Stealing music from black people so good white people can sing it is a time-honored tradition for the most brazen kind of entertainment. It's tough to say whether that tops what happened with the 'Amen Break' and you may not think you know it but you've heard it, likely many, many times. (WIKI: Amen break)
In fact, let's find a YouTube video because that will demonstrate it most easily.
The 'Amen Break' is at about 1:20 into the video and it only lasts six seconds. The overall video runs long and the history is interesting but that's the key piece of information from it.
Neither the drummer nor the man holding the copyright received anything in royalties although at least one collection took place to try, in a tiny way, to make it right.
There are two ways to copy the break and the first is the old jam bob way, you listen to it and think, hmm, I'd like to play that so you try it for feel, find where it goes, and that's how music propagates itself. Unknown if that's good or bad but music has spread that way since we have banged on logs so maybe it's not even possible to change that nature of it.
Where this gets ugly is when someone uses a sampler to lift the six seconds of the break and then (i.e. cut and paste) the actual audio into some other piece. It's possible to make entire artificial songs by copying bits from other songs, manipulating the samples in various ways, and then presenting it as original. There's been so much of this type of plagiarism that today it's regarded as an acceptable way to make music even though the composer never actually makes music at all, the entire song comes from other people who really did play it.
There's some strange irony in this when pop singers launch sometimes vicious lawsuits in defense or pursuit of plagiarism litigation. There has been some attempt to prosecute people who use samples as above but not much came of it. Based on that, sampling is more or less legal but whether that's ethically defensible is something altogether different.
Neither the performer, drummer G. C. Coleman, nor the copyright owner Richard L. Spencer have ever received any royalties or clearance fees for the use of the sample, nor has either sought royalties. Spencer considers musical works based on the sample to be both "plagiarism" and "flattering". (WIKI)
In fact, let's find a YouTube video because that will demonstrate it most easily.
The 'Amen Break' is at about 1:20 into the video and it only lasts six seconds. The overall video runs long and the history is interesting but that's the key piece of information from it.
Neither the drummer nor the man holding the copyright received anything in royalties although at least one collection took place to try, in a tiny way, to make it right.
There are two ways to copy the break and the first is the old jam bob way, you listen to it and think, hmm, I'd like to play that so you try it for feel, find where it goes, and that's how music propagates itself. Unknown if that's good or bad but music has spread that way since we have banged on logs so maybe it's not even possible to change that nature of it.
Where this gets ugly is when someone uses a sampler to lift the six seconds of the break and then (i.e. cut and paste) the actual audio into some other piece. It's possible to make entire artificial songs by copying bits from other songs, manipulating the samples in various ways, and then presenting it as original. There's been so much of this type of plagiarism that today it's regarded as an acceptable way to make music even though the composer never actually makes music at all, the entire song comes from other people who really did play it.
There's some strange irony in this when pop singers launch sometimes vicious lawsuits in defense or pursuit of plagiarism litigation. There has been some attempt to prosecute people who use samples as above but not much came of it. Based on that, sampling is more or less legal but whether that's ethically defensible is something altogether different.
Neither the performer, drummer G. C. Coleman, nor the copyright owner Richard L. Spencer have ever received any royalties or clearance fees for the use of the sample, nor has either sought royalties. Spencer considers musical works based on the sample to be both "plagiarism" and "flattering". (WIKI)
The musicians, for all that's owed to them, should be living in the lap of the gods. Instead they got almost nothing and that's why I think sampling ferociously sucks, legal or no.
Note: there are different kinds of sampling as only the most base level of it takes music from others while others sample any sound source imaginable. Then they alter that fundamental sound in various ways to get the overall composition they envision. That's not at all the same as taking someone else's music, such as the 'Amen Break,' and calling it your own.
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