Clean that Wax Out Your Ears

April 3, 2006 1:46 AM

Personally, I don't think hope is lost for modern music. Puerto Rican reggaeton is finding solid ground in the world of mainstream hip hop, indie kids are dancing to Brazilian favela jams at loft parties, and old time experimental music snobs don't even have to go to the "World Music" ghetto to find the newest Congotronic sounds. Still, sometimes I can't get off on the new school and I gotta dig back. Way back. The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project has created a database of over 6,000 wax cylinder recordings from the turn of the last century, all free to download or stream. For you sound recording buffs and noise connoisseurs, Tinfoil.com offers early sound experiments AND a cylinder of the month. And for extra nerd cred, check out Thomas Edison's contribution and peep his disturbing talking doll.
posted by elr (21 comments total)

by the way, I posted Don Omar's site because I dig what I've heard of his music and his site is hilarious, and Daddy Yankee's myspace page because that song will likely torment you til the end of your days, and I needed folks to commiserate with

the favela site is AMAZING, but you'll probably break it if you all look at once

and I couldn't find a working link to the creepy doll's audio (sorry)

also, here's a previous thread worth checking out
posted by elr at 1:51 AM on April 3, 2006

Oh dear , i thought i was going to get out the house today ......is there a word for people housebound by having to stay in all day to download extremely fun sounds ?
Do i qualify for some sort of Nurse to come and help me out and stuff ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:01 AM on April 3, 2006

Previous post on the Cylinder Preservation Project. Previous post on Tinfoil.com. Previous post on Favela. Previous post on Congotronics (same link, domain cloaked).

I'm just sayin' is all. Nice first FPP -- but you may want to use the search facility a little more thoroughly in the future. The "contribution" link is cool though.
posted by milquetoast at 3:15 AM on April 3, 2006

*puts on black cap , passes death sentence*
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:46 AM on April 3, 2006

Personally, I don't think hope is lost for modern music.

Yeah, have you heard the new Nelly Furtado? Whoa.
posted by cillit bang at 4:38 AM on April 3, 2006

I was just reading somewhere that reggaeton star, Daddy Yankee, is huge in Kurdistan right now.
Ah, here we go. It was over at Abu Aardvark, of course.
posted by NoMich at 5:23 AM on April 3, 2006

"Rock dead?" "Hope lost for modern music?"

Does anyone actually think that? Are people still bitter about Guns'n'Roses are something?? There's an order of magnitude more music being made nowadays in an order of magnitude more forms, and the technology to select, promote and distribute the best of it is making leaps and bounds! Don't let the creative wasteground of commercial, big-5 music get you down, bro.

Fin de siécle wax cylinders are cute, and I appreciate this FPP doing its bit to make another cool music form or two more known, but modern music doesn't need saving. :)
posted by Drexen at 5:34 AM on April 3, 2006

What's more, pretty much every type of music from Vaudeville onwards is still being produced. It may be some tribute or theme band in a little bar or venue, it may be just a project on the internet, but if you want to hear something and you're prepared to look for it, it's out there.
posted by Drexen at 5:43 AM on April 3, 2006

Oh dear , i thought i was going to get out the house today

Hah, that was my first thought too sarge. Good stuff, eir, even if it is a bit of a compendium of past postings.
posted by jack_mo at 6:17 AM on April 3, 2006

Cool post.
posted by cell divide at 6:20 AM on April 3, 2006

Yeah, great post, thanks!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:51 AM on April 3, 2006

Maybe one problem is that your first link (and thought) when mentioning 'music' is ROCK.

Sadly that is the case with WAY too many limited-minded people.
posted by HTuttle at 7:02 AM on April 3, 2006

So reggaeton is our hope for the future of music? I am loling.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:44 AM on April 3, 2006

Maybe one problem is that your first link (and thought) when mentioning 'music' is ROCK.

Rock and roll is an attitude and musical philosophy, HTuttle. Not a strictly defined sound.
posted by jonmc at 8:24 AM on April 3, 2006

"The" future of music is a little odd considering there's so much room for micromarkets and scenes now, along with more routes to larger scale success. The entire idea of world music was a ghetto only because the few acts with distribution were ones that were affluent, insanely lucky, already locally popular, or able to catch the ear of a passing western artist that brought them global recognition. Or at least more western recognition.
posted by mikeh at 8:56 AM on April 3, 2006

Modern music doesn't suck. You all just need to turn off your shitty FM radios and listen to actual music.
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 9:00 AM on April 3, 2006

The "indie kids" listening to Brazilian funcao music has to be one of the best examples of cultural relativism. Here you have a genre where the lyrics are probably 100 times more degrading then 2 live crew, and you have it being played for an audience who proclaims itself to be progressive (if not only musically, then socially).
posted by iamck at 9:38 AM on April 3, 2006

Sign me up with the fogies. If reggaeton is the future of music I want my Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums back from the flea market. Yeccch. Favela link is awesome though.
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:39 AM on April 3, 2006

Reggaeton makes me feel old and I'm only 22. It's also rather annoying that they changed the rock and pop en espanol station here to all reggaeton ALL THE TIME. Which wouldn't be so bad, except there are perhaps 4 artists and they all sound exactly the same.
posted by wilky at 10:19 AM on April 3, 2006

oops, I'm not good at searching Metafilter. I tried and didn'tfind any of this. I'll stand by my post for the favela sight though. Unlinked and wonderful.

Thanks, Htuttle, for calling me limited minded. It gives me a fuzzy. I mentioned rock in a post that included African circuit bending, two crossing-over genres from Latin America, and early sound recordings from the 1800s, with my point being that the "Is rock dead?" phrase has been parotted back and forth thousands of times by music writers trying to herald the of an era. Some of them are talking about the decline in music cd sales, some (circa-1995) are talking about about how techno is the new rock, some are talking about the prevalence of hip hop in the suburbs, and some are talking about a single lame band that they think is ruining music. For some reason, I find the volume of "Is rock dead?" comforting and reassuring, as to the future of rocknroll.

/limited - minded diatribe
posted by elr at 11:25 AM on April 3, 2006

I predict that soon enough reaggeton is going to be HUGE in the U.S.
posted by joedan at 9:07 PM on April 3, 2006