Music and Appropriation

Appropriation (in the arts)

The adoption, borrowing, or theft of elements of one culture by another culture.

Taking over another culture’s style or way of expressing itself for your own purposes.

Taking something created by another person and making it your own.

Mei-lwun, “Sweet Home Country Grammar” (2003)

incorporating

Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974)

Nelly, “Country Grammar” (2000)

Music and Appropriation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=692ReyCPdqA

There are many examples of appropriation in pop music

A person models their performance or songwriting style on another person’s style.

Members of one culture adopt or adapt the style of another culture.

Imitation (style theft)

Someone steals someone else’s song or music and doesn’t give credit or pay royalties.

Plagiarism

Someone uses someone’s song or music in a context for which it was never intended – movie soundtrack, video game, advertisement, etc

“Recontext”

Someone (usually legally) does their own version of someone else’s song.Cover

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzoWNQqnEQ

Remix

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Bollywood Remix)

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Liam Keegan Club Mix)

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Chipmunk Remix)

Someone (usually legally) remixes the elements of someone’s song to create a new variation– typically an extended dance track.

Someone uses part of somebody else’s recording as part of their own song [accompaniment, chorus, rhythm track, etc]

Sampling

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM0-ZU8njdo

Someone takes two or more songs by different artists – maybe people who would never willingly be part of one another’s music – and creates a new song based entirely on these source songs

Mashup

Listen on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJv17xpatg4

Cheekyboy, Biggie’s Last Christmas

incorporating:

Wham, Last Christmas (1984)Puff Daddy, I’ll be missing you (1997)Notorious B.I.G., Juicy (1994)

Riff from “Walking Blues”COTTON FIELDS à ROBERT JOHNSON à SON HOUSE à MUDDY WATERS

MUDDY WATERS à LED ZEPPELIN

“The Last Time”TRADITIONAL BLUES à STAPLE SINGERS à ROLLING STONES à à à ?

A capsule history of appropriationin popular American 20th century musicThe following is a clip from the movie RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO (2009) sketching the mutation of two musical motifs from their origins as anonymous African American blues to their existence today as commercial successes by white groups.

Watch the entire film online: http://films.nfb.ca/rip-a-remix-manifesto/

Watch clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y67en6x_TsY

Blues starts out in the late 1800s as an organic folk creation of African Americans. Songs have their origins in the cotton fields and taverns, though church music also plays an important role. Amateur musicians trade lyrics, music, and ideas around freely. No one is wholly responsible for any particular song. No one owns any song or can claim sole authorship of it. At first, nothing is published or recorded. Music is transmitted in performance alone. Each performance is a re-creation.

Episode One:Appropriation in Blues & Jazz

Authorship and ownership are not clear-cut or considered that important

Every performance is unique; little is published or recorded; songs are not “fixed” in an original or authorized version

What you do with the material is what’s important; not who created the original or who “owns” it

Appropriation in blues and jazz

Mid-twentieth century appropriation was characterized by white musicians appropriating black styles and songs and capitalizing on them. White-owned music publishers picked up the rights to black songs, white-owned record companies recorded black artists, and white musicians adopted elements of African American style and popularized them with white audiences, sometimes making fortunes.

Episode Two: Appropriation in R&B, Rock and Roll, Electric Blues

A look at some of the sources of Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song” ...

“squeeze my lemon” ...

Plagiarism?

Arthur Mackay, “She squeezed my lemon” (1937)

Robert Johnson, “Travelling Riverside Blues” (1937)

Howlin’ Wolf, “Killing Floor” (1964)

Led Zeppelin, “The Lemon Song” (1969)

Wikipedia notes: In December 1972, Arc Music, owner of the publishing rights to Howlin’ Wolf’s songs, sued Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement on “The Lemon Song.” The parties settled out of court. Though the amount was not disclosed, Wolf received a check for $45,123 from Arc Music immediately following the suit, and subsequent releases included a co-songwriter credit for him.

Plagiarism?

By the second half of the century, recording is the major focus of popular music as an industry. Recordings and technology become important areas for appropriation.

Because records are mass-produced, more permanent than live performance, and major sources of wealth that are subject to copyright, legal and ethical questions about appropriation become more central.

Episode Three: Disco, hip hop, sampling, mashups

Disco re-edits (1970s - ) Remixes (1970s - ) Hip hop DJing (1970s - ) Sampling (1980s - ) Mashups (1990s - )

Technology and appropriation

Disco dance re-edits

During the disco craze of the 1970s, DJs would sometimes have two copies of a record and would extend the song by mixing one into the other so that it went on and on.

