Music has an abundance of guitar gods, but who resides in Synthesizer Olympus? If you’re an ’80s kid, a small list of synth heroes suggests itself—Thomas Dolby, Herbie Hancock, Gary Numan, and (when he’s not playing every other instrument) Stevie Wonder, but the first synthesizer titan remains Elisha Gray. While he’s usually thought of as the poor fellow who just missed out on patenting the telephone, Gray was definitely electronic music’s paterfamilias. From synth-pop to drone to ambient to psychedelia to hip hop and beyond, it all began with a Highland Park inventor (technically) MC’ing the first electronic music show in a North Shore Presbyterian Church on December 29, 1874.
The Highland Park Historical Society plans to commemorate Gray’s demonstration with a live “Electro Music” event Sunday, January 19, 7:30 p.m., at Highland Park Presbyterian Church (330 Laurel Ave, Highland Park, IL). To be clear, that’s not Electro as in the early 1980s electro-funk music genre powered by drum-machines and vocoders. It refers to Gray’s “musical telegraph” and several other devices he employed to deliver music electrically. The church’s choir will perform the 1874 concert’s original program. During the event, Oberlin College ethnomusicology professor emeritus and Gray scholar Roderic Knight will deliver a video demonstration with replicas of several of Gray’s original electric musical devices.
Knight has studied Gray and his inventions for many years. A specialist in the music of the Mande or Mandinka people of West Africa as well as the “music and dance traditions of tribal groups in Central India,” Knight has also studied and lectured on musical instruments and their history and classification. He first came across Gray while visiting a website called 120 Years of Electronic Music. The fact that Gray was a former Oberlin student also caught his eye. Gray never graduated from Oberlin, but did teach there for several years, eventually receiving an honorary degree from his alma mater…