"When I was a boy . . . in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape”"

I really don't see how. Waits is making an appeal to art and integrity, Sousa is decrying the act and presentation of mechanical reproduction.