
Theft: A History of Music - spatten
https://law.duke.edu/musiccomic/
======
z2
This was a very enjoyable and creative read.

I'm not criticizing this in any way, but it would have been even better had it
covered the history of music beyond that of the western hemisphere. Other
cultures have had enough written history and written music [0] for what could
be some fascinating stories on music and distribution/remixing.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation#In_various_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation#In_various_countries)

~~~
beat
My current favorite music is the music of the western Sahara desert (mostly
but not all Tuareg). Northern Mali and Niger have the hottest music scene in
the world today, imho. And it's very much a function of cross-cultural
remixing.

Tuareg culture is ancient, pre-Islamic, and it has a long and beautiful
tradition of music and poetry, which falls along gender lines. Traditionally,
women played most music, while men wrote poetry in the lovely Tamasheq
language. But when guitars, radios, and recordings arrived in the 1960s/1970s,
the instrument had no role in the traditions, and they could make something
new. The poetry fused with the rhythms, while the new wave of guitarists dug
into Dire Straits and Santana along with their own traditions. The results are
astounding - deep, soulful, melodic, improvisational.

Check out Tinariwen and Bombino for the hottest bands in the scene (again
imho). If you dig them, keep digging, there's a lot more where that came from.
And due to civil war and other problems at home, a lot of the musicians tour
relentlessly in the West. I see a half-dozen Tuareg concerts a year!

~~~
nemo44x
Niger has unbelievably great music. Recently picked up a copy of " Etran De
L'Aïr - No. 1" (2014) and it's fantastic. "Azna De L'Ader" (late 70's) is a
fantastic find as well - super rhythmic acid rock bursting with energy and
passion and completely original. These are just a couple artists from that
region I'm into lately and this stuff is as fresh to me as when I discovered
punk rock in the early 1990's.

Quite a bit different from the things you're suggesting showing that there's a
huge range of sound coming from that region and there has been for a long
time, however not documented in the West.

Sahel Sounds is an imprint that has been putting out a ton of great stuff for
a few years now.

~~~
beat
Sahel Sounds is a fantastic label. One of my favorite albums recently has been
their "Music from Saharan Cellphones", basically a sampler of recordings
floating around from mostly-unknown bands. One thing that struck me was how
much drum machine there was on that album, relative to the more rock-oriented
Tuareg desert blues bands, which are driven by acoustic percussion, whether
djembe or calabash or a western drum kit. It's like some of the sounds of Euro
dance music are getting in to the new stuff, much like how classic rock
influenced the older generation.

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xbryanx
This reminds me of Pete Frame's Rock and Roll Family Trees.

[https://familyofrock.net/](https://familyofrock.net/)

Different idea, but a cousin nonetheless.

~~~
sqlacid
Forgot I have a copy of that, need to go dig it up; found lots of new music to
listen to thanks to it.

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cocacola1
One of the co-authors, James Boyle, has a freely available book about the
public domain.

[http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf](http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf)

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grawprog
I read this book a while ago about the history of Jamaican Dancehall music. I
highly recommend it. It goes into a ton of history both about music and
politics in Jamaica from the 50's to present day and is an amazing read if
such things interest you.

[https://www.amazon.ca/Dancehall-Rise-Jamaican-
Culture/dp/095...](https://www.amazon.ca/Dancehall-Rise-Jamaican-
Culture/dp/0957260083#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1534966054434)

Jamaican music in general is the perfect example of music theft giving rise to
a whole new style of music. Ska music was created by Jamaican musicians trying
to imitate swing and jazz music from America. From there it developed into
rocksteady and reggae. At the time Jamaica had no copyright laws so songs were
freely sampled and remixed back even back then. Most modern dancehall music
still has it's roots in old baselines and melodies written back then. Because
of the poverty in Jamaica, a lot of songs were remade and updated over and
over again with different singers or musicians.

Hip hop was influenced by Jamaican dancehall brought over by people
immigrating to new York and other cities from Jamaica. In the 80's dancehall
tunes started sampling from hip hop tracks and a bunch of bands like Sublime
took reggae songs and redid them. Every single one of Sublimes songs is a
reimagining of either some some reggae, punk rock or old rock song. The
downside to this is a lot of talented artists ended up dying broke despite
having a bunch of hit songs. Producers who could afford equipment ended up
owning the rights to a lot of the music and the artists tended not to be paid
properly. Some of them eventually managed to get royalties if they became
famous enough that big record companies took interest but for the most part
they all lost money they should have been paid.

Now today there's dancehall and reggae festivals all over the world. Some of
the biggest ones happen in Europe and Asia. Even Japan has a reggaeband
dancehall subculture.

Reggae in general is a pretty cool, I don't want to say genre because there's
so many different genres within reggae music, branch of music I guess. So much
of it was made in so many different styles, sometimes dozens of different
versions of the same song were produced. There's really a ton of music to
discover.

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aportnoy
Reminded me of the Logicomix:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix)

~~~
stuxnet79
Logicomix is one of the best graphic novels I have read recently. Excellent
use of the medium, and very well researched.

------
parenthesis
This is reminding me of "The Lick":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lick_(music)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lick_\(music\))

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q)

~~~
neilharbinger
and that, in turn, reminds me of The Most Important 6 Second Drum Loop

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac)

and Raiding the 20th Century

[http://www.djfood.org/raiding-the-20th-century-
is-10-years-o...](http://www.djfood.org/raiding-the-20th-century-is-10-years-
old)

------
beat
This is exciting. I'd love to see the topic addressed in the same way for
food, as well as music!

~~~
21
In the past it was called 'fusion'. Today it's called 'cultural appropriation'

[https://twitter.com/hashtag/jerkgate](https://twitter.com/hashtag/jerkgate)

~~~
beat
Cultural appropriation is a complicated subject. It's grossly oversimplified
by both sides.

------
maximp
A great book on the recent history of music piracy and the advent of the MP3
is How Music Got Free:

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-
Obsession/dp/01431...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-
Obsession/dp/0143109340)

