Sensing the World: Pianos as Media of Transatlantic Encounters, between East Africa, Europe, and North America

Abstract In the first decades of the twentieth century, pianos were ubiquitous across the world. Drawing on ongoing conversations on the role of the instrument as a site of transcultural encounter, this article expands these discussions by tracing the connections embedded in pianos’ materials – specifically ivory, one of the primary components for the construction of piano keyboards. This article shows that this commodity mediated a series of exchanges between environmental and musical cultures, as well as between East Africa, Europe, and the United States. From the warehouses of European and American traders in Zanzibar to ivory auction houses in London and Antwerp, and from these sites to American keyboard factories and consumers’ homes, piano ivory enabled differentiated experiences of a globalizing world, revealing hitherto unexamined entanglements between music, capitalism, and transatlantic encounters.