To be honest, I’m not the biggest music guru. I enjoy most of it from hip hop to country but have never gotten really deep into the history or even the legal issues with it. I come from a strong “music obsessed” family where my dad has a pretty strong passion for a lot of music- especially Motown, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and many other black artists. My youngest sister got that same obsession that my dad has and my older sister falls somewhere in between with a deep love but not as passionate as my dad and younger sister.
As soon as I got to Busboys & Poets and saw Mazi from “Words, Beats, & Life”, I was really excited for the presentation. I knew that it was going to be a panel discussion but I didn’t really know what that was going to be like. We have panels at my church at least once a month where all the pastors share on what we’ve been talking about in service and then they open the floor for questions, comments, and testimonies. I figured it would be similar but I wasn’t exactly sure. The discussion started with Casey Rob Hunter, from “Future of Music Coalition”, interviewing Peter De Cola, a law professor who had done a study on sampling and its effects on society. Peter had stated how he was first introduced to sampling on an airplane and quickly learned that sampling happens in every genre. That is what prompted him to do his study on sampling and see what people think about the topic, especially musicians. He gave a lot of insight that I didn’t know- because I’m essentially ignorant when it comes to this topic, because it isn’t public knowledge, or a mixture of both. Peter explained how music has two copyrights: sheet music/lyric copyrights and music/sound copyrights. “According to the 6th Circuit, no matter how much of the sound you take from a song, you can be sued unless there is Fair Use” he stated. I had been exposed to Fair Use very briefly last semester while I was making a video for my Community Leadership course. We were required to add a song to our video about our Experiential Learning project and we had to make sure we had permission to use the song. I had wanted to use a song that I felt really represented my project but wasn’t able to because of copyright and was forced to choose from the Fair Use websites my professor provided or from the music already given on iMovie.
Peter went on to talk about how specific people get with their music when it comes to sampling: “who can sample this”, “what will they do with it”. As I thought about it, it really did make sense to me that people would want that control since they work so hard to create it and don’t want it to be butchered by some other artist. It really is an example of leadership because as the author/creator of your music, you wouldn’t want it to be used for an artist or song that you don’t support. It’s one of the aspects we discussed a lot in class- how we need to be fully aware and involved in whatever our name is attached to in life.
After the interview, two DJs- DJ Robbie Rob and DJ Two-Tone Jones- joined Casey and Peter and they discussed the heavy influence that sampling has on Hip Hop. They discussed a lot of the pros and cons to sampling. Two-Tone Jones made the comment that people have learned about different genres of music because they heard it later in a hip hop song where it was sampled. When asked if the music can still be considered creative or artistic if it’s used samples of other music, Robbie Rob responded “It’s a work of art to sample and sample so well that people can’t even tell that you did.” I was talking to a friend of mine who is really into hip hop music and writes and records his own stuff the next day about the panel and he strongly agreed with that comment. He felt as though it’s almost harder to take something from somewhere else and transform it into something brand new that is still amazing and people have no idea that it was taken from this song or that genre. One of the cons was talking about technology and how it has oversaturated the market today allowing anyone to “make music” by simply downloading an AP on their iPhone. Two-Tone Jones stated how many people who were considered “legendary” didn’t have everything that people do today. Ultimately, sampling is a double-edged sword for the hip hop industry.
I really enjoyed this experience because it showed how leadership is truly all around us: from music to the more blatant leadership of being a manager to President. Everyone has the ability to make an impact in whatever “world” they are part of and making good leadership choices are essential.
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