Sampling Soul
Department of African & African American Studies
Duke University
Spring 2010
Tuesday 6:00pm – 8:30pm
White Lecture Hall, 107
Instructors:
9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit)
Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D.
Teaching Assistants:
Treva Lindsey, ABD
Samantha Noel, Ph.D.
Course Description
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s and became the secular soundtrack of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists such as Aretha Franklin and James Brown and record companies such as Motown and Stax, as well as the term “Soul” became symbols of black aspiration and black political engagement. In the decades since the rise of “Soul,” the music and its icons are continuously referenced in contemporary popular culture via movie trailers, commercials, television sitcoms and of course music. In the process “Soul” has become a significant and lucrative cultural archive. Co-taught with Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, “Sampling Soul” will examine how the concept of “Soul” has functioned as raw data for contemporary forms of cultural expression. In addition the course will consider the broader cultural implications of sampling, in the practices of parody and collage, and the legal ramifications of sampling within the context of intellectual property law. The course also offers the opportunity to rethink the concept of archival material in the digital age.
Books
Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law
~ Richard L. Schur
Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop
~ Joseph G. Schloss
Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic
~ edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai
Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property
~ Kembrew McLeod
The James Brown Reader: Fifty Years of Writing About the Godfather of Soul
~ edited by Nelson George and Alan Leeds
Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure
~ edited by Richard Green and Monique Guillory
On Michael Jackson
~ Margo Jefferson
What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture
~ Mark Anthony Neal
Course Overview
Week 1—Sampling Sampling
The Art and Aesthetics of Sampling
January 19, 2010
Introduction to sampling as a practice. Is sampling a recent phenomenon? What are the historical and artistic context for sampling practices. How do terms like appropriation, borrowing, parody, pastiche, collage and “theft” factor into our understandings of sampling practices. How has sampling practices impacted contemporary art?
Week 2—Sampling Soul
The Cultural and Historical Legacy of Soul
January 26, 2010
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s, combining the drive of rhythm and blues, with the flourishes of the black gospel tradition. This week we will look at the musical foundations of Soul music and its impact on American culture.
Readings: Neal, What the Music Said (Intro: 1-24, Chap 1: 25-54); Soul: Black Power, Politics and Pleasure (Davis, “Afro-Images,” 23-31; Serlin, “From Sesame Street to Schoolhouse Rock,” 105-120; Wald, “Soul’s Revival,” 139-158)
Week 3—Sampling Blackness
Black Culture as Intellectual Property
February 2, 2010
Though various forms of black culture have circulated freely in the United States and across the globe, they have often done so as the property of corporate entities. What is the relationship between black bodies as chattel and black culture as property? What happens when the cultural expressions of a formerly enslaved peoples becomes intellectual property?
Readings: Schur, Parodies of Ownership
Week 4—Sampling Intellectual Property
Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property
February 9, 2010
Guest Lecturer:
James Boyle
William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke University
The practice of sample based hip-hop have brought the subject of intellectual property law to the forefront of discussion about contemporary art. What exactly is intellectual property and what are the implications of current intellectual property law as it pertains to contemporary artists--particularly those who work outside of the mainstream—and concerns about artistic freedom?
Readings: McLeod, Freedom of Expression (Chap. 2: “Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport,” 62-113; Chap 3: “Illegal Art,” 114-170); Boyle, The Public Domain (Chap. 6 “I Got a Mashup” free download @ http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/130)
Week 5—Sampling Beats
Sample-Based Hip-Hop
February 16, 2010
Is sampling beats “stealing” music and evidence of a lazy, uncreative impulse in contemporary art? In Making Beats, ethnomusicologist Joe Schloss argues that sample-based hip-hop is a legitimate art form unto itself.
Readings: Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based Hip-Hop
Screening: Copyright Criminals (dir. Benjamin Franzen, 2009)
Week 6—Sampling Motown
Soundtrack to the Civil Rights Era
February 23, 2010
Special Session @ The Nasher Museum of Art
Guest Lecturer: Harry Weinger, VP of A&R, Universal Music
When Berry Gordy founded the Motown recording label in January of 1959, he had no idea that his little Detroit-based operation would become both of symbol black pride and of the possibilities of racial integration during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Mark Anthony Neal and 9th Wonder will be joined by Harry Weinger, VP of A&R at Universal Music, who in his capacity has overseen the catalogues of Motown and James Brown. The session will examine why Motown’s music struck such a chord and discuss future projects such as a box set release of unreleased and live recordings by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five from the 1970s.