Eventually, DJs began recording “re-edits” of popular songs that contained lengthened versions of tunes made this way, sometimes with the addition of sound effects, voiceovers, or other extraneous material.

RemixIn the end, this led to the practice we have today, where producers sometimes create multiple mixes of the same song for different situations: radio edit, extended mix, dub (mostly instrumental), etc.

It also opened the door to the ideaof the remix.

In a remix, another producer is given access to the master tracks for the original and can use them to reinterpret the material with the addition of their own sounds, instrumentals, vocals, and arrangement.

Hip hop DJing

He would cut back and forth between an instrumental or percussive interlude in the song

(the “breakdown”) and the same instrumental passage on the other disc, creating a

continuous stream of the same instrumental line for the MC to rap over.

When rap began (also in the 1970s), the most common practice was to accompany the rap with breakbeats. The DJ would have two copies of the same record – one on each turntable .

Hip hop DJingVideo excerpts, including

Kool HercMixing, beat-juggling

Ice-T , Grandmaster CazBreakdowns

Grandwizard Theodore, DJ Jazzy JayNeedle dropping and scratching

Grandmaster Flash, Fantastic Freaks and Cold Crush Brothers

Djing, instrumental hip hop

Watch this and following clips on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/v/2Vfoput5KBo

The first mainstream rap single was Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” It uses an instrumental cover of Chic’s disco hit “Good Times” from the same year as the accompaniment.

Rap hits the charts

What on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diiL9bqvalo

Punk singer Debbie Harry, aka Blondie, was into the underground hip hop scene in the late 70s and it was she who invited members of Chic to a Sugarhill Gang event, which is how they knew who the Gang was when members jumped up onstage and started improvising raps over “Good Times” at a Chic concert a few weeks later.

Blondie – Hip hop promoter

Rap enters the world of copyright.

A couple of months later an early bootleg version of “Rapper’s Delight” is released, using material from “Good Times.”

When members of Chic hear this track, they threaten legal action and there is a financial settlement. They are granted co-writing credit. Sugarhill Gang gets a band to record an all-intrumental version that is suitable for rapping over.

Interestingly, Chic’s song has original music but adapts most of its lyrics from two (out of copyright) depression era songs: “Happy Days are Here Again” (1929) and “About a Quarter to Nine” (1933).

Rapper’s Delight (1979)

Meanwhile, way ahead of her time, Blondie decides to do a “rap” song of her own.

MC Blondie

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g

Earliest white appropriation of hip hop Earliest example of a female rapper The first #1 single to feature rap The first “rap” video to be broadcast on

MTV Features cameos by rapper and graffiti

artist Fab Five Freddy and graffiti artists Lee Quinones and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Hip hop DJ Grandmaster Flash was supposed to appear, but didn’t show for the video shoot.

However, he re-used the song in his famous mix “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of steel ”

Rapture (1981)

Initially completely non-commercial; typically practised outdoors in parks and on the street; improvisational; for pleasure

DJs used (almost exclusively black) records, which they mixed together to create extended breakbeat backdrops for MCs to rap to and dancers to dance to

Public performances, rarely for money, almost entirely unrecorded, in which old and new records (funk, soul, jazz) were used as sources for original musical experiences.

Appropriation in early hip hop

Sampling

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tOAGY59uQ

Originally a “traditional” (anonymous, collaborative) Jamaican folk song (actually a mento, not a calypso)

Lyrics adapted by “Lord Burgess” and William Attaway (Jamaican popular songwriters from the 1950s)

Song further adapted for Harry Belafonte and released on his Calypso album – became a million-seller with mainstream white American audience

A different version, by The Tarriers, was also a hit, and these songs launched a calypso craze in the United States

Sampled and processed by Bangladesh in 2010 for Lil Wayne’s track (originally intended for rapper T.I.)

The Banana Boat Song

Pre-digital appropriation

Songs and styles are borrowed or stolen from their original context and used in a new context (typically a more commercial or mainstream one; often without much concern or understanding for the original context)

Post-digital appropriation

Elements of a person’s or a group’s actual recorded performance are lifted from their original context and used in a new context, sometimes without respect for the integrity of the original or even knowledge of the original in context

Gap Ad (early 2000s) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNesa12IL-o

Audrey Hepburn dancing in the movie Funny Face (1957) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3oxqmKGM5g

The intentions of the film maker or the scriptwriter What the choreographer was trying to do with the

dance Who Audrey Hepburn thought she was when doing

the dance – what either Audrey Hepburn’s character or Audrey Hepburn herself was dancing for

Digital appropriation and postmodern de-contextualization

No one cares about the original creators or the original context in which the work was created or presented.

