In the Walkman revolution we lost shared listening in an ever-narrowing world

Daily Maverick

5 days ago

I catch up to things late, always have done. I went, by way of example, from my transistor radio and those finickity cassettes that needed cumbersome cassette recorders to the smartphone with its ability to play music. I skipped over that breakthrough era of the Walkman and evaded the time of the Discman and the portable CD player.
I even missed out on MP3 players. I still shake my head: what was I thinking? Why did I never acquaint myself with the latest technology and get myself a device that would have allowed me to hear music inside my head through those spindly, non-earpod but serviceable headphones?
Probably the most important thing about the Walkman was that it revolutionised how we listened to music, changing the consumption of music – and all things auditory, such as audiobooks and podcasts. How? By giving us the chance to have a private listening experience, laying down the pathway for individual listening choice.
It was a heady breakaway from the 'before' listening times, and took away the constant carping and complaining about whose turn it was. My teen years were hell, an endless negotiation around the inexplicable (to a truculent pre-adult) concept of sharing.
I grew up in a family of six, all with particular musical tastes, all needing airtime. My mother liked classical music with religious themes: hymns, Gregorian chants, Handel's Easter music; the Ave Marias (the Bach and Schubert versions). 'Cross yourself music,' my brothers called it, mostly because my God-fearing mother often made the sign of the cross when she heard a particularly stirring liturgical piece.
My father liked Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, Buddy Holly, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald… played loudly (which annoyed my mother) so he could hear it while he cooked.
There was only one turntable built into a cabinet with an open rack that held the long-playing records, or vinyl as they were known, and a radio with a fabric or mesh-fronted speaker and a large knob for a tuning dial. This was in a pride-of-place position in the lounge. Remember, there was no television set, so it was where we sat to listen to whatever was being played – record or radio.
Antonette, my six-years-younger baby sister, listened to David Frost narrating fairy tales, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella. She'd happily sing along with the complaining ­Hamelin rats, resentful about being unloved, bitter about their treatment from humans.
Anton came home from boarding school, superior in his new knowledge of the hip music scene, bringing with him the music of Jethro Tull, Shawn Phillips, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath… all the colours, my mother used to say.
My musical choices included Elton John, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Phil Collins, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, the Bee Gees… And, embarrassing to the Naidoos, a deep love of country music: Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, John Denver.
My brother Shaun, learning how to play the piano in those years, listened to everything – it is necessary, he'd say, to hear it all. Necessary, it seems, for the brilliant composer he would become before his untimely death at 49.
Everyone had to have a turn. We had to listen to each other's choices – we had no choice. It was communal listening.
My hero, John Denver, wrote a song about his grandma's feather bed that could 'hold eight kids and four hound dogs, And a piggy we stole from the shed' on which they 'didn't get much sleep but had a lot of fun'.
It was a bit like that in the Naidoo family master bedroom. After dinner, when our teeth were brushed, our faces scrubbed and pyjamas donned, we – along with Timmy, the dog – climbed into my parents' bed to listen to the radio on my dad's bedside table.
As the Lost Orchid from a print of Tretchikoff's famous weeping painting looked down on us, we feasted on programmes like Squad Cars, in which the police prowled the empty streets at night, waiting in fast cars and on foot…; The Creaking Door; Test the Team; Inspector Carr Investigates; No Place to Hide with Mark Saxon and Sergei Gromulko; The Mind of Tracy Dark.
Family time, a sharing time. Happy squabbling time.
And then came the Walkman and everything changed. We no longer had to share. We could plug in our music and listen to whatever we chose. It was always our turn.
Over the past 50 years, individual choice has replaced things communal. On a visit to my family in Los Angeles I got sick enough to spend the day in bed. To make sure we still had family time, my sister-in-law, Ann, and nephew, Joe, piled onto my bed. Only each of us had our laptops, each our Airpods, each watched a television series (me), documentary (Ann) or music video (Joe) of our own choosing.
In the end, nobody shared what they'd been watching or listening to, I think because we each had such specific personal taste that nobody thought our choice would interest the others.
It struck me that because it's always our turn, the algorithm can track us and give us more and more of what it thinks we like or want to see or listen to.
And so our world gets narrower and narrower, as do the chances of getting to know arcane religious tracts or becoming familiar with the songs of Bing Crosby or being able to sing along with the rats of Hamelin. You are left with a repertoire of only what you like.
As I said, I come late to things and seem to catch on and catch up only when the trend is deeply entrenched.
Embarrassingly, I have just discovered podcasts and am listening to a host of views and opinions with which I agree, to which I nod along. A case in point is The Rest Is Politics, hosted by former journalist-turned-strategist and spokesperson for Tony Blair and New Labour Alastair Campbell and British academic, broadcaster, writer and former diplomat and politician Rory Stewart.
In a determined attempt to confuse the algorithm, I have resorted to forcing myself to listen to the extremely right-wing views of Donald Trump-supporting Joe Rogan, whose ravings are liberally interspersed with racist epithets.
It's a grim business and I find myself vacillating between rage and despair at some of the things people (such as Kash Patel, Trump's director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) say. But I genuinely believe that the only way to form opinions is to have the views of all sides. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.