Week 7—Sampling Illmatic
The Making of Nas’ Illmatic (1994)
March 2, 2010
When Illmatic, the debut recording from Queens, NY rapper Nas (Nasir Jones) was released in 1994, it had an immediate impact on the hip-hop industry. With contributions from DJ Premier, Large Professor and Pete Rock, among others, the recording was a sonic achievement that raised the bar for hip-hop production.
Readings: Dyson and Daulazai, ed., Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic
Week 8—Sampling Soul Divas
Black Femininity as Intellectual Property
March 16, 2010
This week we will focus on “gendering” soul. We will explore a black women’s tradition within soul aesthetics and cultural forms. Using gender, class, and sexuality as critical lenses, we will examine the interplay of gender and sexual politics, black musical traditions, and sampling. We will also consider the relationship between soul expressions and black womanhood.
Readings: “‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe” by Daphne Brooks, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 8.1 (2008) 180-204; “Toni Braxton, Disney, and Thermodynamics by Jason King, TDR Fall 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3 (T175), Pages 54-81.
Week 9—Sampling James Brown
James Brown and the Birth of Funk
March 23, 2010
With the release of “Cold Sweat” (1967), James Brown spearheaded a rhythmic revolution in pop music, creating a style known as “Funk.” With an emphasis on an accented first beat (“on the one’), Brown’s innovative relationship to syncopation was quickly appropriated by the burgeoning hip-hop movement; Brown remains one of the most sampled artist in pop music history.
Readings: The James Brown Reader, ed. George and Leeds, (Part 1: 1960s, 7-54; Part 2: 1970s, 57-141; Part V: 2000-2007, 235-265, 265-293)
Week 10—Sampling Queer
Queer Sounds, Queer Samples
March 30, 2010
Although African American musical forms like hip hop are now accepted forms of mainstream popular music, not all of the music produced within these genres are accepted. Sampling Queer offers a critical way of thinking about how various sonic tropes that are sampled are often rendered queer by virtue of not adhering to conventional understandings of soul, hip hop, and R&B.
Readings: “Feeling like a woman, looking like a man, sounding like a no-no”: Grace Jones and the performance of Strange in the Post-Soul Moment, ”Francesca Royster, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Volume 19, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 77-94(18); “Any Love: Silence, Theft, and Rumor in the Work of Luther Vandross,” Jason King , Callaloo, Vol. 23, No. 1, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender: Literature and Culture (Winter, 2000), pp. 422-447
Week 11—Sampling Geography
The Geographies of Soul
April 6, 2010
Though Soul Music is often referred to as a Southern phenomenon, the genre quickly spread throughout the nation, with many regions presenting their own unique spin on Soul, with Memphis, Philadelphia and Chicago leading the way.
Readings: Neal, What the Music Said (Chap 2: 55-84, Chap 3: 85-100, Chap 4: 101-124);
Screening: Still Bill (dir. Damani Baker, Alex Vlack, 2009)
Week 12—Sampling Diaspora
Black Diaspora as Intellectual Property
April 13, 2010
This week’s meeting will challenge our understanding of soul by considering various cultural forms from the Black Diaspora. We will explore the practice of recording artists sampling musical traditions from the Diaspora. In an effort to broaden our notion of how soul is expressed, we will also look at how visual artists represent ‘Diasporic’ soul.
Readings: "Power Music, Electric Revival: Fela Kuti and the Influence of His Afrobeat on Hip Hop and Dance music," Joseph Patel in Trevor Schoonmaker, (ed.), Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 25-35; "The Black Atlantic in the Twentifirst Century: Artistic Passages, Circulations, Revisions," Peter Erickson, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. 24 (Mar-Jun 2009), 56-70.
Week 13—Sampling Michael Jackson
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Commodity
April 20, 2010
The Jackson Five’s first four single release for Motown records in 1969-1970 all went to the top of the pop charts, as the groups first national tour set sells records for the day. Already understood as the “leader” of his family group, when Michael Jackson released his first solo album, Got to Be There (1971), it provided just a glimpse at the genius that would become the most important musical icon of the late 20th Century.
Readings: Jefferson, On Michael Jackson
Week 14—Sampling Black Venus
The Artistic Legacy of the Hottentot Venus
April 27, 2010
The performances of artists such as Josephine Baker and Beyonce Knowles-Carter resonate within a particular black women’s performative tradition. This tradition builds upon the idea/iconography/trope of a “Black Venus.” This week we will hone in on black women popular culture artists who “sample” the “Black Venus” through remaking, refashioning, and reconfiguring prevailing racial, gender, and sexual ideologies.
Readings: “Recasting ‘Black Venus’ in the new African Diaspora,” Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, Women's Studies International Forum , Volume 27, Issue 4, October-November 2004, Pages 397-412; “The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body,” Janell Hobson, Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003), pp. 87-105
Discussion Question (#10)
Department of African & African American Studies
Duke University
Spring 2010
Tuesday 6:00pm – 8:30pm
White Lecture Hall, 107
Instructors:
9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit)
Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D.
