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I’ve lived through a couple of decades of recorded sound now — perhaps you have too — and as a result the world of 1908 seems almost entirely alien from the perspective of 1888. Recording technology has improved a great deal of course, but this year this feels incidental; there does seem to be a genuine shift in popular culture. The buttoned-up world of Victorian musical theatre and the racist formalism of the minstrel show have both largely fallen out of favour, but what do we have in their place? Films and TV series set during this era tend to feature ragtime piano music, in place of the early jazz they are clearly itching to use. Real ragtime was, however, still something of a minority interest — and when it did really take off a few years later, it had mutated slightly into the proto-jazz syncopated music which scandalised society and the media.

So when we try to put together an aural picture of this time, there’s a puzzling gap — puzzling because not only was there a great wave of popular music around this time, but because much of it still exists in popular consciousness in the way that embarrassing Victoriana and swept-under-the-carpet “coon songs” do not. The Wikipedia page on the “Great American Songbook” posits a timeframe of “1920s-1950” — but the writers of these songs were already at work, many of them in Tin Pan Alley, and some of the standards had already been written. In 1908 Irving Berlin is already working in New York, Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth have married and have published their most enduring hit “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and George M Cohan has already become such a big deal with hits like "Give My Regards to Broadway" that his two compositions in this mix have his name in the title — “Cohan’s Rag Babe” and “Cohan’s Pet Names.” Sentimental patriotic ballads about soldiers leaving their sweethearts are thankfully out of favour now, though it wouldn’t be until the electronic microphone allowed singers to croon (still 20 years away) that the laconic sophistication we tend to associate with this sort of music began to rise to prominence.

Vaudeville was not new in 1908, but it had finally evolved from a loosely adapted minstrel show into the classic style of wisecracking comics and variety performance it’s associated with today. Perhaps the last truly universal American entertainment, it showed a remarkable ability to adapt while it spread, helping to develop performing styles through sheer power of audience approval. A little-remembered Vaudeville comic called Murray K Hill features prominently in this mix — his stream-of-consciousness rapid-fire joke-telling style anticipates Groucho Marx or even Bob Hope.

One place vaudeville could not be easily transferred to was the UK. Strict regulations on theatres meant that most venues were simply not allowed to present a wide variety of material to the general public. To fill this gap, the ‘Music Hall’ came into existence. Originally back rooms of taverns and coffee houses, these venues allowed food, drink and smoking, and acts would have to work hard to make any sort of impression. This atmosphere, combined with laws about the kinds of performances that could be allowed, ensured that the music hall would rely on songs almost exclusively - there was simply not room for a Murray K Hill in London. Instead we have risqué innuendos from working class girl Marie Lloyd, male impersonators like Vesta Tilley and Vesta Victoria, who dressed as Edwardian gents and sang songs mocking their pomposity, and character singers, often from far afield, like Billy Williams, George Formby Sr and Harry Lauder — all of whom were to achieve national, and even in some cases international fame.

There isn’t any sort of revolutionary change in 1908 — these trends have been building for many years — but it’s the first time that enough of this stuff exists for it to be presented together as a vaudeville / music h