The history of live street music is the history of an endangered species, either suppressed or trivialized as little more than ‘local colour’. Five hundred years ago the streets of Elizabethan London were rich with the sounds of street vendors, ballad-makers and musicians, and in general the worst that might be said of the music was that the same songs were too often repeated – what we would now call ‘on high rotation’. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the poet Wordsworth and advocate of the ‘common man’ was describing street music as ‘monstrous’, and throughout that century vigorous measures were being applied to suppress such sounds, which were now categorized as noise. By the twenty-first century, live street music has been virtually silenced but for the occasional licensed busker or sanctioned parade. Paradoxically, this process of decline is intersected by a technologically sustained ‘aural renaissance’ that can be dated from the late nineteenth century. This article explores the reasons for the gradual extinction of live street music and the transformation of the urban soundscape. It argues connections with issues of class, the rise of literacy, the sacralization of private property and the formation of the politics of modernity.

中文翻译：

---

从音乐到噪音：街头音乐的衰落

现场街头音乐的历史是濒临灭绝的物种的历史，要么被压制，要么被贬低为“本地色彩”。五百年前，伊丽莎白时代的伦敦街头充斥着街头小贩、民谣制作者和音乐家的声音，总的来说，对音乐最糟糕的说法是，同样的歌曲经常重复——我们现在会这样调用'高旋转'。到 19 世纪初，诗人华兹华斯和“普通人”的倡导者将街头音乐描述为“可怕的”，整个世纪都在采取强有力的措施来抑制这种声音，这些声音现在被归类为噪音。到了 21 世纪，现场街头音乐几乎已经沉寂，但偶尔会出现有执照的街头艺人或经过批准的游行。矛盾的是，这一衰落过程与可以追溯到 19 世纪后期的技术持续的“听觉复兴”相交。本文探讨了现场街头音乐逐渐消亡和城市音景转变的原因。它论证了与阶级问题、识字率的提高、私有财产的神圣化和现代性政治的形成之间的联系。