I don't think this has ever been unknown in the US. And while most
balck (and white) musicians struggle to make a living there has been
no shortage of black headliners.

As to influence, borrowing, stealing, if you prefer, it's hardly a
new phenomenon. Copyright is a matter of who gets to the proper
office first. Leadbelly, for one, owned a great many songs that he'd
learned from others (but he did wonderful things with them, and he
wrote a fair number himself). BB King uses riffs that have been
public property for a long time, but somebody must have used them
first. How is this different from Woody Guthrie taking the melody of
the Carter Family's Wildwood Flower for The Ruben James? More subtle
borrowing could be called learning, and it's an open tradition.

Or should black musicians be taken to task for using motifs and beats
derived from Africa, or for that matter Ireland?

On the other hand, Sting has discovered John Dowland, heaven help us.
Dowland should sue, but so should every lutanist who actually knows
how to play the instrument.

Mark

At 09:49 AM 3/23/2007, you wrote:
>Agree with what you say. I'd also draw a parallel between white
>folkies and nearly all white musicians of the 60s, the Beatles, Mike
>Jagger, Bowie, Captain Beefheart (has he been mentioned?) et al owe a
>huge debt to the blues and black musicians. I think there was a BBC4
>program where all the white musicians assembled paid homage to those
>pioneers and admitting to swiping their riffs. Indeed, I was listening
>to a Magic Number's track, when I heard a blues riff chugging way
>underneath the Beach-Boys-ish harmonies. Most popular music owes it
>debt to those black musicians, but alas alack under the current
>hegemony, I guess payback will always go missing. I suppose the
>nearest we can get is recognition.
>
>Roger
>
>On 3/23/07, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>CC is distinct from public domain in that unlike the latter it doesn't
>>surrender the commons as terra nullius for commercial appropriation. The
>>folk scene was vulnerable to this because its presumed commons was
>>undefended.
>>
>>There's an interesting question as to whether the black musicians white
>>folkies swiped things from in the 60s had the same notion of the commons
>>as the folkies, or whether it was just that they lacked the legal
>>representation to assert their rights to attribution, recognition,
>>payback etc.; the same question arises with other sources, the rural and
>>Romany singers from whom much of the material was collected. What is
>>held in common among a particular group may not necessarily be offered
>>gratis to outsiders. Martin Carthy for example clearly recognises and
>>acknowledges a debt to the Romany, both collectively and individually.
>>The commons is not a spontaneous cornucopia but a gift economy;
>>participants are obliged to see to it that what comes around, goes around.
>>
>>Dominic
>
>
>--
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