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The period romance film The History of Sound centers on a relationship between two musicians, Lionel and David. Their affair begins at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1917. Their lives separate when the United States enters World War I. David is drafted to fight on the Western Front in Europe. Lionel, who has poor eyesight and cannot serve, returns to his family's small farm in Kentucky.
After the war, the two men meet again for a trip across the state of Maine. They travel to rural homes to record folk songs using wax phonograph cylinders. These are sometimes called Edison cylinders, named for their inventor, Thomas Edison. The film is a story about lost love and does not have a conventional happy ending. It explores themes of social class, repression, missed opportunities, and grief. It also examines how people mentally revisit their own pasts. As director Oliver Hermanus explains, people sometimes find themselves "having conversations from the past in our heads."
The film's emotional truth is supported by historical research into the early 20th century. This included studying the real people who documented traditional American music. These collectors recorded songs they heard in small shacks, on porches, and around campfires.
No, The History of Sound is not a true story. It is based on a 2018 short story of the same name by Ben Shattuck. The characters Lionel and David are fictional, though they are historically plausible. Their work mirrors the real efforts of song collectors who, from the 19th century onward, became fascinated by folk traditions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. These individuals worked to catalog songs. First they wrote down lyrics and musical tunes, and later they used recording technology.
In the United Kingdom, the most significant figure in this field was Cecil Sharp (1859–1924). Among his achievements, Sharp helped found the English Folk Dance Society. This group later merged with the Folk-Song Society to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Its headquarters, Cecil Sharp House in London, remains a major center for folk music research.
Sharp also collected songs in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. However, the Lomax family is most associated with song collecting in America. John Lomax (1867–1948) helped bring the folk-blues legend Lead Belly to national attention after hearing him perform in a Louisiana prison. Lomax was a key figure in creating the Archive of American Folk Song, the first national collection of its kind. His children—Alan, John Jr., and Bess Lomax Hawes—also became important folklorists.
Some American collectors specialized in particular regions. Several names are linked to Maine, where David and Lionel go collecting in the film. They include Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, who documented the music of working people and Penobscot Native Americans. Another was Robert Winslow Gordon, a field recording pioneer from Bangor, Maine. He later became the first head of the Archive of American Folk Song.
Generations of musicians have benefited from the work of these collectors. A movement known as the American Folk Revival began in the 1940s. Early important figures included Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and the activist Pete Seeger. In 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote the song "This Land is Your Land" as a critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which Guthrie viewed as overly nationalistic.
HistoryExtra: Ben Shattuck adapted his own work, his first screenplay. How did this come about?
Many figures in the folk revival were connected to left-wing political movements. Guthrie's guitars in the 1940s famously bore the painted slogan, "This machine kills fascists." Seeger was blacklisted during the McCarthy era for his political views. In the 1960s, a new generation continued the folk tradition in the coffee houses of Manhattan's Greenwich Village. It may be an exaggeration to claim we would not have had artists like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan without the earlier song collectors. However, their careers, and the broader course of American cultural history, would certainly have been very different.
Director Oliver Hermanus discussed the process of creating the film.
Were there any details that to which you were particularly drawn? At one point, you show a mixed-race community in Maine.
Ben Shattuck adapted his own short story into the screenplay. Hermanus felt this was a natural choice. Adapting a short story is different from adapting a novel. With a novel, the process involves cutting material down. With a short story, the filmmaker has the opportunity to expand and add new details. Hermanus compared it to a house: the short story is just the front room, and making the film allowed them to explore the kitchen, bedrooms, and other spaces that the author had already imagined.
To establish accurate historical details for the characters, Hermanus and his team conducted extensive research. Hermanus enjoys the learning process involved in making period films. While creative liberties are always taken, accuracy in specific details was important to him. The Smithsonian Institution provided valuable assistance. The team also contacted local historical societies in Kentucky and Maine. These groups provided artifacts and information about how people lived, including typical farm sizes, house designs, and building materials.
Hermanus was particularly drawn to certain historical expansions of the story. One involved depicting a mixed-race community in Maine. He asked screenwriter Ben Shattuck what else the characters might encounter on their trip. Shattuck suggested the story of Malaga Island. Historically, the forced eviction of an interracial community from Malaga Island off the coast of Maine happened in 1911, before the characters' fictional trip in 1920. However, Hermanus felt the connection between community, music, and migration was powerful. It explored how music traveled with people from the American South to the North. Given Hermanus's own background from South Africa, this theme of displacement provided a personal connection to aspects of American history.
The film’s soundtrack was developed with the help of folk singer and musician Sam Amidon. The story itself functions as a kind of love letter to this music and its place in American history. From the beginning, there was a playlist of songs that were important to writer Ben Shattuck. This playlist often contained the same song performed by different artists across different eras. This demonstrated how folk melodies and lyrics were constantly being reimagined and passed down.
For example, the song "In the Pines" (also known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?") is a very old American folk song. It later became famous through a recording by the 1990s rock band Nirvana. The filmmakers knew they would not use such a widely recognized song. Instead, they wanted to find songs with stories that echoed the central themes of The History of Sound—ballads about misplaced love, loss, and grief. They also sought songs that originated from the correct geographic regions depicted in the film. Sam Amidon was instrumental in arranging these selected songs into a soundtrack that felt tonally and emotionally appropriate for the film's narrative.