Sampling Soul--Duke University Fall 2011

Black Popular Culture—Sampling Soul (AAAS 132)
Mark Anthony Neal and 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit)
Fall Semester 2011
White Lecture Hall 107
Tuesdays 6:00pm -- 8:25pm

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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.

Damn that Rap, Snoop Stole My Music

A discussion on intellectual property and the future of Black expression

Damn that Rap, Snoop Stole My Music
by Mark Anthony Neal

Most rap music fans are probably unaware of Michael Henderson and his rather formidable musical career. Henderson recently filed separate complaints against Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus) and producer 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit) in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, charging both with copyright infringement.

In layperson’s terms, he’s accusing them of stealing his music.

The cases continue what has been a more than two decade struggle over hip-hop’s aesthetic principles and intellectual property law. At stake in these skirmishes is the future of Black cultural expression.

A Little History

At his peak, bassist Michael Henderson, was most known for his work as a sideman with Miles Davis during Davis’s electric funk period in the early 1970s appearing on albums like Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971) and Live-Evil (1971). An in demand session musician, Henderson also worked with and recorded with Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye. Like his peers Larry Graham and Stanley Clarke, Henderson was of a generation of electric bassists that were redefining the sound of the instrument in the early 1970s, furthering the funk revolution that James Brown initiated in the 1960s.

It was with James Brown in mind that Davis recorded On the Corner (1972), an album in which Henderson’s bass is prominently featured. The genius of On the Corner, was that even as Davis and his musicians liberally borrowed from the musical impulses of Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendix and others, there’s little doubt that On the Corner offers singular evidence of Davis’s creativity and musical genius.

Critic Greg Tate has suggested that On the Corner’s production values were a prototype for later rap production. Indeed Davis’s last studio album before his death in 1992 was the hip-hop influenced Doo-Bop which was produced by Easy Mo Be (Ready to Die). In bringing suit against Snoop and 9th Wonder, Michael Henderson is ironically suing the children and grandchildren of On the Corner.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

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Editor's Note: This past spring Neal co-taught the class “Sampling Soul” with producer 9th Wonder at Duke University.

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy. He teaches Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. Email Mark at mark@theloop21.com. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.

James Boyle: Master of the Public Domain

Master of the Public Domain

by Kevin Lincoln

Professor James Boyle can fly.

Boyle is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and a co-founder of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which supports scholarship and research in the field of intellectual property Primarily, Boyle studies the ramifications of copyright law on the ideas, writings, films, music and other forms of creativity it governs.

The comic book “Bound by Law?”—which he keeps in tow —features Boyle’s cartoon doppelganger descending from the sky, riding an orange surfboard labeled “Google.” The cover is a busy scene: the Law School prof is accompanied by a faux-Superman judge brandishing a gavel, a jowly Michael Moore in trademark baseball cap, and the book’s spiky-haired protagonist wielding her camera like an assault rifle. Its title and epithet “By night she fought for FAIR USE!” point toward the battle between private interest and public good that the authors have rendered as the latest episode of David and Goliath.

“Bound by Law?”, co-written alongside artist and UC-Davis law professor Keith Aoki and Center Director Jennifer Jenkins, is one weapon in the campaign that Boyle plays a major role in: to broaden the public domain they believe is now being suffocated by America’s extensive copyright laws. “Bound” seems to be Boyle’s own effort at advancing a collaborative artistry, an informational and entertaining piece that provides a moralistic, animated translation of a complex legal issue. “Bound” and Boyle’s latest work, a book entitled simply “The Public Domain,” were published both for sale in print and for free online—a gesture made in the spirit of the books’ arguments.

In “The Public Domain,” Boyle addresses the problems he sees with today’s intellectual property laws.

“I am not saying copyright is bad. I actually think copyright’s a pretty good system. The basic principle [that] you only own the expression, [but] the facts and ideas can be used by anyone—that’s a pretty good line to draw,” Boyle said. “It’s just that we’ve expanded it in every dimension: how long it is, how much it covers, how fine it goes…. All I’m arguing for is a balance between what’s protected and the public domain, and I’m saying, we’ve forgotten the balance.”

What might initially seem to be an abstract issue reserved for ivory-tower legal scholars actually has taken a major role in the life of anyone who consumes or produces American media. Copyright’s influence is a plastic surgeon sculpting the face of hip-hop. It’s the black screen you see every time a Youtube video is taken down, the wasted potential of the Internet not filled as it could be by countless books, movies and films.

Read the Full Essay @ Towerview

Beware the Kindle!

from The Christian Science Monitor

Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought
By Emily Walshe
from the March 18, 2009 edition

Brookville, N.Y. - All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten.

Think back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.

That's one trade you'd never make again.

Yet that's just what millions of Americans are doing every day when they read "books" on Kindle, Amazon's e-reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.

Web 2.0 and its culture of collaboration supposedly unleashed a sharing society. But we can share only what we own. And as more and more content gets digitized, commercialized, and monopolized, our cultural integrity is threatened. The free and balanced flow of information that gives shape to democratic society is jeopardized.

For now, though, Kindle is on fire in the marketplace. Who could resist reading "what you want, when you want it?" Access to more than 240,000 books is just seconds away. And its "revolutionary electronic-paper display ... looks and reads like real paper."

But it comes with restrictions: You can't resell or share your books – because you don't own them. You can download only from Amazon's store, making it difficult to read anything that is not routed through Amazon first. You're not buying a book; you're buying access to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It's like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.

Read the Full Essay @