This has been making its way around various MP3 blogs and digital music sites, but I had to make a note because it just reminds me too much of my days in the academic music world, where Ethnomusicologists at our elite institutions have begun to occasionally opt out of the Western Music Canon or sounds from the Far East for the urban bass thumps and sampled beats of hip hop and electronic dance music.
One of my favorite academic takes on hip-hop sampling is a book by Joe Schloss called “Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip Hop” published in 2004. But, it is only natural in the digital age that Hip-Hop Academia venture out of print and make it to the web, which brings us Nate Harrison’s in-depth take on the evolution of the most popular drum sample in history: The Amen break.
Fascinating stuff…and even better it’s a thoroughly illustrative example of how our abilities to re-mix culture are slowly being curtailed by overreaching copyright laws and why we need to make sure we do not stifle innovation…because it’s not just technological innovation, but musical innovation.
Do yourselves a favor and not only listen to Nate Harrison’s description (warning it’s a good 17 minutes or so), but swing on over to Creative Commons, Larry Lessig’s blog, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and get up to date on why copyright and intellectual property issues are important for our cultural (and esp. musical) future.
(oh, and thanks for the tip from Boing Boing and the Ropeadope blog)
