The Recording of Past Social Conditions

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of the tape recorder in the recording of oral tradition in its, ‘set’ forms (i.e. songs, rhymes, tales and standardised sayings), its usefulness as an aid in research into past social conditions has not, as yet, been fully realised. Its importance in this respect equals that of the camera, but its use presents several difficulties, for the material which it can record is inchoate, ephemeral and subjective. Given the certainty that information about past conditions will disappear as fewer and fewer informants survive, the crucial problem is to know what to record. The task of the photographer, in comparison, is simple: he can see what there is to be done, but is, of course, restricted to what exists at the moment he sets about his work. Even though what he photographs – an old house perhaps – may belong to the past, it is beyond his power to bring the scene to life, to evoke the living experience. It is precisely at this juncture that the tape recorder, with its capacity to conjure up the past, makes its peculiar contribution.