Earlier this year I was enrolled in a pretty cool music criticism course. Each week we had to turn in a 300 word opinion piece where we would address a certain issue or artist and take a stance. They were fun, but academic, and I kind of struggled to find a comfortable voice throughout. Nonetheless here’s one I did on music sampling and why its kind of preposterous to oppose it:
Most critics of music sampling label it as an unauthentic way to make music. These claims do not take into consideration that sampling is just an evolved form of musical borrowing, a concept innate to music. In the late 19th century, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak traveled to New York City to study American music. Dvorak asserted, “The future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies… the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.”
As the 20th century progressed, American popular music contributed to the seemingly constant co-opting of black music. In 1974, New York City duo Steely Dan overtly borrowed the first eight bars of a piece by black jazz pianist Horace Silver for their single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” Aside from tempo, Silver’s tune, “Song for My Father,” bared no similarity to “Rikki.” Still, “Father” served as a blatant influence for this now classic Steely Dan song. Thirty-three years later, Kanye West proved by sampling Steely Dan for his song “Champion” that borrowing was not exclusively an interchange from black to white, but rather from artist to artist. Borrowing brought these otherwise unrelated musicians together into a timeline of influence. This timeline initially followed Dvorak’s sentiment, but in time West proved by sampling Steely Dan that the age of influential citation had evolved.
While living in New York Dvorak wrote “The New World Symphony;” a piece that features prominently the ‘Negro melodies’ he had observed. Although he did not have the technological resources that Kanye West has, Dvorak’s creative avenue was the same: take a found piece of music and use it to create something new.
Borrowing is inherent to the nature of popular music, and it is only now, because of our evolved musical state, that we have the ability to directly cite, or sample, our sources.
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