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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"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde
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