“¿Cuánto por una máquina parlante?”: estrategias cotidianas para acceder al mágico mundo de los sonidos grabados (México, 1903-1910)

Abstract

Objective/Context: This article aims to demonstrate how, despite the high prices of talking machines for the pockets of the Mexican working classes, these sectors used various practices and mechanisms to enter the world of recorded sounds. This story develops in a specific context of the social uses of talking machines in Mexico, marked by the interest of several American companies in the country’s sound market, such as Victor Talking Machine Company, National Phonograph and Columbia Record, whose directors sent technicians to record hundreds of records and cylinders with pieces performed by cultured and popular artists. Methodology: The tools of cultural history and a wide range of periodical sources, and, to a lesser extent, governmental petitions, are used to capture segments of the workings of the everyday economy and the consumption strategies of talking machines. Originality: This is a topic scarcely addressed by phonographic studies in Mexico, which have concentrated on analyzing musical recordings rather than understanding the consumption of these products. By considering income, consumers’ spending capacity and the commercial strategies of businesses, this text reveals different applications of talking machines at the educational, domestic and occupational levels to explain how they were transformed into desired commodities. Conclusions: After highlighting the cost of living at the time and the wages of workers, artisans and peasants, the research concludes that practices such as raffles, theft, the offer of itinerant phonographers, listening in commercial establishments and installment purchases, among others, allowed the less privileged to have access to the apparently unattainable devices imported between 1903 and 1910.