Abstract

Phase Shift: Synthetic Sounds and the Cold War’s Musical Divide

The computer age revolutionized popular culture in North America and Western Europe. Music was one of the first domains in arts and entertainment that introduced audiences to the vast potential of digital technologies. For decades, sound synthesis had remained the obsession of electronic tinkerers like Robert Moog, who pioneered analog instruments, and experimental musicians like (Walter) Wendy Carlos, who set aesthetic standards in instrumental works. But in the early 1980s, pop music underwent a sonic transformation when developers and entrepreneurs in capitalist countries ventured to make digital devices commonly usable and widely affordable. Digital synthesizers significantly expanded the sonic palettes of musical artists. In the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and elsewhere, popular performers embraced opportunities to push genre conventions and invent new styles. In the Eastern Bloc, by contrast, music’s sound spectrum did not expand in comparable ways. Severe developmental lag in microelectronics, shortages in industrial capacity, and neglected consumer markets for entertainment technologies prevented communist countries from containing the digital divide. The sonic slope between West and East reflected technological and economic imbalances. This paper looks at the origins and implications of the Cold War’s final sound gap. It examines the conditions that spurred the innovation, commodification, and utilization of digital instruments in the capitalist sphere, discussing how subcultural and mainstream musicians adopted these devices. Tracing the Eastern Bloc’s struggle to leave the analog era, it explains how music creators and producers in communist states pursued access to the kind of sounds that their home audiences came to equate with modernity and progress.