Strange Sounds: Music, Technology, & Culture. By Timothy D. Taylor. (New York: Routledge, 2001. x, 278 pp. Cloth, $85.00, isbn 0-415-93683-7. Paper, $22.95, isbn 0-415-93684-5.)

Abstract

Timothy D. Taylor opens his engaging analysis of the effects of digital technology on contemporary music by asserting that w1e inhabit an inescapably altered universe. He states, “The advent of digital technology in the early 1980s marks the beginning of what may be the most fundamental change in the history of Western music since the invention of music notation in the ninth century” (p. 3). The means by which we produce, store, and distribute, as well as consume, music no longer are dictated by some form of hard object. Instead, sound itself can be bought, moved about, and, most important, transformed at the whim of any individual. This erodes the line that once neatly separated producers from consumers. Since those with the necessary tools can easily remix the work of others, the hierarchical relationship between creators and their fans has become potentially democratized. Taylor, however, believes that the social relationships between producers and consumers were never as fixed as some might assume, for technology, musical or otherwise, cannot be separated from the social systems in which it is inextricably embedded. That has become even more so in the advent of globalization, for the permeability of borders permits the transmission of sound as ubiquitously as it does the movement of capital or labor. The musical creations of cultures foreign to the West therefore circulate freely—often in the literal sense, without either compensation to their creators or acknowledgment of their role. Musical producers treat sounds outside their sphere of origin as discrete material unlinked to any sense of local identity.