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Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: Mr.OMuck on April 01, 2008, 09:49:54 AM

Title: New Trove of Early African American Song Recordings circa 1859 Found!
Post by: Mr.OMuck on April 01, 2008, 09:49:54 AM
Reuters:
Journals by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville (1817 ? 1879) show that he made a cross Atlantic Voyage to New Orleans in 1859. Scott de Martinville was, it seems a cousin of the great French painter Edgar Degas and was in some way involved in the family's cotton importing business. Degas is known to have spent time in New Orleans and painted the cotton Exchange there in around 1872. Along with the recovered journal were several more of the paper recordings that have laid claim to being the earliest recordings known. Scott de Martinville recorded them on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.
The Journal contains the following entry:
"New Orleans is a city alive with the beautiful music of Africans, freemen and slaves, the like of which I have never heard. Several of the Africans played songs on crude Spanish guitars and sang songs at once mournful and joyful. How fortunate that I thought to bring my phonautograph so that I may record these plaintive and wonderful songs!"
Scientists, Audio technicians  and paper conservation experts, are working to extract the music from the one hundred and forty nine year old recordings and hope to present them soon. There are five of the sheets deemed to be restorable.

A.F. Paris
Title: Re: New Trove of Early African American Song Recordings circa 1859 Found!
Post by: CF on April 01, 2008, 09:58:29 AM
Muck . . . is this an April 1st gag??? 
Title: Re: New Trove of Early African American Song Recordings circa 1859 Found!
Post by: Slack on April 01, 2008, 11:36:23 AM
POPS AND CRACKS BABY!

Quote
phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

LOL!   :P
Title: Re: New Trove of Early African American Song Recordings circa 1859 Found!
Post by: Mr.OMuck on April 02, 2008, 07:20:46 PM
Muck . . . is this an April 1st gag??? 

Yes. But the Degas part is true. So is the Lamp blackened paper.
Title: Re: New Trove of Early African American Song Recordings circa 1859 Found!
Post by: CF on April 02, 2008, 07:23:50 PM
Damn! Ha ha (check your personal messages Muck)
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