Echo

1. Echo = Historical

• a. ”An echo is nothing if not historical.”
• b. Because echos are generated after an original sound, they become a historical retelling.
• c. “Reflection of time passed”
• d. Repetition of something that happened in the past

2. Historical Acoustemology

• a. Basically, the study of cultures aurally and visually in order to identify the sounds of that culture.
• b. A recording of the past is not the same as physically being immersed in that soundscape.
• c. All history is mediated, everything we know about the past is dependent on what others have said about it.

3. Technology

• a. Recording devices → game changing
  -Captured the sounds and echoes of the past
• b. Historians interested in sounds
  -Nothing to study without recording devices
• c. Two ways to write about sounds of the past:
  -1. Historical imagination
  -2. Reenact a scene to experience the sound
• d. Because of technological advances, we can experience the sounds of the past and hold onto them forever.

4. How historians interpret the meaning, value and relevance of sound shapes how they think and write about the past.

5. Ephemerality (existing briefly) + Technology (recording devices) = laid the groundwork for historical thinking

6. Print

• a. printed word can be used to convey and even reproduce the sounds of words and events
  -The Civil War: “Soldiers described the sounds of bullets using comparisons from their world, not ours. This is why bullets sounded like buzzing bees and swarms of insects, comparisons that help remind historians of the largely agricultural background of many soldiers.”
• b. Literary terms: similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, descriptions
• c. The value of what historical sounds meant, rather than the sounds themselves