Various Artists — Indian Talking Machine Part Two: Instrumental Gems From the 78rpm Era (Sublime Frequencies)
Indian Talking Machine Part Two is a double LP that compiles 26 sides of music lifted from 78 rpm records procured and selected by Robert Millis. When Millis, who is also a member of Climax Golden Twins, produced the first volume of Indian Talking Machine for Sublime Frequencies a decade ago, it represented a peak accomplishment of a practice that’s been around ever since the middle of the 20th century. That’s when the advent of vinyl LPs first made it possible for music preserved on a bypassed format to be compiled and presented on a more current one. This practice has made it possible for a lone person with sufficient resources and a point of view to make a strong, discourse-shaping statement; for just two examples, consider Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Ian Nagoski’s To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929.
The original Indian Talking Machine might not have changed how we understand our world, but it did provide reliable transportation to a couple of them. First, it enabled a listener to steep in the sounds of musical traditions that had been around for centuries, but had not yet been transformed by capture and reproduction. Second, it introduced its audience to the surviving Indian 78 rpm culture. The album came as a 245-page hardcover book that presented both reproductions of sleeves, labels, gear, advertisements, and ephemera from back in the day, and color photos that Millis had taken of the places where you can still find them and the people who make that possible. It was possible to treat its two CDs tucked into pockets in the cover as accessories, which was a shame given the musical riches they contained.
That won’t happen with Indian Talking Machine Part Two. It contains the same number of sides as the first volume, this time on two LPs. The transfers subdue most of the 78s’ noise without compromising the sounds of the instruments. While it does include a booklet with a dozen pages of images of records, players, and the animal byproducts used to make shellac, the annotation is much more bare-bones, conveying only the names of the artists and the instruments featured on each track.
And what music! By narrowing the focus to instrumentals, Millis has foregrounded two elements of Indian music of the early 20th century. One is the concentrated power and beauty of the music that made it to disc. Reproducing hour-long ragas and other musical forms that had evolved ungoverned by the small amount of music that a 78 could contain was out of the question, so these tracks capture foundational themes and climactic moments; just the good stuff. The other is the spectacular virtuosity of the playing and the easy but focused rapport between the musicians (usually just a couple per performance); in a culture where music was made mainly by people playing every day, they got really good at playing it.
Indian Talking Machine Part Two is not a musicological enterprise, and anyone looking to be told anything about what they’re hearing will be disappointed. This volume presents the music as something you listen to, period.
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