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FIT and fighting at FORTY
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The cassette is middle-aged, and still quite potent
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IT DOES give one a turn, doesn't it? The good old cassette has been around for four decades. The credit for making music truly democratic goes to this small, handy, plastic device.
It was Phillips that launched the first blank audiocassette in 1963 at the Berlin Radio Show. It was an instant hit. Music buffs divorced themselves from cumbersome gramophones and radios that gave them limited choice. They started compiling their own music — from singles, EPs, LPs, the radio — lovingly indexing and labelling their own unique albums. We're still doing it, though technology permits amateurs like us to do likewise on CDs too, but not with as much ease and speed.
One happy fallout of Phillips's revolutionary innovation was that the cassette took on the cartel of big record companies. The Guardian quoted from anthropologist Peter Manuel's book, Cassette Culture: "... the cassette smashed EMI's monopoly of the record industry in India in the early 1980s. It opened up a market that had been dominated almost completely by film soundtracks and allowed hundreds of small local producers to release their own styles."
This meant that local talent could express itself and gain exposure. The cassette boom saw an explosion of bands and musicians, a number of them truly talented as an equal number were not. Nevertheless, they all could afford to produce the album of their dreams.
When Sony's Walkman hit the market in 1980, it was the beginning of the end for LPs. Pre-recorded cassettes became the norm. As Paul James pointed out in The Guardian: "Cold, wet mornings at the bus stop had the capacity to be something wonderful."
The '80s also saw the birth of the music pirate. Illegal tapes — most of them of dubious quality in every sense — flooded the market, and one could pick from the heaps on even footpaths if one dared to.
The music industry is still reeling from the assault, which is now powered by the Internet and MP3. The industry is now fighting back, organising raids and fighting court cases. Some companies, like Lahari Recording Company, retaliated with competitive pricing. Today, one can get a Lahari cassette, backed by world-class studio recording, for a mere Rs. 25. (Lahari's CDs are priced at an incredible Rs. 42, and MP3s, Rs. 63! The industry's current bete noir, according to G. Manoharan Naidu, Lahari's Managing Director, is private FM channels that want to air music without paying royalty.)
Though the advent of CDs (in 1983, Phillips again) spelt the demise of cassettes in the West, the cassette is still dominant in India, bringing not just music, but also religious discourses, children's stories and rhymes, and even class lessons.
As for the home taper, s/he did not confine himself to recording music, as Prince Charles has discovered, much to his chagrin. But there are happier instances too. Like the husband who successfully wooed his estranged wife back by mailing her half a dozen tapes full of passionate yearning. It worked faster than his pleading letters.
SUGANDHI RAVINDRANATHAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
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