Zagorski-Thomas, Simon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4632-0320 (2016) The influence of recording technology and practice on popular music performance in the recording studio in Poland between 1960 and 1989. Polish Sociological Review, 2016 (196). ISSN 1231-1413

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Abstract

Listening to recorded Polish popular music from the period between 1960 and 1989 and comparing it to music from the USA and Western Europe, particularly the UK, from the same period, there is a striking lag in the sound of the productions. A commercial, positivist narration of these differences might characterize them in terms of being more ‘advanced’: of using newer technologies and the techniques that grew out of them. This article aims to look a little deeper at these musical and sonic differences and to explore how economic and technological factors affected these differences through a variety of social mechanisms. So, while a particular set of working practices and value judgments about those practices can be seen to have been maintained by these economic and technological factors, the article will also look at how that caused a different set of musical and sonic developments.
By employing Actor Network Theory underpinned by the ecological approach to perception and embodied cognition, the way that occupational and social roles evolved in Poland’s music industry during this period will be examined. Although the lack of availability of new recording and instrument technologies was important, it will also be seen that the industrial structure of Polish recording studios and the occupational duties of the recording professionals were also a crucial part of this phenomenon. In addition, while this lag in the development of new working practices among both recording professionals and musicians can definitely be identified, it doesn’t simply lead to a chronologically delayed implementation of the same practices. By channeling their musical creativity in different directions when the new technological options weren’t open to them, Polish popular music developed differently rather than simply belatedly.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Arts Social sciences > Communication and culture Music
Depositing User:	Simon Zagorski-Thomas
Date Deposited:	10 May 2016 15:09
Last Modified:	06 Feb 2024 15:44
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1942

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