Preface

Talking Machine Empires is a history of the dawn of the sound recording industry in Latin America and the Caribbean. By way of the many episodes, people, objects, corporations, and networks that such a history summons, it is also a study of the globalization of recorded sound. This book can be taken, at once, as cultural history, music history, business history, technology history, and even social history. Better yet, with any or all of those words in their plural forms: cultures, musics, businesses, technologies, societies (or communities), and of course, histories. What matters is not their discrete configurations but their interconnectedness: how the various things that those words or categories represent, namely sounds, industries, artifacts, humans, everyday life, and many more, come together and make sense. Their connections can be fostered by all kind of processes, themes, or scenarios. The thread that binds them together in this book is imperialism.