In-Between Waves, Reels and Grooves

The article explores the processes and changes to the everyday working lives and conditions of labour of the professional musicians in the turbulent years of the great economic crisis of the 1930s, exacerbated by the increasing presence of mechanical music (gramophone records, radio broadcasts and sound film) in the spaces and contexts previously reserved exclusively for the live music performances. Central to the author’s discussion are the experiences, perspectives and evolving discourses of the interwar Zagreb musicians involved in the unionised struggle for better conditions of labour and dignity of their profession. By bringing their voices to the fore, the author aims to underline the Janus faced nature of the technologies of mechanical transmission and reproduction of music, and thus to contribute to the existing historiographies of local discography, fi lm and radio by bringing to the fore the previously often omitted perspectives of ordinary working musicians directly affected by the changing realities of music labour market resulting from the introduction of the mechanical music

Acoustics · Art · Physics · Visual arts · Balkan and Eastern European Studies