Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890–1945. Edited by Elodie A. Roy and Eva Moreda Rodríguez. London: Routledge, 2021. xv+268 pp. ISBN : 978-1-032-05711-8

ISBN: 978-1-032-05711-8 Phonographic Encounters is a welcome contribution to the growing field of recorded sound history. Since the early 2000s, alternative narratives to the top-down and linear accounts of inventors and major phonographic companies, and the conception of recording as a socio-technical practice rather than a transparent technology (a mere ‘inscription’ of sound), have gained in importance. [...]similar controversies existed in neighbouring countries, where distrust for ‘mechanical music’ and ‘mass culture’ was countered by the valorisation of the latter as ‘art’ (discographic criticism, prizes) (Maisonneuve 2009). [...]placing this analysis in a transnational framework would allow the author to nuance her statements and further contribute to the deconstruction of mainstream historiographic categories announced in the introduction. The author convincingly brings to light the interweaving of science and politics in the context of the Nazi state, both through the political instrumentalisation of science to legitimise the Lebensraum project and through the scientists’ use of the political context to obtain grants and escape conscription. [...]Lange highlights how the recording activity forges sonic evidence of the Germanness of a dispersed people, supporting their integration into an expansionist empire.