The intentions of AC/DC in writing and performing their song

Whether any of those people would like to be associated with each other or would like to promote The Gap

Digital appropriation and postmodern de-contextualization

No one cares about the original creators or the original context in which the work was created or presented.

What the anonymous creators of the original song meant by it, felt or cared about

What Harry Belafonte felt or cared about when he recorded the song in the 1950s

Whether or not any of these people would be happy to have their creation used snidely as a piece of Lil Wayne’s amoral, narcissistic banger.

Lil Wayne and his producer Bangladesh don’t show much sign of caring about the context from which their sample comes.

Digital appropriation and postmodern de-contextualization

Every case of appropriation involves an attitude toward the original, and twists the intentions and context of the original to a new intention and context.

Do artists owe anything to the people who came before them, and those people’s intentions and contexts?

Recap: original songOtis Redding, Respect (1965)

Recap: cover versionAretha Franklin, Respect (1967)

Recap: hip hop djing Anquette, Respect (1988)

Recap: remixRLP and Barbara Tucker, R.E.S.P.E.C.T (2011)

Recap: samplingNa Wasn? Productions [?], Respect the Window Shopper (Aretha Franklin vs 50 Cent) (2011 [?] )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IICqaN-XyYg

They come scoop me up at LAX and I hop inWhen it comes to bad bitches you know I got themSome from Long Beach, some from Watts, some from ComptonYou know a nigga wanna see how cali girls freak offAfter that five-hour flight from New YorkI start spitting G at a bitch like a pimp, maynTell her "Meet me at The Mondrian so we can do our thing"She can bring the lingerie with her, I supposeAnd we can go from fully dressed to just having no clothesShe can run and tell her best friend bout my sex gameHer best friend could potentially be next, manListen man, shit changedI came up from doing my thangHomey I'm holing, holing, holing

Rap acapella

The typical mashup artist is an amateur, semi-anonymous “bedroom dj” creating their art on a computer and posting it – illegally but without charge – on the Internet.

Three great mashup artists to check out:

DJ EARWORMNORWEGIAN RECYCLINGGIRL TALK

Mashups

Want to know more about mashups as an artform? Visit http://www.futureartnow.org

Coldplay vs Drake, Lil Wayne & Eminem,“Forever The Scientist” (Tizwarz Mix)

incorporating

Coldplay, “The Scientist” (2005)

Drake, Kanye, Lil Wayne, Eminem,“Forever” (2009)

Mashups

(a very crude summary)

Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz (late 19th and early 20th century) African Americans invent the most important foundations of 20th century popular music through a free, organic exchange of ideas and motifs

Rock and Roll, Electric Blues (mid 20th century)African American creations are adapted, capitalized on, and sometimes stolen by mainstream white musicians and entrepreneurs

Hip hop and sampling (late 20th century) African Americans recycle their own and white music to create new songs. (Mostly white) musicians gradually adopt and perfect sampling techniques and “producer music” is born.

Mashup (today)Runaway appropriation. Everybody can use everybody else’s stuff for anything (though there are legal difficulties if you make money from it)

Appropriation in Americanpopular music

Here is a track I “created” in literally about two minutes.

I found a recording on YouTube of a Muslim muzzein making the call to prayer from a minaret and I stuck it on top of a eurodub track from a producer I like (Tosca, “John Lee Huber” (Rodney Hunter Dub)).

Should it be okay for me to do that?

• From a legal point of view?

• From a moral point of view? (ethically)

• From a cultural appropriation point of view? (politically)

Appropriation in the 21st Century

Are the only appropriation issues left now to do with money and copyright law or are their still questions of respect, fairness, political abuse?

Can anyone appropriate anything now? (From a practical point of view the answer is yes. But what about from a moral point of view .... ?)

How important is acknowledgement?

How important is an understanding of and respect for the appropriated music and its original makers?

Appropriation in the 21st Century

Nothing Royalties Acknowledgement Respect Knowledge, true understanding

What do appropriators owe to the creators of the past?