Giving my love affair with vinyl a spiritual twist

I’m a vinyl record fanatic. My father, also a musician, recently gave me his vinyl collection and it got me considering: despite having limited use of my arms as a result of a disability, why do I still make an effort to play vinyl albums each day, whether old or recent?

The Historian in me reveals a bit nostalgia and fascination for vintage audio processes, while the Musician in me prefers the open sound of analog vinyl to the compromised, “flat” sound of low-resolution streaming.

But nostalgia and audiophilia don’t fully explain the depth of meaning ascribed to those objects. Putting a record on the turntable is a ritual, and the albums themselves elevate me and plenty of others beyond the mere sound experience.

As I learned from my partner Jennifer, who’s a Background in Religious StudiesThe vinyl experience has parallels to other types of the sacred in on a regular basis life.

Vinyl was once the measure of all things

The vinyl experience, including the mandatory ritual of interacting with the physical medium, has existed for over a century, despite Rise and fall of various formats of recorded music.

The recording industry emerged within the early twentieth century to satisfy what historians Daniel Boorstin described as “repeatable experience.” In the early twentieth century, technology made it possible to relive a moment in time by a photograph, watching a movie, or listening to a recording. People wanted to listen to a song they liked over and all over again. Advances in tape recording and the mass production of records made this repeatable experience possible.

The phonograph or record player quickly became a preferred staple in lots of households. In 1948, long-playing records or LPs got here onto the market as Upgrade to acetate recordsAnd Vinyl dominated the music industry until the Eighties.

In the Nineteen Seventies, when the record industry began tracking annual sales By format, listeners bought 74 to 82 percent of recorded music on vinyl. Cassettes and 8-track tapes a small share of vinyl sales, but in 1982 the production of 8-track records was discontinued. The variety of cassettes sold exceeded the variety of vinyl records sold and continued to grow until 1993, when CD sales overtook cassettes.

In the meantime, Vinyl sales have almost completely disappeared within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s and accounted for lower than 1% of all annual music industry revenues. Only independent labels with no industrial interests kept the vinyl format alive, sometimes luring their fans with additional titles that were only available on vinyl.

But step by step a small but significant group of music listeners closed the circle of the format – from records to cassettes, CDs, digital downloads and streaming – and began to return to vinyl.

In an era of low-cost and quick access to streaming music, vinyl record sales have nevertheless accounted for a better share of all recorded music revenues within the United States than at some other time since 1988which now accounts for 8% of all music revenues and 17.4% of all non-streaming music sold, and is due to this fact second only to downloads.

Vinyl records as sacred objects

The resurgence of vinyl records might be attributed to several aspects – one among which is definitely the nostalgia and love for analogue sound that I and others feel. However, for a lot of music fans, these vinyl records are sacred objects.

Religious scholar Ann-Kathrin Taves notes that “The tendency to separate some things from each other is a deeply rooted human trait.“When we separate things and provides them value and meaning, we could also be practicing an on a regular basis religion, whether we comprehend it or not.

The separation reminds us of the importance of the article being unique and not only a part of a set. Relationship between this object and something meaningful Going beyond ourselves takes us into spiritual territory.

Vinyl enthusiasts who exhibit these tendencies abound on platforms comparable to YouTube. They speak in a reverent tone about their rare or significant finds and exhibit a careful and ritualized handling of the artifacts.

Most enthusiasts perform ritual cleansing processes, purchase special archival sleeves to store their records, and maintain a private collection database. They dedicate entire rooms of their home to fastidiously curated record archives and create listening rooms. Both are shrines to a repeatable vinyl listening experience that elevates the records to unique places of deep meaning. They are artifacts of connection to the past and have the flexibility to move the listener beyond themselves.

To experience music on vinyl, the listener must pull the record off the shelf, fastidiously remove it from the sleeve, clean it, place it on the turntable and begin spinning it. The needle drops and the familiar magical crackle begins for just a few seconds before the great thing about analogue music is transferred from the vinyl record to the listener's ears.

When streaming or downloading music, there isn’t any physical relationship or interaction with the song. The sound of the music should be special, but the article has been removed. There is nothing to place aside. We cannot fastidiously clean, store, protect, admire or display a digital version of a song. The song could also be beautiful, but the article that creates a deeper connection is gone.

Former singer and spoken word artist of Black Flag Henry Rollins explains that today you “hear something that is served to you from a cloud, something out there in the ether, but you can't touch it. So what remains the same is analogue. It always sounds good to the ear. And it is what is left of humanity's encounter with music.”

Finding the sacred

My father's records – and people I even have added and can pass on – are amongst probably the most sacred objects in my household: I hold them dear to my heart and consider them a part of a musical and familial heritage with a shared, repeatable meaning.

Not all listeners would describe their return to vinyl as a spiritual experience or a non secular journey. But they’re nonetheless drawn to the repeatability and great thing about the record – something that’s made, kept, passed on and cherished. Space and time are reserved for the ritual of listening. We take a look at an album with reverence because, in turn, it represents a spot of meaning and connection, something special and special.

Jennifer Wilken, associate vice provost at Arizona State University, contributed significantly to this text.