.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Second Edition (New Perspectives on the Past), First (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 24–25.
46.
Lamas , “Zarzuela and the Anti-Musical Prejudice of the Spanish Enlightenment.”
47.
J de Man, Recollections of a voyage to the Philippines translated from the French by E. Aguilar Cruz (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1984), 51. From the original: Souvenirs D’un Voyage Aux Îles Philippines. (Anvers: impr. de Stockmans et Moerincx, 1875).
48.
See: Retana , Noticias Histórico-Bibliográficas de El Teatro En Filipinas Desde Sus Origínes Hasta 1898, 84.
49.
Wenceslao Emilio Retana did confirm the impresario in question might in fact be a certain Señor Preysler who ‘took a liking to theatre business and theatre women.’ (Ibid.).
50.
Out of this number, ‘75 vessels, of 44,755 tons, were under the British flag; 90 vessels of 28,074 tons, were under the Spanish flag; 28 vessels, of 25,011 tons, were under the American flag; and 5 vessels, of 1961 tons, were under the French flag.’ Consul Ricketts, Foreign Office Commercial Report Philippines, 1868, 606–607.
51.
Ibid., 603.
52.
Onofe Corpuz, The Roots of the Filipino Nation (Quezon City: Onofre Corpuz, 1989).
53.
Carlos C. Grant, History of the Philippine Church (Manila: The Philippine Revolutionary Press, 2011), 15.
54.
Division of Insular Affairs, Monthly Summary of Commerce of the Philippine Islands, vol. No. 1 Seri (US Government Printing Office, 1901).
55.
Legarda, After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Change & Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century Philippines, 113–114.
56.
Ann Bermingham, “Introduction. The Consumption of Culture: Image, Object, Text,” in The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800; Image, Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London/New York: Routledge, 1997), 3.
57.
Ibid.
58.
Ibid., 4.
59.
Ibid., 3.
60.
Ibid.
61.
Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre : The Human Seriousness of Play, Performance Studies Series v 1 (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 11.
62.
Tracy C. Davis, “Theatre as Cultural Capital,” The Economics of the British Stage, 1800–1914, 2000, 334–363.
63.
Bernhard Siegert, “Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies,” Grey Room 29 (2007): 27.
64.
Ibid.
65.
See: Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972); Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); Friedrich Kittler, “Translator’s Introduction: Friedrich Kittler and Media Discourse Analysis,” in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
66.
Joseph Vogl, “Becoming-Media: Galileo’s Telescope,” trans. Brian Hanrahan, Grey Room: New German Media Theory 29 (2007): 14–25. Vogl points out: ‘everything they store and mediate is stored and mediated under conditions that are created by the media themselves and that ultimately comprise those media’ (Ibid.). As opposed to content analysis or semantics of representation, Siegert asserts that German media theory ‘shifted the focus from the representation of meaning to the conditions of representation, from semantics to the exterior and material conditions that constitute semantics’. In this framework, media is not just an ‘alternative frame of reference for philosophy and literature but also an attempt to overcome French theory’s fixation on discourse by turning it from its philosophical or archaeological head on to its historical and technological feet’.
See also: Bernhard Siegert, “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory,” Theory, Culture & Society 30, no. 6 (2013): 50.
67.
McLuhan , Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1964).
68.
M.C. Ricklefs et al., A New History of Southeast Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); J.E. Nathan, The Census of British Malaya, 1921 (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1922).
69.
Heidegger , “Heidegger Age of the World Picture 1939,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. and trans. William Lovitt (Harper Torchbooks, 1939), 115–154.
70.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 4.
71.
See: Hans Belting, “An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body,” in An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 9–36; Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 2 (2005): 302–319.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Ibid., 302.
74.
Ibid., 302–303.
75.
Ibid., 304.
76.
Ibid., 305.
77.
Ibid., 313.
78.
Vogl , “Becoming-Media: Galileo’s Telescope.”
79.
Ibid.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Ibid.
82.
The German term is Kulturtechnik , which could be translated to either cultural technique or cultural technology. However, following Siegert’s usage of the first, which accounts more for bodily practices than just external technologies, will be the notion used here.
83.
Siegert , “Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies,” 50.
84.
Ibid.
85.
Joseph Vogl, “Becoming-Media: Galileo’s Telescope,” trans. Brian Hanrahan, Grey Room: New German Media Theory, 29 (2007): 14–25.
86.
Ibid.
87.
Ramon Pagayon Santos, “Revivalism and Modernism in Asian Music,” Bulawan: Journal of Philippines Arts and Culture 7 (2002): 38.
88.
Christi -Anne Salazar Castro, Musical Renderings of the Philippine Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 26.
89.
Ibid., 53.
90.
Jean-Luc Nancy and Michel Maffesoli, Techno: An Artistic and Political Laboratory of the Present (Paris: Dis Voir, 1998), 66.
91.
Ibid.
92.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. Public Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

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yamomo, m. (2018). Chapter 1 The Sound of Modernity. In: Theatre and Music in Manila and the Asia Pacific, 1869-1946. Transnational Theatre Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69176-3_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69176-3_2
Published: 21 July 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69176-3
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