1 Chapter 1 Overture: a Call to Listen As the Twentieth Century Gave Way
Chapter 1 Overture: A Call to Listen As the twentieth century gave way to the new millennium, a particular cultural phenomenon emerged on the French landscape: the call to listen, issued to French society from Mediterranean culture in French. As the predominant use of analog sound and radio shifted to the digital age, the digitized movement of media made cultural works (including literature, graphic novels, film, theatre, and music) and journalistic enterprises (including newspapers, blogs, and news aggregates) more accessible to the general public. Access became far more efficient and quick. The shift from analog recording and radio broadcasting to digital media allowed for a more efficient transmission of national and regional cultures, as well as the immediate transmission of historic events. As a global community, our everyday cultural experience has become enmeshed with sounds from around the world, ranging from voices, to music, to advertising, to bombs, and beyond. Many times, we bear witness to events through both sight and sound mere moments after they happen, at times simultaneously as they do. This cultural weave into the texture of daily life has given us the heretofore unimaginable possibility of experiencing the world through not only the eyes, but also the ears, of others, with dizzying immediacy. Mediterranean culture in French appropriated twentieth century cultural shifts in sound technology and distribution through a phenomenon I have named the call to listen. By Mediterranean culture in French, I refer to French-language cultural works that, first, originate in either North Africa or the Middle East, whether through authorship, 1 performance, or content, and that second, were all published or released in France.
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