I agree with Dominic--Candice
--- Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
> >
> >
> >--
> >My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> >"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." Oscar
> Wilde
>
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