Bailes Fonoeléctricos: WTF?

Round about mid-1945, a few of Buenos Aires's "bailes con grabaciones" (dances with recorded music) began to describe themselves in their advertising as veladas fonoeléctricas. A velada, I knew, was nothing more than a late-night version of a soirée, but the word fonoeléctrica threw me for a loop, especially since my porteño friends had never heard the word and were as puzzled by it as I was.

"Phonoelectric Concerts of Musical Culture. Direction and commentary by Dr. Leopoldo Hurtado." Until this time, classical concerts invariably featured live performers. The concept of these concerts was to gain acceptance for performances of recorded music, without the expense and inconvenience of live musicians.

"GROOVES OF THE DISC: The phonoelectric dance acclaimed for its quality" (January 1946). The "Surcos del Disco" was one of the longest running and best attended "bailes con grabaciones" of the mid-1940s. Their ads often employed irony and other forms of puckish humor. Here, the convergence of the rather pompous expressions "fonoeléctrica" and "impuesto" (acclaimed) amount to a send-up of overblown advertising language.

On my last visit to the National Library I found the rather imposing document you see at the right. It's an ad that appeared in El Mundo on April 8, 1945, announcing a series of free public auditions of classical music sponsored by several corporate entities, including the Argentine Electric Company, the South American branch of General Electric, the Philco radio company, and both record companies operating in the country, Victor and Odeon. As far as I can determines, their use of the term fonoeléctrica predates its usage by the bailes con grabaciones.

The context suggests that the term fonoeléctrica was a somewhat pompous neologism intended to give greater apparent dignity to a concert of classical music presented on recording, without live musicians. (Note that the layout of the ad is very similar to an academic diploma or something similar.) This wasn't going to be just a bunch of people in a room, listening to phonograph records on an old Victrola. It was to be a corporate-sponsored act of musical connoisseurship, aided by an electronically amplified phonograph, with commentary by an expert. Or whatever....

I'm guessing that the term fonoeléctrica was adopted soon after by the BCGs as a kind of in-joke, a tongue-in-cheek way of glorifying their homespun dances, which presented popular dance music—tango, jazz, and other genres—on recording, without live musicians. That was very much in keeping with the playful, puckish tone of their  ads.

Comments

[Jantango]

What I've learned about music in Buenos Aires has come from the milongueros...until now, that is. The newspaper announcements that you're discovering are a true record of the past. Every little piece is an important part of the puzzle.