Thursday, September 9th, 2004

Love and Theft

Odub and others on the new sampling case.

Here’s Joe Schloss’ thoughts:

“I was actually surprised by this lawsuit, because the standard they set was what I thought the standard already was.

You know, there are two sets of rights, the master rights and the publishing rights. The publishing refers to the song as a conceptual entity and the master rights to a specific recording of it. So my understanding has always been that questions about how much of a song you can use only have to do with publishing rights, and that they are basically like any other plagiarism case. Like, exactly how many words can you take before you’ve stolen someone’s book? That is a very subjective question, which is why it’s constantly being debated and changed. But master-wise, which is what this decision seems to deal with, my understanding was that *any* unauthorized sample of a recording is not legal and never has been.

The ‘unrecognizable amount’ standard was, and I guess still is, de facto. If you think about it, it really doesn’t make any sense as a legal standard: if it’s unrecognizable, it’s unrecognizable – they can’t bust you for it, because they can’t recognize it. Conversely, if they can bust you for it, then – by definition – it is recognizable. Which brings me back to why this decision is so weird: I’ll buy it as a statement of legal principle, but as a law, simple logic dictates that it’s totally unenforceable.”

posted by @ 12:16 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, September 9th, 2004

Musicology’s End

Here’s a piece on Prince that I did for the finale of his Musicology Tour this weekend on September 11 in San Jose.

But wait. Here’s an even better piece, by Matos, who has to be the world-leading Princeologyist. Any resemblances in the pieces are coincidental in that I didn’t read his piece til after I filed. But then again, there’s no doubt that his excellent book on Sign’O’The Times influenced me. Yeah, pretty thoroughly.

posted by @ 10:08 am | 1 Comment

Wednesday, September 8th, 2004

1918

Still mad about Monday. Rookie umps should only be allowed to work Expos and Yankees games. Red Sox fans are like roaches, they’re everywhere and their only function is to annoy. Don’t tailgate in my parking lot or eat my Gordon Biersch garlic fries. Go Huddy.

RRRRRRR-ah!

posted by @ 10:15 am | 2 Comments

Monday, September 6th, 2004

Chi-Chi Man Redemption?

Kelefa Sanneh, brilliantly, on Beenie Man, bu’n battyman lyrics, and the gay activist backlash.

This is a controversy that’s really heated up this summer. In fact, unlike 3 years ago, bu’n chi-chi lyrics are in decline in the dancehall, and the Outrage!/J-Flag campaign has played no small part in this. But as Sanneh points out, it also has to do with dancehall’s continuing global crossover.

He writes:

“Even as they portray themselves as swaggering “bad men,” reggae stars also present themselves as forces for good: folk heroes, social activists, prophets. (Buju Banton, for example, sometimes calls himself, “the voice of Jamaica.”) To be really successful, you have to do both at once, which is one reason vocalists find antigay rhetoric so useful. It gives them a way to gesture to religious and cultural injunctions against homosexuality (in interviews, the stars often cite Scripture) while also reminding listeners of their “bad man” bona fides. With antigay lyrics, vocalists manage to seem simultaneously righteous and wicked.”

Indeed, progressive dancehall-watchers have been making these same points for a while. But just as it was with Boom Bye Bye in 1992, the discourse has reached a new height in light of the platinum success of Sean Paul, and the underground influence of T.O.K. and Elephant Man.

Sanneh’s article makes two passing points that are interrelated, and that deserve elaboration.

+ “This state of affairs has bred no small amount of resentment among stars and listeners alike, who see something neocolonial in the way Britons are criticizing Jamaican music.”

+ “Frustratingly, gay Jamaicans have been largely absent from this discussion.”

For a dancehall artist, anti-gay lyrics are part of a closed system within which an interesting feedback loop develops. Here’s how it works:

If you’ve ever been to a dancehall show, you’ll see that chi-chi man lyrics draw an intensified response from the crowd. We could talk about who’s doing the responding, perhaps compare it to the response rappers get when they ask females to strip, or much worse scenarios (note: I’m never the one to go Fox News and start talking Nazi Germany), but it’s basically empirical fact.

The artists then hit the studio and develop their money lines to voice over a riddim–against tons of other artists trying to get recognized on the same beat. That stuff goes to the shop or the DJs, where the buyers and the DJs sort through the stuff. Here, with 25 seconds to catch the attention of the tastemakers, the tracks with the clearest expressions work the best, and let’s face it: “Fiya bu’n” was a pretty strong trope, yall. The song gets played in the dance, to the same effect as before. And the stuff gets filtered up and up to the top of playlists and charts.

In the end, the reasons that folks dance and respond to this stuff is complicated, but there have been multiple places for the music to be ratified. A small clique of tastemakers can seal the deed. And it is small. We’re talking in the low hundreds. Folks who want to generalize homophobia to the entire country of Jamaica, or speak of it broadly in terms of abstract nationalisms would do well to start first by studying the process of making a dancehall hit.

