Securing the aural border: fieldwork and interference in post-war BBC audio nationalism

Abstract

At the close of World War II, the BBC Director General called for radio that was ‘firmly British in character’. This article tells two stories about how sound was used to produce the nation in the post-war moment. The first story is one of radio fieldwork, listening to how recording technology was used to recover fragments of the nation through the BBC Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme (1952–1957). The second story tells of institutional efforts to combat interference through international technical regimes and emphasis on fidelity in transmission. Both tell the same story of how sound was nationalized and nationalizing, constructing a nation free from interference. I frame this as a process of securing the aural border. By tracing and connecting these labours and materialities, this aural history probes how sounds are used to index nations, how listening is conditioned as a national activity, and what gets silenced in the process. Acts of securing the aural border sat at the intersection of cold war techno-politics, international frequency plans, anxieties about mass culture, and post-war multiculturalism. National purification limited representational space at a time of great demographic change, imbuing the nation with particular assumptions about class and race. This article concludes by questioning the politics of wavelengths and technologies, critiquing ways in which national identity has been institutionalized in sound, and thus challenging discourses of national culture.

Keywords:

• Radio
• fieldwork
• interference
• ethnomusicology
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to my supervisors, Simon Frith and Katherine Campbell, for their guidance, and to Carolyn Birdsall, Florian Scheding, and the reviewers and editors of Sound Studies. Thanks, also, to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my PhD research [grant no. AH/J50015X/1], to Jessica Hogg and Katie Ankers at the BBC Written Archives Centre, and to Janet Topp Fargion at the British Library.

Notes

1. William Haley memo to C(N), C(H), C(P), C(Eur.S), A/C(O.E.), 26 Jan 1945. R34/420. BBC WAC.

2. Kun, “The Aural Border”; Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes, 103.

3. Revill, “Music and the Politics of Sound,” 597.

4. Badenoch, Fickers, and Henrich-Franke, Airy Curtains; Lacey, “Radio in the Great Depression”; Bohlman, Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe.

5. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 206.

6. Ibid., 203.

7. Ochoa Gautier, “Sonic Transculturation,” 807, 813.

8. Ibid., 814.

9. Ibid., 820.

10. Dolan, “The Voice That Cannot Be Heard,” 69.

11. Born, “On Musical Mediation”; Born, “The Social and the Aesthetic”; Piekut, “Actor-Networks in Music History.”

12. Piekut, “Actor-Networks in Music History,” 206–07.

13. Bohlman, “Analysing Aporia.”

14. Arnheim, Radio, 14.

15. Fickers, “Visibly Audible,” 419.

16. Hilmes, “Transnational Radio in the Global Age,” iii–iv.

17. Lommers, Europe – On Air, 75–97.

18. Spohrer, “Threat or Beacon?”, 32–33.

19. Huxley, UNESCO, 59–60.

20. Kennedy, “The Director Writes,” 77–78.

21. Arnheim, Radio, 30–32; Sieveking, The Stuff of Radio, 15–26; Scannell, “The Stuff of Radio,” 1–26.

22. Benjamin, “Reflections on Radio,” 391.

23. Fickers, “Visibly Audible,” 413, 432.

24. Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes, 17, 21–22.

25. Bohlman, Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, xxiv.

26. Porter, “Europe,” 217.

27. IFMC, “General Report,” 22.

28. IFMC, “Report of the Radio Commission,” 53.

29. IFMC, “General Report,” 12.

30. Ibid., 12.

31. Sharp, English Folk Songs; IFMC, “Definition of Folk Music,” 23.

32. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 24–25; Baade, Victory Through Harmony, 176–80.

33. Scannell, “Public Service Broadcasting,” 135–66.

34. Scannell and Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, 10.

35. Nicholas, The Echo of War, 1; Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 2.

36. Briggs, Sound and Vision, 163.

37. Ibid., 138–40.

38. Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 155–56; Nicholas, The Echo of War, 231.

39. Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 135–228.

40. Scannell, “The Stuff of Radio”; Scannell and Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, 151–52.

41. Beveridge, quoted in Briggs, Sound and Vision, 383.

42. Bohlman, Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, 44.

43. Slocombe, “Round Britain with a Recording Machine,” 12–13.

44. Brief from Head of Central Programme Operations, 16 May 1952. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

45. Brief, 16 May 1952, original emphasis. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

46. Maud Karpeles report to Marie Slocombe, 10 May 1952. Box 16. BBC Reports. PK BL.

47. Peter Kennedy report to Marie Slocombe, June–July 1954 and June–July 1955. Box 16. BBC Reports. PK BL.

48. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, 4, 232.

