Come’ on, it’s just a Juke

The Samsung Juke phone was released in October of 2007 and seems to pride itself in taking the shift from a cellular phone with music capabilities to an MP3 player with a phone included.I am interested in its shift from the way that it allows music to be listened to from exclusive to external.

There is a pure joy in walking around campus or elsewhere, playing a tune on the Juke’s external speaker at a volume not only loud enough to visibly annoy the passersby, but also not quiet enough for it to be totally inaudible. With almost two gigabytes of memory on the music player phone, there’s usually a song that fits my mood at the right time. Thus, I find an auspiciously selected, three-minute tune a fine metaphysical replacement for the cigarette between classes (since Geneva prides itself for having a Smoke-Free Campus).

But the point is not to be an annoyance. The point is that I want to share my music with others. I like to imagine just one note of a song passing into an unsuspecting victim’s ear and pleasantly haunting them for the rest of the day, inspiring them to hum the faintly familiar tune to others. In a sense, I cause the music to spread like a good wildfire.  Actually, I doubt something that utopian will occur, but there is a phenomenal difference between sticking ear-buds on and gazing at your shoes across campus and letting your favorite music seemingly emanate out of your very loins for those around you to hear (for better or for worse).

By no means is the Samsung Juke the first device with an external speaker. I fondly remember biking down my street while holding a Home Alone 2–conjuring Talkboy — an essential moment in my audiophile childhood. I am simply excited about the possibilities of a more social or communal (political philosophy aside for right now) musical milieu, so to speak, stemming from the way people listen to music. I’m talking about L.L. Cool J’s radio or Lloyd Dobler’s keen boom-box presentation of “In Your Eyes” in Say Anything… What kind of emotional aptitude would have existed had these songs been played on headphones? Lloyd certainly would not have won back Diane without that external speaker, I know that much. Consider the possibilities of what at first seems to be a minor phone option, try to spread the social music gospel, and let’s see what happens.

Jake Kauffman

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