Imperial Networks

Abstract This chapter looks at the dawn of talking machine empires—the industrial milieu of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in which sound recording corporations from North America and Europe blossomed and embraced globality. Their engagement with performers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in Latin America and the Caribbean reveals the entangled trajectories of political and commercial empires, how consumer culture pushed the worldwide expansion of recorded sound forward, and how deeply ingrained exoticizing practices in the business—such as crafting “foreign” and “ethnic” records—carved and invigorated imperial networks. As sound recording businesses thrived and a renewed imperial era unfolded in the geopolitical and trade arenas alike, recorded sound swiftly gained cultural currency almost everywhere around the world.