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Start Date
12-6-2025 11:00 AM
Description
The zoo has long served multiple functions, including education and amusement. The earliest public zoos retained their associations with the aristocratic menagerie, incorporating cultural hallmarks of the aristocracy and promenade culture. Even following the zoo’s 20th-century shift towards education and animal welfare, the zoo has retained some of its prior association as entertainment venue, often including amusement park rides and cultural performances. Musical performances in these venues are often lost to history. This paper begins the work of tracing the history of music at zoos, focusing on the 19th and early 20th centuries.
19th century European zoos often included a concert venue, usually as a way for the middle class to adopt aristocratic traditions. Zoos were social places where the aim was to see other humans just as much as exotic animals, and musical performances allowed the burgeoning middle class to distinguish themselves from commoners. The zoo’s human and exotic aspects were jarringly juxtaposed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when zoos began to include “exotic” human exhibits. Existing on a spectrum between cultural exchange and enslavement, contemporary accounts of human exhibits often cited musical performances as mediating influences between patrons and the people in the exhibits. I posit that music has played a complex, overlooked, and sometimes problematic role in the drawing of patrons to the zoo. Additionally, music’s changing role in zoos reflects the larger philosophical move of the zoo from social to scientific in the 20th century.
Recommended Citation
Provost, Sarah Caissie, "The Musical History of Humans at the Zoo" (2025). Theme Park Music and Sound. 4.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2025/thursday/4
The Musical History of Humans at the Zoo
The zoo has long served multiple functions, including education and amusement. The earliest public zoos retained their associations with the aristocratic menagerie, incorporating cultural hallmarks of the aristocracy and promenade culture. Even following the zoo’s 20th-century shift towards education and animal welfare, the zoo has retained some of its prior association as entertainment venue, often including amusement park rides and cultural performances. Musical performances in these venues are often lost to history. This paper begins the work of tracing the history of music at zoos, focusing on the 19th and early 20th centuries.
19th century European zoos often included a concert venue, usually as a way for the middle class to adopt aristocratic traditions. Zoos were social places where the aim was to see other humans just as much as exotic animals, and musical performances allowed the burgeoning middle class to distinguish themselves from commoners. The zoo’s human and exotic aspects were jarringly juxtaposed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when zoos began to include “exotic” human exhibits. Existing on a spectrum between cultural exchange and enslavement, contemporary accounts of human exhibits often cited musical performances as mediating influences between patrons and the people in the exhibits. I posit that music has played a complex, overlooked, and sometimes problematic role in the drawing of patrons to the zoo. Additionally, music’s changing role in zoos reflects the larger philosophical move of the zoo from social to scientific in the 20th century.