Music and Social Angle: is it wrong to sample a song?

Is it wrong to use a sample?

I was asked this question a while ago. To me, the answer seemed obvious: no. It is not wrong. It is genuine. It is creative. It is accessible. But I sought the best and most didactic way to respond and the insights I had to think about in that answer culminated in the reflections I bring through this text.

Sample is one of the most timeless trends in the music industry and it is impossible to talk about sample without talking about social angle. It was between the 1960s and 1970s that the first evidence of samples in music appeared, used by artists such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, James Tenney and even the Beatles, who sampled through the capture and manipulation of sounds. But the real boom of the feature was created by the DJs in the rap/hip-hop genre, with the manipulation of the vinis at the parties. It is possible to say that the history of sampling is mixed with the story of the birth of what is today the most listened genre in the United States: Hip Hop — but that, important to say, remains one of the most marginalized genres around the world.

It was not long before discussions about plagiarism began, for with the popularity of the resource in the 1980s and its normalisation, debates about its legality also arose. When it comes to samples, the line between inspiration and plagiarism is thin and blurred, because these are pre-existing recordings that serve as the basis, inspiration or repertoire for composers, beatmakers, DJs and music producers, and the way everyone handles them depends on everyone’s creativity, common sense and good character.

Soon arose discussions about how many seconds can be used so that the line between plagiarism and inspiration is clear, because in sampling everything is worth, from using a set of drums, 3 seconds of voice, using a few acordes, to the use of more seconds of the music that is then repeated along a beat or instrumental. Well, but today I am not here to talk about the technical and bureaucratic aspects that categorize a music as plagiarism or as sample.

In general and especially in the scenario of rap and hip-hop, the use of samples forces us to rethink copyright laws considering that digital reproduction expands existing understanding of “what is a copy?” And it makes us rethink the process of composing, arranging and producing a music.

A famous and very practical case to think about this is the epic bass and drummer meeting of Under Pressure — Queen and David Bowie in Ice Ice Baby of Vanilla Ice, which today even has the rights to the music, sold by Queen guitarist himself, Brian May. But it was before that, in the eighteenth-century breakbeats of names like James Brown who inspired the B-Boys and who were indispensable for the consecration of Fight The Power of Public Enemy that uses nothing more than 21 samples in a single song or Fuck Tha Police of N.W.A that uses 10.

The sample, when well exploited, as in those cases I cited, is a way to recycle music and, more importantly, a way of making it accessible. Accessible for those at that time and today who did not have and do not have access to multiple instruments, classes and conservatories but has creativity and a story to tell — and, important to say, a story within their world views, visions that were invisible before being told through cultural works, such as songs, films, plays and books. They are the protagonists of these stories. (Of course, by speaking of this we enter another field that is cultural appropriation and representation, but that’s for another text.)

This is my favorite thing about music: the story telling that will invariably be different from composer to composer, from producer to producer, and from music to music. Copyright must be protected. And, in the end, that’s not even the point here, it’s about the creative potential of whoever uses the sample to transform a music that already exists into something entirely new.

And, modestly speaking, we do this in an incomparable way in Brazil. The creativity of the Brazilian made it possible for us to hear Sebastian Bach’s flute in the brazilian funk Bum Bum Tan Tan by Mc Fioti. Every Lesson Learned by Erykah Badu. The Beatles’ Daytripper in Mc Kevin’s Car. The Belchior’s Sujeito de Sorte in AmarElo of Emicida.

Glad the samples exist. And how good that the music is recyclable and that I was able to learn about different realities from mine through it. This only reinforces the educational potential of culture, both for those who consume it and those who produce it.

#samples #sample #music #rap #recycle