One of the most memorable passages in all of Sag Harbor for me was when
present-narrator Ben explaining bit of own musical “coming of age” becoming
aware of past Benji’s reception of when he calls out Afrika Bambaataa’s
sampling of Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express.
I didn’t understand back then why
Marcus was hassling me, but I get it now.
A couple of years later, if someone said “I stole that off an old Lou
Donadon record,” and the sample kicked it, you got respect for your expertise
and keen ear. Funk, free jazz, disco,
cartoons, German synthesizer music—it didn’t matter where it came from, the art
was in converting it to new use.
Manipulating what you had at your disposal for your own purposes,
jerry-rigging your new creation. But
before sampling became an art form with a philosophy, biting off somebody was a
major crime, thuggery on an atrocious scale.
Your style, your vibe, was all you had.
It was toiled on, worried over, your latest tweak presented to the world
each day for approval. Pull your pockets
out so that they hung out of your pants in a classic broke-ass pose, and you
still had your style. If someone was
stealing your stlye, they were stealing your soul. (61 [hard back])
Here Whitehead takes us not just through a brief history of
sampling but of the philosophy behind the argument for and against “stealing”
other people’s work/music. I used to very
much hold onto the idea that music should be original in its entirety in “pure”
form. As I have grown older I have
realized that everything is a ripoff of everything else. Sampling as a philosophy is not a “modern”
invention. Every piece of music is just
imitating previous pieces of music. What
is so important that Benji already is onto (that Marcus is against) is that
this isn’t a bad thing! With modern
technology sampling has taken on different meanings, but the concept is the
same. Think of how a composer takes a
bass line from another person, tweaks it a bit, and then incorporates it into
their own work. This is exactly the same with modern sampling –
just it is maybe even more obvious because you can search specific audio files
instead of just comparing harmonies.
