Unsound Supplies explores the complex and often hidden provenance of the raw materials that underpin the rich musical cultures of modernity. Each of the book's ten chapters focuses on one material used in musical instrument making and the audio communications industry in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries--from African ivory and transatlantically traded rubber to Manila paper, Brazilian Pernambuco wood, tropical mahogany, Indian jackfruit trees, and steel, aluminum, wax, and shellac sourced from around the globe.
Together, the chapters trace the geographically diverse and frequently colonial origins and extraction processes of these materials, while also revealing their shifting values and meanings along supply chains. The authors critically examine the logistics, large-scale infrastructures, working conditions, and political, economic, and epistemic forces that have facilitated this material diversity.
Employing a variety of methods and approaches, Unsound Supplies reflects on the narratives and historiographical challenges that arise when discussing the material underpinnings of modern soundscapes, which are so often obscured and morally sanitized by modern musical and sonic aesthetics. The volume unleashes a noisy materiality marked by myriad contradictions, global connections, and uncertainties.
Unsound Supplies investigates the hidden provenance of the materials that have shaped modern musical and audio technology. In ten detailed chapters, it uncovers the global, often colonial, sources of materials such as African ivory, Brazilian wood, and Indian shellac used in musical instruments and audio equipment. The book reveals the complex supply chains, labor conditions, and political and epistemic forces behind these resources, challenging a conventionally sanitized view of music production. Its critical perspective on the often-overlooked material foundations of modern soundscapes make it a thought-provoking read for those interested in music, history, and global trade.
Viktoria Tkaczyk, David Pantalony, and Fanny Gribenski: Introduction
Part I. Rethinking Sonic Perfection 1: Elodie A. Roy: Phonographic
Imperfect: A Network Archaeology of Shellac 2: Rebecca Wolf: High Energy for
a Great Modernity: Musical Instruments Made with Aluminum Part II. Writing
Against the Chain 3: Edward J. Gillin: Keyed In: Ivory, Slavery, and the
Colonial Networks of the Piano, 1850-1931 4: Michael Silvers: Pernambuco:
Listening for "the Very Substance of America" Part III. Paying Attention to
Noisy Matter 5: Matthew Hockenberry: Paper: A Sonic Archaeology of Some
Vegetable Fibers 6: Fanny Gribenski and David Pantalony: Forging Acoustic
Precision Part IV. Conducting Material-Oriented Provenance Research 7:
Viktoria Tkaczyk: Sounds in Wax: Comparative Musicology, Chemistry, and the
World as a Resource 8: Panagiotis Poulopoulos: The Troubling Sound of
Mahogany: Sugar, Slaves, and Square Pianos Part V. Tuning In to Sound
Cultures Beyond Extractivism 9: James Q. Davies: Kautschukmelodie: Blood
Rubber, Epistemic Murk, Song Properties 10: Thamarai Selvan Kannan: Sweet and
Sound: Crafting Jackfruit Kattai in South India
Fanny Gribenski is Assistant Professor of Music at New York University. She is the author of L'Église comme lieu de concert (2019) and Tuning the World (2023). Her current research examines the relationships between musical instruments, ecology, and empire. Gribenski has been a fellow of the Thiers Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and the Huntington Library, and has worked as a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) and IRCAM, Paris.
David Pantalony is Curator of Science and Medicine at Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation, and has been a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, the Dibner Institute at MIT, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He was awarded the Bunge Prize for his book on the acoustical instrument maker Rudolph Koenig. Pantalony's current research focusses on the history of the precision instrument industry in Canada. He is adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa's History Department, where he has taught collection-based seminars on provenance.
Viktoria Tkaczyk is Professor of Media and Knowledge Technologies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she also leads the Research Center "Applied Humanities: Genealogy and Politics." Her academic career includes positions and fellowships at Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Amsterdam, the Laboratoire SPHERE in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Princeton University. She has published widely on the history of early modern and modern aviation, architecture, acoustics, neuroscience, experimental aesthetics, and sound media. Her current research explores the relationship between concepts of humanity and of technology.
