Music, music, and more music

Every week on the Regina Community Radio Station, there is a show called Line of Flight aired. The show, hosted By Charity Marsh (my MU 320 professor) is a collaborative project between the U of R Department of Fine Arts and 91.3 FM. Each week she brings in students from her Arts and Everyday Life or Popular Music classes. During the October 27 show, the topic of ethnicity and race was discussed. In the discussion, one of the aspects of race that was brought up was the idea of cover songs, specifically between black artists who wrote them and white artist who covered them during the early days of rock ‘n roll.

First lets get one thing out of the way. When I refer to “black” artists, I am simply referring to certain styles of music that have been placed with said label over the years. There are certain characteristics to “black” music as well as “white” music. For example: black artists usually display more improvisation within their music. Hip-hop is an excellent example. On the other hand, white artists usually display more polished and, for lack of a better word, clean music. A perfect example is Big Mama Thornton’s version of Hound Dog and Elvis Presley’s version of the song. Listen to them and compare. You’ll know what I’m talking about. Eminem, although a Caucasian person, is considered a black artist. It has nothing to do with actual ethnicity, but more about style. Just thought I’d get that out of the way.

Now, on to what I actually want to talk about:

It is fact that many white artists in the early days of rock ‘n roll did take black artists music, covered it, and made did not give any royalties to the original writers of the songs, all the while making their own profit from them. Many of these white artists had been widely criticized for these actions. But there are still many people who think Elvis was a great songwriter because of Hound Dog (not to reuse examples or anything, it was just easier).

However, since the advent of sampling, black artists had been taking white artists music and turning them into their own, using pieces of songs. The fact that this technique has been so widely praised is quite ironic, considering that they are doing basically the same thing that white artists did years ago, just on a smaller scale. However, now they are not being chastised for stealing music, but praised for creating a new technique for making music. One could almost say that history is repeating itself, but what is also interesting is that copyright laws are coming down on many of these artists who are doing the sampling. White artists who don’t want their music sampled are taking the black artist to court over copyright infringement. White artists are doing what black artists should have done originally, but couldn’t.

While it may sound like I am supporting sampling whole-heartedly, I don’t actually. Granted, I do like a lot of songs that use samples from other popular songs, I just don’t like the fact that many of these rappers are taking songs that I love and sampling them, turning them into something I dislike. Not that I'm saying they're all bad, but some really can kill a song for me ( as I 'm sure it was back in the day when all those white artists were taking songs from the black artists ) I really don’t like the song where the guy (I think it was Lil John) used Ozzy’s Crazy Train on his song. I realize that Ozzy probably would have had to give him permission for it, but I still don’t like it. Maybe I should be blaming Ozzy, but I won’t do that. I’m just that ignorant.

So through music we see history…well…almost repeating itself, for if it weren’t not for all the greedy white people, or artists if you will. Bunch of fuckin’ greedy crackers.

Youngblood