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6 The featured performers in this chapter are artistic whistlers and bird mimics who dedicated their professional lives to the pursuit of that goal. 7 My study of twentieth-century phonographic whistlers and bird mimics has the added benefit of bringing a sonic dimension to the history of the American conservation movement. You might hear this chapter, then, as a whistling trio between birds, humans, and sound technologies. ”8 It is not surprising that Johnson’s initial point of reference for a domestic sound reproduction device was a parrot, since cage birds had been popular sources of sonic entertainment in American and European homes since the 1600s.

In the next section my focus shifts to the area formed by Green Discs and the acoustic era of phonography. Acoustic practices of record production and consumption demonstrate another way in which phonography of this era can be understood as eco-sonic. unplugged phonography Acoustic-era studio production, like Indian shellac manufacturing, was both modern and traditional at the same time. Recording did not require electricity during this period and so was a form of low- or no-wattage media production.

141 There is another form of contemporary Indian labor that may provide clues to a twenty-first-century practice of convivial phonography. India is one of the few countries that continues to produce hand-wound, acoustic phonograph players. These machines circulate globally, but the Western collector community denigrates them as “Crap-o-phones” or “Frankenphones,” due to the fact that they are often composed of parts taken from various machines of different vintage. ” As the supply of petroleum inevitably declines, Greer claims that Western populations will have to scale back their expectations and make do with technologies that work with available renewable resources.