Smuggled Sound

Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory

Bibliographic Data

ID2481301
AuthorsMark Neumann (University of South Florida, corresponding author), Timothy A Simpson (Ohio University)
Year1997
Volume20
Issue4
Pages319-341
Publication date1997-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/si.1997.20.4.319
OpenAlexW1983777743
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited30

This paper explores the meanings that bootleg recording holds in peoples' lives. 'Bootlegging' refers to the practice of making unauthorized recordings of live performances. Our paper is an interpretive analysis of interviews with bootleg producers and collectors. In their accounts, they suggest how their activities offer an extraordinary example of what it means to participate in contemporary popular culture. As bootleggers smuggle tape recorders into concerts, or trade tapes in underground networks, they pursue rare artifacts of popular culture. Their stories of bootleg taping, collecting and trading suggest an alternative to depictions of popular culture as merely a process of production and consumption. Instead, these accounts demonstrate how some people document their participation in mass cultural events on their own terms and for their own uses. Here, bootlegging is seen as an attempt by people to capture live performances, to collect them as a source of memory and authenticity, and to mediate the events of their lives through means of technological reproduction

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Media studies · Popular culture · Reproduction · Social science · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Diverse Musicological Studies · Music History and Culture

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