49. S. M. Wheatley report to Marie Slocombe, 22 October 1952. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

50. Timothy Eckersley memo to Marie Slocombe, 12 February 1954. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

51. Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, 28–39.

52. S. M. Wheatley report to Marie Slocombe, 22 October 1952; Peter Kennedy report to Marie Slocombe, 4 February 1954; Peter Kennedy letter to Marie Slocombe, 2 August 1953. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

53. Peter Kennedy report to Marie Slocombe, June–July 1954. Box 16. BBC Reports. PK BL.

54. Marie Slocombe memos to Peter Kennedy, 10 February 1956 and 7 March 1956. Box 17. BBC Sound/R.P. Library. PK BL.

55. Timothy Eckersley memo to Marie Slocombe, 7 July 1955. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

56. Bijsterveld, “Introduction,” 15.

57. Peter Kennedy report to Marie Slocombe, 7 June 1952, 25 May 1952, June–July 1954. Box 16. BBC Reports. PK BL. Peter Kennedy letter to Hamish Henderson, 17 October 1955. Box 11. Hamish Henderson. PK BL.

58. Marie Slocombe, “Review of Scheme from April to December,” 21 November 1952. R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

59. Kenneth Adam memo to Brian George, 13 March 1953. R46/26/1. BBC WAC.

60. Briggs, Sound and Vision, 52, 55; Nicholas, The Echo of War, 50–53.

61. Briggs, Sound and Vision, 83; Nicholas, The Echo of War, 275.

62. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 28.

63. Briggs, Sound and Vision, 76.

64. Gregory, “Roving Out,” 223.

65. Birdsall, “Sonic Artefacts,” 139–41.

66. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 34, 41.

67. Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, 57.

68. Duesenberry, “Fiddle Tunes on Air,” 100.

69. Slocombe, “Radio Report,” 25–26.

70. Slocombe, “British Broadcasting Corporation, London,” 60.

71. Ibid., 60.

72. Marie Slocombe, “Review of Scheme from April to December 1952” and “Stock Recording: Folk Music, 1956,” R46/658/1. BBC WAC.

73. Western, “The Age of the Golden Ear.”

74. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes, 41–65.

75. Karathanasopoulou and Crisell, “Radio Documentary and the Formation of Urban Aesthetics,” 173.

76. Sterne, The Audible Past, 226.

77. Tunbridge, “Singing Translations,” 72.

78. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7; Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes, 104–06; Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 6, 114.

79. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 34, 42.

80. Jones, Yellow Music, 109, 123–36.

81. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 12–13.

82. Bohlman, Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, 6.

83. Ibid., 12.

84. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 17.

85. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 32.

86. Arnheim, Radio, 229, 232–33.

87. Lommers, Europe – On Air, 15–16.

88. Spohrer, “Threat or Beacon?”, 46–47.

89. Ibid., 44.

90. Hunter, “If Everyone Kept to the Plan,” 5.

91. Spohrer, “Threat or Beacon?”, 32.

92. Lommers, Europe – On Air, 173–76; Spohrer, “Threat or Beacon?”, 48.

93. Fanon, “This is the Voice of Algeria,” 329–35.

94. Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes, 17.

95. Frith, “Pleasures of the Hearth,” 29.

96. Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music,” 213.

97. Cundell, “Listening to Music,” 5.

98. Peter Kennedy letter to Sarah Makem, 15 September 1953. R46/26/1. BBC WAC.

99. Scannell and Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, 5.

100. Newman, “The Impact of Radio on Music,” 142.

101. Hunter, “How You Can Improve Reception This Winter,” 5–-6; McLanachan, “How to Get the Best from Your Set,” 11.

102. Kynaston, Family Britain, 400, 664.

103. McLanachan, “How to Get the Best from Your Set,” 11.

104. The full eight-minute advertisement for the ‘Ether Symphony’ is available (and well worth viewing) at http://vimeo.com/89,092,972 (last accessed October 11, 2015).

105. Sterne, The Audible Past, 215–86.

106. Briggs, Sound and Vision, 9.

107. “As I Roved Out,” 75.

108. Sterne, The Audible Past, 218.

109. “As I Roved Out,” 75.

110. Rothenbuhler and Peters, “Defining Phonography,” 260.

111. Jones, Yellow Music, 107–09.

112. Born, “For a Relational Musicology,” 238.

113. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 4.

114. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 15.

115. Sterne, The Sound Studies Reader, 9.