Take a listen to this song:
Now ask yourself, why would this song ever be considered important? What historical significance is there to flute covers from 1971? Who ever considered this an acceptable album cover?
A: It was the first album ever listened to on a portable music player.
The quest for portable music is only quite recent and the implications have been huge; how music is experienced now-a-days, what we use music for, not to mention the mass profit that created from portable music. The original inventor of the Walkman (or “stereobelt” as it was called) Andreas Pavel, is really a fascinating man. On building the first prototype, he claimed that the intent was to ”add a soundtrack to real life, purely aesthetic”. When he first listened to the soothing sounds of jazz flute, he remarked:
“I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains, the snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation.”
The rest of Pavel’s story usually goes on the protracted legal battle he had with Sony’s Walkman (a battle only recently put to rest in 2005). But few actually go further to ponder Pavel’s original reason for creating portable music. I have known many people to claim that iPod’s have become a mass nuisance, putting people into their own individual bubbles and putting another wall against public contact. While I believe there is certainly truth to this claim, I haven’t heard many people seriously discuss the personal aesthetic of listening to music; experiencing the city as a flaneur, creating a personal soundtrack to the movie of their life. I know I love this experience. Recently, while skiing in the mountains, the Faunts terrific song “Explain” clicked in randomly. And I just felt incredibly happy perched on the side of steep chute in Jasper (“Wendy’s Choice”). Each ski turn seemed to sync in with the rhythm of a song and for a moment you achieve this type of transcendence: as if you become a viewer of your own existence, watching a minute of your life from the outside.
Ipod’s have definitely changed how we experience the world and I’ll definitely be covering this topic with more detail down the road. But for now, enjoy the soothing flute of this sexy beast above…
-C.