Teaching Assistants:
Treva Lindsey, ABD
Samantha Noel, Ph.D.
Course Description
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s and became the secular soundtrack of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists such as Aretha Franklin and James Brown and record companies such as Motown and Stax, as well as the term “Soul” became symbols of black aspiration and black political engagement. In the decades since the rise of “Soul,” the music and its icons are continuously referenced in contemporary popular culture via movie trailers, commercials, television sitcoms and of course music. In the process “Soul” has become a significant and lucrative cultural archive. Co-taught with Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, “Sampling Soul” will examine how the concept of “Soul” has functioned as raw data for contemporary forms of cultural expression. In addition the course will consider the broader cultural implications of sampling, in the practices of parody and collage, and the legal ramifications of sampling within the context of intellectual property law. The course also offers the opportunity to rethink the concept of archival material in the digital age.
Books
Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law
~ Richard L. Schur
Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop
~ Joseph G. Schloss
Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic
~ edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai
Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property
~ Kembrew McLeod
The James Brown Reader: Fifty Years of Writing About the Godfather of Soul
~ edited by Nelson George and Alan Leeds
Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure
~ edited by Richard Green and Monique Guillory
On Michael Jackson
~ Margo Jefferson
What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture
~ Mark Anthony Neal
Course Overview
Week 1—Sampling Sampling
The Art and Aesthetics of Sampling
January 19, 2010
Introduction to sampling as a practice. Is sampling a recent phenomenon? What are the historical and artistic context for sampling practices. How do terms like appropriation, borrowing, parody, pastiche, collage and “theft” factor into our understandings of sampling practices. How has sampling practices impacted contemporary art?
Week 2—Sampling Soul
The Cultural and Historical Legacy of Soul
January 26, 2010
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s, combining the drive of rhythm and blues, with the flourishes of the black gospel tradition. This week we will look at the musical foundations of Soul music and its impact on American culture.
Readings: Neal, What the Music Said (Intro: 1-24, Chap 1: 25-54); Soul: Black Power, Politics and Pleasure (Davis, “Afro-Images,” 23-31; Serlin, “From Sesame Street to Schoolhouse Rock,” 105-120; Wald, “Soul’s Revival,” 139-158)
Week 3—Sampling Blackness
Black Culture as Intellectual Property
February 2, 2010
Though various forms of black culture have circulated freely in the United States and across the globe, they have often done so as the property of corporate entities. What is the relationship between black bodies as chattel and black culture as property? What happens when the cultural expressions of a formerly enslaved peoples becomes intellectual property?
Readings: Schur, Parodies of Ownership
Week 4—Sampling Intellectual Property
Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property
February 9, 2010
Guest Lecturer:
James Boyle
William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke University
The practice of sample based hip-hop have brought the subject of intellectual property law to the forefront of discussion about contemporary art. What exactly is intellectual property and what are the implications of current intellectual property law as it pertains to contemporary artists--particularly those who work outside of the mainstream—and concerns about artistic freedom?
Readings: McLeod, Freedom of Expression (Chap. 2: “Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport,” 62-113; Chap 3: “Illegal Art,” 114-170); Boyle, The Public Domain (Chap. 6 “I Got a Mashup” free download @ http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/130)
Week 5—Sampling Beats
Sample-Based Hip-Hop
February 16, 2010
Is sampling beats “stealing” music and evidence of a lazy, uncreative impulse in contemporary art? In Making Beats, ethnomusicologist Joe Schloss argues that sample-based hip-hop is a legitimate art form unto itself.
Readings: Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based Hip-Hop
Screening: Copyright Criminals (dir. Benjamin Franzen, 2009)
Week 6—Sampling Motown
Soundtrack to the Civil Rights Era
February 23, 2010
Special Session @ The Nasher Museum of Art
Guest Lecturer: Harry Weinger, VP of A&R, Universal Music
When Berry Gordy founded the Motown recording label in January of 1959, he had no idea that his little Detroit-based operation would become both of symbol black pride and of the possibilities of racial integration during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Mark Anthony Neal and 9th Wonder will be joined by Harry Weinger, VP of A&R at Universal Music, who in his capacity has overseen the catalogues of Motown and James Brown. The session will examine why Motown’s music struck such a chord and discuss future projects such as a box set release of unreleased and live recordings by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five from the 1970s.
