The first of these was The Festival Express which is a rockumentary made of a festival held in Canada in 1970. A number of artists including Janis Joplin, the Buddy Guy Blues Band and Grateful Dead played in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary, travelling between the concerts together on a chartered train.
In addition to some excellent performances, this film discussed the way that the public had come to expect music concerts such as these to be free following Woodstock. For these concerts the ticket price was $16.00 per person causing concern to some members of the public. In Toronto there was a demonstration outside the venue leading to conflict between the public and the police. The artists ended up setting up a separate, free, concert at a park down the road in an attempt to quell the unrest. In Calgary the promoter punched out the Mayor after he insisted that the concert be made available to the public for free. Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead commented:
The truth is, it can’t be free completely. Someone has to pay for something to make it happen. Even if you don’t pay money for tickets,.... you still gotta rent a truck, you gotta rent a generator; somebody’s got to pay for it.
This presented some interesting parallels to today’s environment of uncompensated file sharing. Whilst it is true that the distribution and to some extent the production costs of music have been reduced by digital technologies. Nonetheless there remains a need for artists to recoup (and make a reasonable profit) from their creations.
I read this article today from The Register and without commenting on the accuracy or sentiments expressed, note that there continues to be conflict regarding the concept of ownership of music and culture as a form of property. The record labels (and perhaps some artists), do not consider music to be public property; and at the same time some members of the public refuse to acknowledge that artists have any property entitlements to their creations. For me and others supporting a collective licensing regime, these are absolute positions. I consider there to be co-exisitng and competing property rights for both artists and the public to music. Indeed the conflict over file sharing is simply the modern articulation of an ongoing debate as to the extent and emphasis the law should place on these rights.
The second film I watched was Feel Like Going Home, a 2003 Martin Scorsese Production and part of the Blues Film Collection. This was an excellent film with artist Corey Harris exploring the history of blues in the United States and the links between these artists and African culture. In particular the comparison was made between the drumming and fife styles of blues musicians and similar patterns in Africa, despite the fact that possession of a drum by an African American was an offense punishable by death up until the civil war.
In African culture there are special musical story tellers and an inseparable connection between music and history. These artists are known as griots and Corey comments that while the country itself is relatively poor, the people are 'kings' because of the richness of their culture.
A particularly inspiring interview is presented between Corey and Salif Keita in Bamako, Mali. Salif states:
Everybody in Africa, especially in West Africa, we’re born inside music. You start singing the day you are born. You understand? And growing up like this, inside it, so it’s inside you. And you live with it.
In the later part of the film Corey visits the Sankore Mosque and Library built in the 15th Century and talks with an artist called Toumani Diabate. Toumani comes from 71 generations of Kora players with the skills being passed from father to son over the years. Corey recounts how he was told that when one of them dies “it is like a whole library is burned up.”
Another aspect of the film considers the life of the American musicologist Alan Lomax who travelled the world in the 20th Century recording and preserving the music of different cultures for future generations. In discussing the importance of his work and his appreciation of music, it is suggested that he “came to realise that it was as essential as human speech and just as precious.” Lomax is also quoted in reference to the progress of music and society in his lifetime, saying:
When the whole world is bored with automated mass distributed video music, our descendants will despise us for having thrown away the best of our culture.
Whilst I very much value the work of Alan Lomax (he died in 2002) I haven’t been able to accept this statement in its entirety. Prior to the introduction of digital technologies and the ability for remixing and reusing culture on a mass scale, perhaps it may have been possible to suggest that at the end of video music there would be an inevitable sense that the past had been lost. Today, however, I increasingly see the opportunity to relive this culture over and over again in differing forms.
Just as the West African musicians have passed down musical techniques and songs to their descendants, modern society now has more opportunity than ever before to preserve culture. In the course of continually building on and communicating culture over digital networks there will inevitably be changes and adaptations but there never need be loss. The ‘originals’ can survive and just as we can trace the lineage of people we will be able to trace the lineage of culture in a way that we are only beginning to understand. For me video music reflects the evolution of society from the industrial to the digital age. From here I see the prospects for culture to be enormous - provided we allow them to be realised.
Copyright law remains the single most obvious and destructive impediment to allowing these cultural conversations to take place in the future. By focusing on controlling creativity rather than rewarding it, our society is prevented from being kings and prevented from enjoying and even producing the richness of our culture. Imagining the impact copyright law would have on the culture of West Africans highlights to me what it is we are prevented from realising at the moment. In being exposed to how music is treated within their culture I have become acutely aware of what we might be missing.
(I have one more film to watch this week on Blues music so hopefully there will be a part two to this post).
Other Links:
Columbia University: Music and Dance of Africa http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/music.html
Joanna Lott, Keepers of History (May 2002) <http://www.rps.psu.edu/0205/keepers.html> at 26 March 2006
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