Seizing the Means of Audio Production | Hacker News Reader

Seizing the Means of Audio Production

laphamsquarterly.org

53 pointstintinnabula13 comments

The article is about audio cassettes in Egypt and how Sadat banned them. (after a cursory glance-through)

The headline is misleading. I thought I was in for reading about some open source version of Ableton or something about laws and sampling/remix culture :)

Uhm, A headline isn't misleading just because you assumed it was about something completely different, especially when there's a subheader to explain the article and a large picture of the subject matter.

> A sentence is not misleading because a chunk of people understand something totally different than what it is supposed to be about

To read the subheader you have to go the site; since trying to do so hung up Firefox, it's not going to happen anymore. It will be added to my filter of bad sources along with Nautilus, the New Yorker, etc.

That’s a shame, because Lapham’s Quarterly and the New Yorker often host interesting material. Perhaps there’s something wrong with your browser or system?

Its literally about working class Egyptians getting easier access to music production and consumption because of cassette tapes. Had it been about Ableton it would really have been misleading as it would have had nothing to do with class tensions and control over cultural activity.

Has the headline changed? Currently, the headline is "Seizing the Means of Audio Production". There is no class tensions suggested by the title.

Ableton is audio production software, so it's easy to understand the first thoughts going in this direction. Mine did too, though not specific to any one software package. I even imagined "Seizing the Means" to be about some novel way of averaging signals to produce new signals.

Not one thought about antiquated audio distribution formats ever popped into my thoughts from the title. Why one would think reading of the actual article would be required is a wholly other topic on the interpretation of an articles title upon first reading of the title alone.

The Marx quote is

"Therefore, for working people to be free, they must seize control of the means of production."

Marx is explicit about a class here, the working class, and implicit about who it should be seized from. His full oeuvre is not implicit though and is quite clear that it is the capitalist class it should be seized from. The term seizing the means of production has for 150 years been widely understood as a call or reference to class struggle. Missing the framing of class in the title is a misreading.

>Missing the framing of class in the title is a misreading.

Now imagine reading the title without ever having read Marx.

"Seizing the Means of Production" is a reference to Marx, who had many things to say about class tension, such as "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles".

Not only is the title a deliberate Marx reference, the article itself is about an elitist government banning lower-class entertainment.

"This title is misleading because this article is about something I don't understand. I assumed that since the source was a literary magazine, this must have been about radical open source software, which has nothing to do with class tensions."

> The success of the Public Culture program is subject to debate

Having watched YouTube videos of the Egyptian Armed Forces Symphonic Band mangling various national anthems, I would certainly debate its long term effects.

Seriously though. Those videos made me wonder, how much is corruption at play there, and in this question as well? Were they really all that concerned about the cultural decay of the nation, or was it maybe about an opportunity for bribes? If garage musicians really made a lot of money from audio cassettes, wouldn't some have seen that as an untapped opportunity to extract bribes?

Based on my limited experience with pre-revolution Egypt, the answer would be both. A large part of society was tip/bribe based, tourism in particular, and corruption or incompetence is pretty common. The political leadership was also elitist and formed in the image of the British colonial government they replaced.

The president of Egypt and others of that level were likely not more concerned with supporting street-level payoffs over maintaining Egyptian cultural purity. These were military dictators accustomed to commanding something and, more or less, that becoming reality. And they were deeply proud and protective of their cultural identity.

This is being repeated again by Hany Shaker today.

Source: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/in-egypt-indie-music-finds...

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