Week 7—Sampling Illmatic
The Making of Nas’ Illmatic (1994)
March 2, 2010
When Illmatic, the debut recording from Queens, NY rapper Nas (Nasir Jones) was released in 1994, it had an immediate impact on the hip-hop industry. With contributions from DJ Premier, Large Professor and Pete Rock, among others, the recording was a sonic achievement that raised the bar for hip-hop production.
Readings: Dyson and Daulazai, ed., Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic
Week 8—Sampling Soul Divas
Black Femininity as Intellectual Property
March 16, 2010
This week we will focus on “gendering” soul. We will explore a black women’s tradition within soul aesthetics and cultural forms. Using gender, class, and sexuality as critical lenses, we will examine the interplay of gender and sexual politics, black musical traditions, and sampling. We will also consider the relationship between soul expressions and black womanhood.
Readings: “‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe” by Daphne Brooks, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 8.1 (2008) 180-204; “Toni Braxton, Disney, and Thermodynamics by Jason King, TDR Fall 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3 (T175), Pages 54-81.
Week 9—Sampling James Brown
James Brown and the Birth of Funk
March 23, 2010
With the release of “Cold Sweat” (1967), James Brown spearheaded a rhythmic revolution in pop music, creating a style known as “Funk.” With an emphasis on an accented first beat (“on the one’), Brown’s innovative relationship to syncopation was quickly appropriated by the burgeoning hip-hop movement; Brown remains one of the most sampled artist in pop music history.
Readings: The James Brown Reader, ed. George and Leeds, (Part 1: 1960s, 7-54; Part 2: 1970s, 57-141; Part V: 2000-2007, 235-265, 265-293)
Week 10—Sampling Queer
Queer Sounds, Queer Samples
March 30, 2010
Although African American musical forms like hip hop are now accepted forms of mainstream popular music, not all of the music produced within these genres are accepted. Sampling Queer offers a critical way of thinking about how various sonic tropes that are sampled are often rendered queer by virtue of not adhering to conventional understandings of soul, hip hop, and R&B.
Readings: “Feeling like a woman, looking like a man, sounding like a no-no”: Grace Jones and the performance of Strange in the Post-Soul Moment, ”Francesca Royster, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Volume 19, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 77-94(18); “Any Love: Silence, Theft, and Rumor in the Work of Luther Vandross,” Jason King , Callaloo, Vol. 23, No. 1, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender: Literature and Culture (Winter, 2000), pp. 422-447
Week 11—Sampling Geography
The Geographies of Soul
April 6, 2010
Though Soul Music is often referred to as a Southern phenomenon, the genre quickly spread throughout the nation, with many regions presenting their own unique spin on Soul, with Memphis, Philadelphia and Chicago leading the way.
Readings: Neal, What the Music Said (Chap 2: 55-84, Chap 3: 85-100, Chap 4: 101-124);
Screening: Still Bill (dir. Damani Baker, Alex Vlack, 2009)
Week 12—Sampling Diaspora
Black Diaspora as Intellectual Property
April 13, 2010
This week’s meeting will challenge our understanding of soul by considering various cultural forms from the Black Diaspora. We will explore the practice of recording artists sampling musical traditions from the Diaspora. In an effort to broaden our notion of how soul is expressed, we will also look at how visual artists represent ‘Diasporic’ soul.
Readings: "Power Music, Electric Revival: Fela Kuti and the Influence of His Afrobeat on Hip Hop and Dance music," Joseph Patel in Trevor Schoonmaker, (ed.), Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 25-35; "The Black Atlantic in the Twentifirst Century: Artistic Passages, Circulations, Revisions," Peter Erickson, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. 24 (Mar-Jun 2009), 56-70.
Week 13—Sampling Michael Jackson
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Commodity
April 20, 2010
The Jackson Five’s first four single release for Motown records in 1969-1970 all went to the top of the pop charts, as the groups first national tour set sells records for the day. Already understood as the “leader” of his family group, when Michael Jackson released his first solo album, Got to Be There (1971), it provided just a glimpse at the genius that would become the most important musical icon of the late 20th Century.
Readings: Jefferson, On Michael Jackson
Week 14—Sampling Black Venus
The Artistic Legacy of the Hottentot Venus
April 27, 2010
The performances of artists such as Josephine Baker and Beyonce Knowles-Carter resonate within a particular black women’s performative tradition. This tradition builds upon the idea/iconography/trope of a “Black Venus.” This week we will hone in on black women popular culture artists who “sample” the “Black Venus” through remaking, refashioning, and reconfiguring prevailing racial, gender, and sexual ideologies.
Readings: “Recasting ‘Black Venus’ in the new African Diaspora,” Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, Women's Studies International Forum , Volume 27, Issue 4, October-November 2004, Pages 397-412; “The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body,” Janell Hobson, Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003), pp. 87-105
Discussion Question (#10)
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