Includes links to the several of the recordings mentioned.

‘The Phonograph and Labor’ by Gareth Ross from New Masses. Vol. 18 No. 9. February 25, 1936.

THE phonograph came into existence just sixty years ago. By the October Revolution Lenin was using it to spread his personal force into corners where he himself was unable to go. By the time Hitler took over Germany there were hundreds of Hanns Eisler records to feed the Nazi bonfires.

But in America records had no direct function in the labor movement until this very year. A few chain-gang songs had found their way into commercial catalogs, labelled “spirituals” or “race records.” The Internationale had been recorded three times in band versions, replete with piccolo in the standard Sousa manner. Once it was intertwined with another piece of band music. Once it was operated on by Jazz. But even such versions appeared under different names: Hymn of the Laborers and First of May (Internationale), etc. In any case, all three have long been out of stock. Then there were some experiments with “home recordings” of one or two workers’ concerts-without practical results-and numerous plans to establish independent recording companies to issue revolutionary songs. But year after year passed and nowhere could you buy a single record of forthright proletarian music.

That recordings can play a very significant role in the labor movement is obvious, once the present status of the phonograph is clear. That status is hardly what it once was. In the early ‘twenties practically every home had its talking machine. Caruso is said to have earned a million dollars by his phonograph singing alone. But by 1928 radio receivers had begun to displace talking machines. They were cheaper, they required no winding of motors, no continuous outlay for records. The record business dwindled to the point where its very survival was almost problematic. But the last four years have proved that despite its “advantages,” the radio can be only a sorry substitute for the phonograph. Records are re-appearing and in greater numbers; the standards of recording have never been so high. And if records are being made, they are also being sold. The Disc Club of New York announces phonograph concerts of all the recorded works of Beethoven: the series will fill twenty-two evenings. The fact is that a constantly growing mass of people are returning to the phonograph for something they cannot possibly obtain from the radio. In the light of all this, the appearance of three records which are definitely of the Left has far more than passing importance; and the fact that they are technically so excellent is worth every music-lover’s enthusiasm. I have seen listeners, time after time, fidgeting in their chairs, infected by the rousing rhythms of the music and almost unable to restrain themselves from breaking into the chorus.

That four of the six songs are by Hanns Eisler is a significant tribute to that great composer of workers’ music.

These songs should go out into places where concerts are unknown; and in no way can they go so effectively as thus, in actual sound. They will be played in homes, to a few men. They will be played at mass meetings where they will stir thousands. In mining towns where men have forgotten how to sing. In shacks by the waterfront. In farmhouses through the West. And everywhere they will come now, at last, in their living form.

A song like In Praise of Learning has qualities which have appealed to all sorts of people almost as long as songs have been made. It is at once simple, fresh, haunting. The quiet, child-like opening for women’s voices, almost chanting; the vibrant, electric voice of the soloist; and the contrasts between the women’s voices and the full chorus music which makes a solid impact; and by no other means so broadly or so quickly as by the record.

Rise Up has another kind of strength. A magnificent song of action, its sturdy surging movement is not to be found in ordinary music of our time. From the first firm piano chords, it drives with unflagging vigor on to the close.

Forward, We’ve Not Forgotten is somewhat handicapped by its translation, not because the translation is bad but because there is no tonal English equivalent of Vorwaerts, und Nichts Vergessen. At other places you feel that words and music are less closely knit than in the original German.

Internationale is not the best of the six performances. The singing is a shade too brittle, perhaps too incisive. And here, as in other places, the chorus is not always easy to understand. But what a pleasure it is to own such a recording. To hear it played full and rich and loud- in your own home! To hear it at meetings, where it arouses the liveliest kind of mass song.

As they continue to appear, records like these are bound to have a tremendous effect throughout the music front. For here is the music itself, not a printed copy of it. Composers who are writing mass songs have new opportunities now to reach the people.

The International and Forward, We’ve Not Forgotten; Soup Song, and United Front,· Rise Up and In Praise of Learning. Timely Recording Company. 75cents each.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s to early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway, Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and more journalistic in its tone.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1936/v18n09-feb-25-1936-NM.pdf