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b'Originally published on 29.08.2021.\\n\\nBackwater Blues: "Natural" Disaster, Blues Records and the Commodity Form.\\xa0\\n\\nBen looks at Bessie Smith\'s classic 1927 recording and the way it transforms a \'merely private misfortune\' into a historical record of race and class dispossession, carving out a space for a collective consciousness. Music that speaks to and even operates as a social consciousness and memory\\u2014how has this changed over time? Can music in America and other \\u201cdeveloped\\u201d capitalist societies still do this? Are there modern-day equivalents? Or has the commodification of recorded music and its shaping of the way we listen undermined our ability to have this kind of collective experience?\\n\\n\\nYou can read this article and subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter at www.spaghettiforbrains.com'