Lutgard Mutsaers
American popular songs in the late 19th century often referred to the new medium of telephony, which created no less than a sensation. ‘Hello, Ma Baby’ by Ida Emerson and Joseph Howard from 1899 is a well known example, and was then sung by many artists in vaudeville and recorded both for Edison and Berliner Record Companies, bitter rivals at the time. ‘Hello, Ma Baby’ much later inspired ‘Telephone Baby’, made immortal by The Big Bopper who died along with Buddy Holly in their 1959 plane crash.
Long distance calling over the phone was perceived as the next miracle in an age where all sorts of modern inventions took shape. Numerous are the scenes in early Hollywood movies where jet setters and gangsters wait for the phone to ring, pick up the horn in great expectation, put it to their ears and do whatever business they are up to. The occupation of telephone operator was a new and exciting job for young female professionals, whose voices were selected to be pleasant and inviting. In the trenches of World War I the telephone was an indispensable tool for the planning of warfare and information about casualties. There is little that has not been mediated through a phone, from noncommercial messages of interpersonal contact to professional telephone sex.
The ringtone, for a long time identical to the dial tone (the one the caller hears in his or her ear when waiting for connection), has seen variations in different countries. Great Britain for example had the standard of two ringtones shortly after one another, followed by a short break, and then the repetition of the bitone sound. The Netherlands and many other countries have single ringtones with regular spaces of time in between. For any hearing person, the sound of a telephone ringing is unmistakable. The standard national ringtone is a cultural phenomenon understood by all. It is like the national anthem. The national annoyance is ‘waiting music’ when you as a caller are put on hold by the people or firm you try to reach, but that’s a different story altogether.
The advent in the mid 1980s of satellite communication including telephony and the consecutive boom in cellular phones brought with it the opening up of the ringtone possibilites. Customizing your own phone with a ringtone of choice is now normal practice. The intersection of the music industry with the ringtone business was a logical development. But it took some time to recover from the mobile wonder itself, or so it seemed. Not much was done about customizing and variation during those first years.
As late as 1997 Finnish producer Nokia began offering alternative ringtones to its standard ‘Gran Vals’ ringtone. These ringtones could be downloaded through what Nokia called Smart Messaging. ‘Gran Vals’ (big waltz), by the way, is the name of a composition by Spanish guitarist Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909). Had he lived, he’d be a household name. Since 1997 the simple monophonic or mono ringtone (just one melodic line, no harmonies) was joined by polyphonic or poly ringtones (more tones ringing simultaneously in a certain harmony), and even MP3’s of sections of original recordings (realtones).
It is impossible to say whose claim to be ‘the first original ringtone composer’ is true. Paris-born Martin Plante, now Montreal based and a rockband keyboard player (as such not blessed with a wide range of exposure), says he is the world’s first ringtone artist to compose music exclusively for cell phones. He started this new thing in February 2001. Classifying his work results in several official categories: techno, tropical, morbid melodies, buzz-tones, speedy melodies, Far West tunes, sophisticated ones, Mid East sounds, mystery tones (inspired by classic mystery film plots), ringtones-a-gogo (with a touch of Moulin Rouge), and the unclassifiable ‘Unclassified’ ringtones that are, well, interestingly different.
Different at yet another level are socalled ‘moantones’, sexy sounds relating to all sorts of phases of sexual arousel. The sexually explict audio clip for cell phones seems to be a whole new industry by itself. Started in Toronto in the world of prostitution, the moantone was an instant success. Technically the inventors went as far as assigning a specific moantone to specific incoming calls from clients, so they knew by ear who wanted their time and assistence. This principle of assigning a specific tone to a specific caller in your own address book was not new though. Another composer who has a claim to ringtone fame is the already legendary British monument of crossdressing and androgyny, Boy George. He was the first pop star to compose an original ringtone (‘Sonic Trigger’) for UK Vodafone in 2003. Some time before, in december 2001 to be precise, record major EMI had made the historical mistake to try and fight new developments in consumer music culture, instead of adapting to them. EMI ordered ringtone providers to stop turning the music of EMI signed artists into what they called ‘jingles’, altered versions of copyrighted songs, suited for mobile phone use.
A fairly recent development in Ringtonia - fantasy name of the world of the ringtone - is the chart system reinvented for ringtones. Its rationale is the same as the chart system for records: sales figures count. The virtual Ringtone Jukebox plays the ringtones of choice, so to speak. Parallel to issues in ‘normal’ popular music of the past, ringtones are not neutral elements in people’s lives. Some fit your personality more than others. For that reason ringtone websites offer special questionnaires to get to know yourself better in this respect. The omnipresent use of pieces of the biggest chart hits as ringtones has become the reason that the ringtone phenomenon itself is tainted by a kind of ‘cheap’ image. The fact that young children are the most fervent users of chart hit ringtones adds to the low esteem. All of which has nothing to do with the overall quality of the individual original songs themselves (a mistake quite often and undiscriminately made). It remains true that popular tunes soon lose their appeal when too many people use the same excerpts of hit songs on their mobiles. That makes the scene ideally set for composers of original material. The development of ringtones can still expand in so many directions; it has only just begun.
Definitive proof of the cultural importance of a technological invention or gadget is the mentioning of the device and what you can do with it in lyrics of popular songs. Apart from the ‘telephone’ songs mentioned earlier, there are also numerous songs about the grammophone, the transistor radio and the walkman, especially since pop culture became almost exclusively youth oriented. In the summer of 2004 Dutch based R&B artist and singer songwriter Alain Clark (24) released his single ‘Ringtone’, a Dutch language song. It contains two crucial lines, [in translation] ‘to make sure you know that it’s me’ (zodat je weet dat ik het ben) and ‘my ringtone made especially for you’ (mijn ringtone speciaal voor jou gemaakt). Like Emerson/Howard before him, Alain Clark couples a hot topical cultural phenomenon annex communication gadget with the notion of romantic possibilities and promises. A logic the ‘art’ ringtone composers might wish to disrupt in their own noncommercial but definitely communicative ways.
Lutgard Mutsaers
Popular Music Studies
Utrecht University
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