The Age of Information has proven itself to be a double edged sword for working musicians and recording artists. While it is easier than ever to self-publish and promote our work with a single click, the music industry as a whole has been on a drastic decline of overall revenue since the late 1990s. This is nothing new and nothing any of us can say we aren’t guilty of contributing to. Since the birth of Napster in 1999 there has been a gradual consumer shift towards the most convenient mode of listening. This trend has continued to grow through the creation of the legal streaming services, even as it strips away monetary value out of the pockets of working artists. With every album we release online, we run the risk of allowing someone to rip the files for their own listening, and sometimes sampling pleasure, all without spending a dime. But is that ultimately a bad thing? Well, it’s complicated.

It would be hypocritical and ahistorical for someone to wholly decry illegal reproduction and sampling of recordings on ethical grounds. For as long as we’ve been documenting music, from standard Western notation up through the invention of audio reproduction, artists have been influenced by and often have outright copied their favorite artists and pre-composed musical phrases. Everything from early hip-hop turntablism to contemporary club bangers rely heavily on the creative recycling of the old to create something beautifully new. And while imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, in the age of digital recording it certainly falls under a legal and ethical grey area.

As electronic music culture became a mainstream commercial commodity, so did the sample materials that laid the foundation for so many of these tracks. But with any free market, there is always the power dynamic of those that have and those that have not. It’s not uncommon for mainstream artists to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, often in the case of releasing music that features uncleared samples and fighting or settling the lawsuits after the fact. But lawsuits cost money, artists with major label backing can afford to take the case with the knowledge that the independent artist cannot, often making any attempts of negotiation a futile effort.

This dichotomy of haves and have nots is only amplified to the nth degree when regarding samples of non-Western music used for commercial purposes in the U.S. and Europe. This scenario combines the record industry labor disputes as previously mentioned with many of the problematic tendencies of early ethnomusicological research practices, much of which was deeply rooted in Western imperialism and corporatism. There is a historic track record of Westerners exoticizing or “othering” non-Eurocentric musical traditions, dating as far back as the American Civil War when abolitionist musicians began documenting the “primitive” and “half-barbarous” spiritual music of the slave populations throughout the Carolina Islands, ultimately for the sake of selling a songbook collection of their findings.

The birth of the recording industry only cemented this othering further, with even acclaimed field recording pioneers such as Alan Lomax having been criticized for profiting off impoverished and marginalized musicians throughout both the American and Global South. The best of intentions are no substitute for properly paying your workers, both at the time of recording and through residuals of sales and contracts.

“I don’t have an issue with it if you ask the creator for permission and pay them, especially when they live in a country where the GDP is significantly less”, says composer, performer, and professor Ami Dang, whose work combines the North Indian classical sitar and vocal training of her youth with an academic background in contemporary electronic music. “I see less of a problem when it comes to sampling a Top 40 song, although legally you’ll have even more of a problem.” What’s crucial here is acknowledging the power dynamic from an economic standpoint: not only do mainstream Western artists have more financial backing, but their currency is potentially worth exponentially more than the non-Western artists they’re sampling. Those on top know exactly how much they can get away with, lest they risk public backlash.

Case in point, a more recent example of this power dynamic was highlighted by the use of DJ Lag’s music sampled by Will.I.Am, alongside featured artists Megan Ryte and ASAP Ferg, in a January 2021 track (ironically) titled “Culture”. DJ Lag, a native of Durban, South Africa, is believed by many to be one of the founding pioneers of the gqom (pronounced !-om) style of club music, combining traditional Zulu rhythms and drum samples with dark and reverberated subs and synths. In “Culture”, Will.I.Am directly sampled the main drum and bass sections of DJ Lag’s 2016 track “Ice Drop” with barely any changes, and gqom fans both locally and abroad were quick to call out the blatant plagiarism across social media. Nowhere was Lag’s name to be seen in the production credits for “Culture”, despite there being entirely untouched 16 bar loops of his music being featured as the primary drum part in this new context. It was as if his music was simply a found sound that could be plucked by those who could afford to get away with it. It was only through a public backlash that the artists at fault settled with DJ Lag for an undisclosed amount, but one could assume considering the difference in GDP that it was barely a drop in the bucket for Will.I.Am and company.

So what can we as independent Western artists do concerning the one-sided power dynamic inherent in sampling non-Western or lesser known music by living artists? We can use the age of information to our advantage by seeking to create digital communities of musical collaborators from across the globe. We learn more as artists by working with others of different musical backgrounds, and our own sonic vocabulary inherently grows as a result of international collaborations.

As Ami Dang so eloquently put it, “Better than asking for permission, why not collaborate?”

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