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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

Band instruments were also a huge industry in bygone days. Every town had multiple bands. The center of town always had a bandshell. In the late 1890s you pretty much couldn’t walk through a city without hearing a band rehearsing somewhere. Elkhart, Indiana hosted dozens if not hundreds of musical instrument factories for a period of about 100 years.

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Changing tastes, and the electric guitar, killed band instruments. Three or four people could replace a 19 piece dance band. The economics were overwhelming.

While it's surely a blip and not a trend, there's a shortage of band instruments right now. I just donated my student flute to a nearby music store, and they said they had 40 kids on the waiting list for flutes. The Elkhart brands still exist, but a lot of instruments are made in China.

I think people are still interested in music, but electronics have taken over. Today even electric guitars are in decline.

Yup, and an industry which promised trouble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI

"We've surely got trouble! Right here in River City. Right here!"

You understand that’s all I’m going to be singing for the next 24 hours, right? Explain this to my wife. Not my fault!

TIL that a hard, curved surface designed to reflect sound towards an audience (and thus typically placed at the back of an actual stage where musicians can play) is called a (band)shell [1]. Thanks!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(theater)

Oops thanks.

They didn't have smartphones and video games back in those days, so people kept themselves occupied with other pursuits...

Or easy access to recorded music, although it was starting. Music via the radio wasn't available yet either.

> They didn't have smartphones and video games back in those days, so people kept themselves occupied with other pursuits...

In other words: there were fewer lazy, low-effort distractions, so people had to develop more skills, more frequently.

And interact with each other. In meatspace. No wonder more babies were being born.

so people engaged in activities which built real community and required frequent, sustained interaction with their neighbors, AND which involved manipulating real-world objects rather than fantasy objects.

#1 is generally correlated with increased mental health, something which makes sense when you recognize that we are a social animal.

#2 would make for some interesting research

In certain parts of the US, you can still find these. I'm thinking Cape Cod for example. In the summer, many towns still have town bands that play weekly or so.

Yep, the VFW and other organizations sponsored local bands to keep the military band tradition going. Not so much these days.

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