My copyright journey
It’s significant to note that tracks “Lesson 3” by Double Dee and Steinski and “The Magic Number” by De La Soul, together composed of dozens of samples, were created during the so-called “golden age of hip hop.” This was a period of time before copyright law caught up to the hip hop producer, resulting in albums such as It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 3 Feet High and Rising, and Paul’s Boutique, widely considered masterworks of sonic collages, often composed of dozens of bite-size samples. Following high profile lawsuits in the decade following hip hop’s golden age, collage-based hip hop became largely a lost artform. “Lesson 3” and “The Magic Number” could not be produced under today’s copyright law. And as of this writing, De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising cannot be streamed or downloaded.
The majority of my residency was spent learning about and navigating current copyright law in the context of sample-based music. A lesson I’ve learned over and over again during this time is that this is a very, very complex topic. To illustrate this I will describe an example of audio material that did not make it into Citizen DJ and why. The Southern Mosaic collection represents the three-month, 6,502-mile recording trip through the southern United States in 1939 by John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the American Folklife Center archive), and his wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax. During this trip they recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers, including future Blues Hall of Famer Bukka White and future Alabama Women’s Hall of Famer Vera Hall. This is a massive, rich, and important collection that I encourage you to listen to.
What would it take to sample from Bukka White’s Po’ Boy, recorded in 1939? Field recordings of musical performances often have at least three layers of copyright: the collector, the performer, and the songwriter. In this case, the Lomaxes recorded this on behalf of the Library of Congress, thus their work should be in the public domain. But it’s less clear whether performer Bukka White relinquished his rights to the performance, or even if he did, if it was done so transparently and in good faith. Furthermore, like most blues songs, it is very difficult to track down the original songwriter given the ever-evolving, nonlinear, and oral tradition of blues and folk music.