AN ORAL HISTORY of SAMPLING from Turntables to Mashups Kembrew Mcleod
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5 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING From Turntables to Mashups Kembrew McLeod Artists have traditionally borrowed from each other and have been directly inspired by the world that surrounds them. But what happens—ethically, legally, aesthetically— when digital technologies allow for very literal audio quotes to be inserted into new works? Sampling refers to the act of digitally recording pieces of preexisting music and placing those bits in a new song. This appropriation practice can be viewed—with some obvious differences, of course—as an extension of earlier African American musical traditions that valued musical appropriation, such as the blues, jazz, and gospel. Well over a decade before the file sharing controversies—beginning with Napster, in 1999— pushed the topic of copyright to the front pages of newspapers, hip hop artists had already raised similar legal and moral questions when they began using the new audio technology of digital sampling.1 During the 1970s, hip hop DJs in the South Bronx reimagined the record player or turntable as a device that could appropriate and create music—by manipulating vinyl records with their hands—rather than simply replaying complete songs. Similarly, hip hop artists in the 1980s embraced the newly developing sampling technology as their own, finding ways to make new music out of old, rare, or sometimes forgotten, sources. As with the sharing of MP3 music files today, many artists and record companies believed that the practice of digital sampling was the equivalent of stealing. Others, like Public Enemy’s Chuck D, argued that there should be more freedom to recontextualize found sounds. However, Chuck D and other similar artists lost this particular argument after Gilbert O’Sullivan won the lawsuit he filed against Biz Markie and Warner Brothers Records in 1991 (Markie sampled and looped the hook from the hit “Alone Again (Naturally)”).2 Subsequently, the music industry began to enforce more vigorously copy- right law as it related to sampling. The industry developed a cumbersome and expensive “sample clearance” system in which all samples, even the shortest and most unrecogniz- able, had to be approved and paid for. Since this period, the cost of licensing samples has continued to increase, as have the costs associated with negotiating those licenses. This made it legally impossible for certain kinds of music to be distributed—such as Public Enemy’s early records—because they contained hundreds of fragments of sound, just within one album. Today, it would simply be too expensive to clear copyright licenses for albums such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back—a record Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 K. MCLEOD considered so culturally important that The New York Times included it on its list of the 25 “most significant albums of the last century”3 and Fear of a Black Planet, which the Library of Congress included it in its 2004 National Recording Registry,4 alongside the news broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow and the music of John Coltrane. In the interview that follows, Harry Allen stated5 one would have to sell a record such as Fear of a Black Planet for $159 per CD to pay for all the licenses, as opposed to a time before 1991 when not all sound fragments needed to be licensed (and the ones that were licensed did not reach today’s astronomical prices—sometimes $100,000 for a single sample). Allen may have been hyperbolic, but there is more than a grain of truth in what he said. In our book Creative License, we (Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola) conducted an economic analy- sis of Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, another “golden age” album that contains hundreds of samples. We determined that it would no longer be viable to release these two albums today. In the case of the two records we are examining, the artists pay out more than they receive. Neither album would be commercially practical to release. Each artist, having licensed away more royalties and more publishing than the amount that they would receive on each track of the album, would go further into debt with every copy sold to the public. The prices for all the samples— multiple samples on each track—simply exceed the artist’s piece of the record- ing-revenue pie. Public Enemy would lose an estimated $4.47 per copy sold. The Beastie Boys would lose an estimated $7.87 per copy sold. The total amount of debt incurred for releasing these albums, according to our estimates, would be almost $6.8 million for Public Enemy and would be $19.8 million for the Beastie Boys.6 Many artists and critics have argued that this licensing system had a negative impact on the creative potential of this newly emerging African American art form before it had a chance to flower. They allude to the growth of twentieth century jazz music, which would have been similarly stunted if jazz musicians—who regularly “riffed” on others’ songs—had been burdened by a similar legal requirement to license and receive permis- sion from music publishers for the use of every “sampled” sonic fragment.7 The remain- der of this chapter is a remix of sampled quotes from a series of interviews with musicians and producers. The oral history form—which relies on interviewees’ words to drive the narrative—lends itself nicely to a history of sampling and remixing. Drawing on the knowledge gleaned from over 100 interviews, what follows is the result of hours of crate- digging through transcripts in order to assemble a narrative about the emergence of remix culture and its eventual collision with copyright law. I have constructed a five-part chronological history (with an introduction and con- clusion) that allows those who actively participated in the development of sampling to tell this story. The first is a prehistory of digital sampling, documenting the ways that 1970s hip hop DJs developed an approach to music making that continued into the digi- tal era. The second provides an overview of the impact of digital sampling technologies in the 1980s, which contributed directly to what is often referred to as “the golden age of sampling,” roughly from 1986 to 1992. The third offers an account of the copyright infringement lawsuits that exploded in the wake of that golden age, and the fourth explores the ethical—rather than legal—implications of remixing practices. The fifth part brings us into the twenty-first century, discussing the mashup phenomenon before Copyright © 2015. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 84 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 3/9/2015 3:47 PM via UNIV OF WASHINGTON AN: 916892 ; Burrough, Xtine, Gallagher, Owen, Navas, Eduardo.; The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies Account: s3432366 AN ORAL HISTORY OF SAMPLING concluding this oral history with some more general observations about sampling from artists, lawyers, and record company owners. Introduction: Appropriation, Technology, and the Law Chuck D (Public Enemy): Sampling is playing with sound, or playing sound—like it’s like an instrument, or a game. DJ Abilities (Eyedea When I’m sampling, I have all these artists in and Abilities): my band. I’ve got Wes Montgomery. I’ve got Art Blakey, he’s my drummer. Chuck D: When those old musicians created magical moments, you had four or five guys that were the best, and they put it down. Sampling allowed the best magical moment to be duplicated. George Clinton With James Brown, they just sampled “Yow” (Parliament-Funkadelic): and all that. That was enough for one sample. There was so much personality in the tone, you didn’t need to sample much. Tom Silverman (Tommy Boy The beautiful thing about sampling was it put Records CEO): tools in the hands of people who didn’t have the traditional musical training or skills. I would say in the last 20 years the biggest musical con- tributions have been made by nonmusicians. Kid 606 (electronic musician): Sampling is like Legos. If you give someone a bunch of Lego blocks and tell them to put something together, then they have something to work with—as opposed to saying, “Here’s a bunch of plastic, go mold it and then build it.” Lloyd Dunn (Tape-Beatles): The photocopier was one of those challenges to authorship—also the phonograph, which replaced the traditional artist or musician in many ways. Mark Hosler (Negativland): I see the computer as the ultimate collage box. Greg Tate (music journalist): A lot of people look at hip hop sampling as doing what bebop jazz artists did—taking a classic and putting a new melody on top of it. Shoshana Zisk (entertainment So that’s where people start to wonder, “Why attorney): is sampling considered stealing, and jazz isn’t considered stealing?” It’s hard to say, really. Harry Allen (music journalist): I’ve never heard a completely original idea, from anyone. Most musicians will say that the best musicians copy. Shock G (Digital Underground): How many comedians tell the same joke? Nobody says, “Hey that is my knock-knock joke, or that is my mama joke.” Copyright © 2015.