As Lawrence Levine explains in Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Heirarchy in America, the mid to late nineteenth marked a departure in theatre culture.  Previously, performances mixed formats and there was little distinction between low and high art.  Shakespeare and vaudville acts often appeared on the same stage.  But as theatres began to specialize in specific genres the audience, who had once been talking, walking about and even interacting with the stage actors, became silent spectators.

In sharp contrast to the views on sounds of industrialization in the North before The Civil War.  The mid to late nineteenth century was a time when the sounds of the city were thought to be disruptive.  What was once the sound of progress became associated with the excess and waste.  The Noise Abatement Commission was set up in New York City to attempt to identify and control sound, but their attempts were largely unsuccessful.

In Instruments of Desire, one of Steve Wacksman's overriding juxtapositions is the association of the white musician with tone and control and the black blues man with distortion and noise. Les Paul’s search for pure tone defined his unique sound.