From now on, I’ll only be updating the blog here on my website. You can still access older stuff here and at the Blogger site.
Part of what I’m endeavoring to do with these posts is to give people actual things they can try in the classroom and in their daily lives. There’s plenty of theoretical pedagogy stuff out there: that’s not why I’m here. I’m a part-time lecturer and have been for the last eight years. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to make a living this way—talking about music with students. I haven’t been able to do much in the way of research: I have a pretty full teaching load every quarter (including summers), and I’m not really expected to do research. I haven’t read everything that’s out there on pedagogy, but I have taught rap classes for about 10 years now at several different institutions.
At any rate—whiteness as property. One thing that I’ve started doing in my classes is to introduce my students to the racial restrictive covenants as a way of thinking through the idea of whiteness as property. Following that exposition, I ask them to consider three landmark sampling cases: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Grand Upright Music v. Warner Bros. Records, and Bridgeport Music Inc. v. Dimension Films. If we think about music in terms of intellectual property, it’s not too hard for students to make the leap in understanding how these cases relate to racial restrictive covenants.
These kinds of laws rest on the assumption that music is an object and not an activity (or, that music is more object than activity). The book-length comic Theft! offers an enjoyable survey of how this change in perception evolved and presents its consequences as well. Prior to the release of “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, rap music was certainly more of an activity than an object (see Dimitriadis and Kajikawa). Many early practitioners of rap were reluctant to sign record deals, unsure of how rap music—which at the time consisted of a night-long improvised party—would translate to recorded media. I’ll have to track down the original source of the quotation (I think it was Chuck D, maybe in Yes Yes Y’all?), but someone said you’d do just as well to make a recording of a basketball game or a subway ride—it would make about as much sense.
It’s worth mentioning that, historically, the disciplines of music theory and musicology are rooted in the idea that music is an object. As such, they’re ill-equipped to address some important aspects of rap music and hip-hop culture. The times, they are a’changing, though.
Also worthy of consideration: think about the (racialized) ways people describe sampling as theft, or lacking in creativity.
We then turn our attention to issues of academic integrity. How can we rethink the things that we do as students, teachers, and scholars, in light of this idea of intellectual property? How does our understanding of what constitutes intellectual property uphold whiteness? I like to compare our academic integrity policies with the ethics of sampling that Joe Schloss outlines in his book Making Beats (reproduced here for your convenience):
“No Biting”: One can’t sample material recently used by someone else
Records are the only legitimate source for sampled material
One cannot sample from other hip hop records
One can’t sample records one respects
One can’t sample from reissues or compilation recordings of songs with good beats
One can’t sample more than one part of a given record
I think I’ll call it a day here. The important thing here is to think about what we value in art, music, pedagogy, etc. and to think about the ways in which policies and traditions uphold those values. How can we challenge these values in order to make room for other ideas and approaches? More soon!