I was listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour this week, and they were doing their annual “did we keep our resolutions from last year” episode. And for each person on the podcast, they would set up an audio clip from last year’s show by playing a short run of notes on the harp, then segueing into the past.
It sounded something (though not exactly) like this.
It’s a phenomenon referenced at TV Tropes’ Flashback … Back … Back page.
I immediately recognized it from a bazillion bits of pop culture I’ve heard or seen before —but it got me wondering: Where does that convention come from? How did glissandos on the harp come to mean “we’re going back in time”? Is there a particular piece of culture that kicked off the idea?