On the other hand, that group is a powerful group, one confident to believe it can shape the attitudes of the island and the culture. Homophobia also allows that group–let’s call them the cultural elite because that’s what they are–to also gain acceptance from the island’s political establishment. Not a small thing when you consider the fractious, often bloody history between politicians and musicians on the island.

Homophobia, in the same way the culture war does for American fundamentalists and business interests, strikes a strong bargain between the two most powerful forces in Jamaica. Together, the alliance of the establishment with the most influential anti-establishment types can make any kind of dissent look nothing less than treasonous. No wonder gay activists in Jamaica appear tentative to First Worlders.

posted by @ 9:08 am | 0 Comments

Friday, September 3rd, 2004

For Bay Area Hip-Hop Activists

The Bay-LOC website is up!

And save this weekend for two events by local organizations that came out of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention:

OCTOBER 2nd

BEYOND THE ELEMENTS

San Jose State Student Union

SAN JOSE HIP-HOP COUP

Featuring Tricia Rose, workshops, B-Boy jams, film festival, MC battles

OCTOBER 3rd

STATE OF EMERGENCY; THE BAY AREA HIP HOP SUMMIT

Laney College Campus, Oakland

THE BAY AREA LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (BayLOC)

In Conjuction with POWER 92.7

 AN ALL DAY EVENT HELD ON THE LANEY COLLEGE CAMPUS

+ WORKSHOPS

+ ENTERTAINMENT

+ PANEL DISCUSSIONS

+ VOTER REGISTRATION

These will be two of the biggest hip-hop political events in the Bay this fall. Clear your calendars!

posted by @ 12:41 pm | 1 Comment

Friday, September 3rd, 2004

Bring On The Debates

Debate season begins now. But even if they let Nader in the front door–not likely–none of them will be likely to top this. Click now!

While we’re on the topic, what about the Kerry daughters vs. the Bush twins? Hamster Girls against Crack Babies. There’s a concept.

posted by @ 9:50 am | 0 Comments

Friday, September 3rd, 2004

Republican Ketchup

Missed the last 2 days due to a summer blizzard of deadlines. I stayed home this week to make money. So I played ketchup last night. Can’t keep coming up wth lint! Yelling at the kids during Bush’s speech cause he gets me that way. Then watching pundits and Kerry’s oh-shit-I-better-say-something speech until I passed out from boredom and round-the-clock-writing exhaustion.

Stuff to peep:

+”Bush is a no-tax, still-spend “conservative,” which means he’s spent more than Clinton while decimating the treasury w/ tax cuts. Waytago!” From Farai Chideya’s annotated guide to Bush’s speech.

+”America,” he proclaimed from that altar-like podium, “is called to lead the cause of freedom in the new century….Freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It is the Almighty God’s gift.” From David Corn on Bush’s Mission From God.

+””I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and who misled America into Iraq”. From Kerry’s speech last night. About time he defended himself. He was starting to look like a sorry-ass mark.

+”These people have already been the victims of a process.” A quote from State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo. From Sarah Ferguson at the Village Voice. Andre 3000 was apparently waiting in the crowd on a crew member who was among those released yesterday.

+”There never have been so many people arrested in the history of our 80 political conventions in the United States.” From Tom Hayden. Quoted in Newsday.

+”This morning, the Labor Department quietly released data showing that new unemployment claims rose by 19,000 last week, a number Bush will likely be far too manly to mention when he takes the stage tonight.” Esther Kaplan on the economic girly-men beat. BTW the new economic numbers hit today…more soon.

+”Truly inspiring. His powerful message was conveyed with the gravitas and charisma of Kindergarten Cop and the rippling eroticism of Conan the Barbarian.” Ed Helms on Arnold’s speech.

+”You’ve got to tell the delegates what they want to hear in order to win them over. Politicians always talk the way it fits into their agenda,” an Austrian waitress on Schwarzenegger’s bizarro history of Austria.

+”I really wish the GOP had scheduled Alan Keyes as a speaker. Now that would have been really entertaining.” From Notes from a Different Kitchen

+”Dissing Michael Moore? Why not, I feel like doing it myself sometimes. But biting Saturday Night Live and “Jump?” Offensive. Unforgivably wack.” From Hua.

+Bonus: Jay Smooth grokking the Twins. Be easy on em yall–they’re crack babies!

posted by @ 7:07 am | 0 Comments

Friday, September 3rd, 2004

Division Beat

Robert Christgau and John Payne on protest music.

posted by @ 6:48 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, September 1st, 2004

Hawai’i on TV

So NBC’s “Hawaii” debuted this week. Minors, brah. Just some tourist shit. Here’s the real story.

posted by @ 7:23 am | 0 Comments



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