The Amen Break
The link
What it is
The Amen Break is four bar drum solo
from the record “Amen, Brother,” by the Winstons. This solo has been used as the
foundation for a large portion of breakbeat oriented music, particularly the
electronic music genres of Rave and Drum and Bass.
The first link is a 18 minute
documentary on the Amen break, and it’s an excellent introduction to the
sample, its impact, and its relevance to copyright law.
The Economist article has an
excellent collection of music the Amen break has been used in (imagine that: the best source for drum and bass music links being the Economist). If you hit the Economist's paywall,
just google the article title and open it from the search results, as google
has a licensing deal with them.
What it means to me
That drum
loop you never knew you recognized? This is it. I think it’s flat out amazing that a six second drum solo on a
B-side has had this much cultural impact, and has been used and reused in so
many different ways.
The Amen
break, and hip-hop and sampling based music in general, shows the process of different cultural elements influencing each other at a rapid speed. The sampler was a key acceleration in this process, as were 'dub
plates', throwaway quality records. that were easy to produce. In addition, there was an audience for new music, and radio provided the infrastructure to play it on.
What’s happening
in hip-hop and electronic music is no different from what happened with painting
in the renaissance, or with fairy tales since time immemorial. Technology and
mass media just allow it to happen much faster.
Copyright
has not kept up with this increase in speed: copyright periods tend to become
longer rather than shorter, locking work out of the public domain. The case of Amen
break itself is particularly egregious: the Winstons never pursued their copyright
with anyone who sampled the drum break. A production company which sold a “Drum ‘n’ Bass
sample kit” which includes the Amen break (precisely due to this lax enforcement)
may now be recognized as the official copyright holder – even though they never
truly owned the sample in the first place!
To give you
an idea of changes (and incentives) in copyright law over the 20th Century: the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie”, was originally expected to enter the (US) public
domain in 1984. After two successful copyright extensions, it may now
lose its protected status in 2023 – provided the law doesn't change in the next 8
years.
On one
hand, this is the invaluable intellectual property Disney built its giant
corporation on. We don’t know what would happen to the company (and the people
it employs) if Mickey Mouse weren’t exclusive. On the other hand, I’d love
to see other cartoonists ‘remix’ Mickey Mouse.
"A society free to borrow and build upon the past is culturally richer than a controlled one." - Lawrence Lessig
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