"Sampling Soul": The Mid-Term Exam

9th Wonder and I intended the course "Sampling Soul" to be accessible to a wider audience than that contained in the classroom. In that spirit, we are making the mid-term exam available to the public and encouraging readers to respond to the prompt. The best responses will be published @ NewBlackMan.

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Sampling Soul

Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D. (e-mail: man9@duke.edu)

9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit)

Midterm Examination

Answer the essay question as comprehensively as possible.

Response should be typed and double-spaced. (minimum 1500 words; 4-6 pages)

Throughout McLeod’s Freedoms of Expression and Schur’s Parodies of Ownership, both authors make claims about black communal practices (and examples of non-black oral cultures) that embraced informal notions of borrowing, revision, and sharing; practices which became critical to musical and performance practices amongst black performers. In his video treatment of Imani Uzuri’s “Sun Moon Child,” visual artist Pierre Bennu makes an even more explicit claim on this culture of borrowing, revision and sharing, by literally linking various performance movements across time and space (diaspora). Bennu produced his treatment using fair use doctrine, to protect his use of Uzuri’s music, as well as the imagery of noted black performers such as Nina Simone, James Brown, Alvin Ailey, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Judith Jamison, The Jackson 5, Rita Moreno and countless others. Youtube recently removed Bennu’s video, which had been posted on the site for three years, claiming that it was copyright infringement.

Sun Moon Child from pierre bennu on Vimeo.

Using Bennu’s work as a backdrop, discuss the ways that black artists have employed formal and informal modes of borrowing, revision and sharing in musical, literary and visual arts. What is hip-hop’s relationship to these practices? How has the practice of contemporary musical sampling, largely influenced by hip-hop production, altered the viability of these communal practices? Given the emergence of intellectual property law in the last decade, what are the implications for communal art practices and “black” art in general? In that Soul and Funk music have been used as raw material in hip-hop sampling practices, how has sampling impacted the legacy and commercial value of these musical genres and the artists that produce them? From the standpoint of intellectual property law, how would you defend or reject Bennu’s claim that “Sun Moon Child” is fair use?