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| 9th Wonder |
Sampling Soul 2.0
Department of African & African American Studies
AAAS 132/VMS 104-C-01
Fall 2011
Tuesday 6:00pm – 8:30pm
White Lecture Hall, 107
Instructors:
Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D. | Twitter:@NewBlackMan
9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit) |
Twitter: @9thWonderMusic
Teaching Assistants:
Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell, ABD
Kesha Lee
Course Description
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s and became the secular soundtrack of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists such as Aretha Franklin and James Brown and record companies such as Motown and Stax, as well as the term “Soul” became symbols of black aspiration and black political engagement. In the decades since the rise of “Soul,” the music and its icons are continuously referenced in contemporary popular culture via movie trailers, commercials, television sitcoms and of course music. In the process “Soul” has become a significant and lucrative cultural archive. Co-taught with Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, “Sampling Soul” will examine how the concept of “Soul” has functioned as raw data for contemporary forms of cultural expression. In addition the course will consider the broader cultural implications of sampling, in the practices of parody and collage, and the legal ramifications of sampling within the context of intellectual property law. The course also offers the opportunity to rethink the concept of archival material in the digital age.
Books
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Week 1—Sampling Sampling
The Art and Aesthetics of Sampling
August 30, 2011
Introduction to sampling as a practice. Is sampling a recent phenomenon? What are the historical and artistic context for sampling practices. How do terms like appropriation, borrowing, parody, pastiche, collage and “theft” factor into our understandings of sampling practices. How has sampling practices impacted contemporary art?
Week 2—Sampling A Blues People
Dark Voices and Blue Movements Against the Night
September 6, 2011
In line with Amiri Baraka’s classic claim that the “spirits do not descend without music,” music serves as a primary resource for Black Americans to articulate notions of pain, resistance, pleasure, pride, faith and aspiration. This week we’ll examine the music of the pre-Soul era.
Readings: George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues | Chap 1: Philosophy, Money, and Music; Chap 2: Dark Voices in the Night; Chap 3: The New Negro
Discussion Question (Beta)
Week 3—Sampling Soul
The Cultural and Historical Legacy of Soul
September 13, 2011
Soul Music emerged in the late 1950s, combining the drive of rhythm and blues, with the flourishes of the black gospel tradition. By the 1960s it was part of a broader social movement articulate politically in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, philosophically in the concept of Black Nationalism and the Black Arts Movement and stylistically in the flourishing of Afros. This week we will look Soul music and its impact on American culture.
Readings: George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues | Chap 4: Black Beauty, Black Confusion; Chap 5: Redemption Songs in the Age of Corporations; Chap 6: Crossover: The Death of Rhythm and Blues; Chap 7: Assimilation Triumphs, Retronuevo Rises
Discussion Question (# 1)
Week 4—Sampling Blackness
Black Culture as Intellectual Property
September 20, 2011
Though various forms of black culture have circulated freely in the United States and across the globe, they have often done so as the property of corporate entities. What is the relationship between black bodies as chattel and black culture as property? What happens when the cultural expressions of a formerly enslaved peoples becomes intellectual property?
Readings: Schur, Parodies of Ownership | Chap 1: From Chattel to Intellectual Property; Chap 2: Critical Race Theory, Signifyin’ and Cultural Ownership; Chap 3: Defining Hip-Hop Aesthetics; Chap 4: Claiming Ownership in the Post-Civil Rights Era; Alkon, Alison Hope. "Growing Resistance: Food, Culture, and the Mo'Better Foods Farmers' Market" Gastronomica, Volume 7, No. 3 (summer 2007), pp. 93-99; Chavis, Shaun. “Is There a Difference Between Southern and Soul?” in Reed, Dale Volberg, John Shelton Reed, and John T. Edge, eds. Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Pps. 237-244; Nettles, Kimberly D. "'Saving' Soul Food." Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Volume 7, No. 3 (summer 2007), pp. 106- 113; Zafar, Rafia. "The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women's Cookbooks." Feminist Studies, Volume 25, No. 2 (summer 1999), pp. 449-469.
Discussion Question (# 2)
Week 5—Sampling Hip-Hop Aesthetics
Transformative Uses: Parody, Memory, Community
September 27, 2011
How have the aesthetics of Hip-Hop challenged the legitimacy of Intellectual Property Law and in the process transformed how we think about intellectual property and its value?
Readings: Schur, Parodies of Ownership | Chap 5: “Fair Use” and the Circulation of Racialized Texts; Chap 6: “Transformative Uses”: Parody and Memory; Chap 7: From Invisibility to Erasure? The Consequences of Hip-hop Aesthetics
Discussion Question (# 3)
Week 6—Sampling Sampling
The Culture of Digital Sampling
October 4, 2011
Is sampling beats “stealing” music and evidence of a lazy, uncreative impulse in contemporary art? In Making Beats, ethnomusicologist Joe Schloss argues that sample-based hip-hop is a legitimate art form unto itself.
Readings: McLeod & DiCola, Creative License
Screening: Copyright Criminals (dir. Benjamin Franzen, 2009)
Discussion Question (# 4)
Mid-term Examination Distributed
*Week 7—Sampling Soul Divas
Black Femininity as Intellectual Property
October 18, 2011
This week we will focus on “gendering” soul. We will explore a black women’s tradition within soul aesthetics and cultural forms. Using gender, class, and sexuality as critical lenses, we will examine the interplay of gender and sexual politics, black musical traditions, and sampling. We will also consider the relationship between soul expressions and black womanhood.
Readings: “‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe” by Daphne Brooks, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 8.1 (2008) 180-204; “Toni Braxton, Disney, and Thermodynamics by Jason King, TDR Fall 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3 (T175), Pages 54-81; “The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body,” Janell Hobson, Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003), pp. 87-105
Discussion Question (# 4)
Midterm Examination Due
Week 8—Sampling The Post-Soul (The R. Kelly re-mix)
Toward a Post-Soul Aesthetic
October 25, 2011
Well before sampling became the lingua franca of cultural appropriation, a generation of Black artists and thinkers—the so-called Post-Soul Generation—began to appropriate Soul Culture and remake it to fit the demands of the post-Civil Rights era.
Readings: Neal, Soul Babies | Chap 1: “You Remind Me of Something: Towards a Post-Soul Aesthetic; Chap 2: “Sweetback’s Revenge: Gangsters, Blaxploitation, and Black Middle-Class Identity; Chap 3: Baby Mama (Drama) and Baby Daddy (Trauma): Post-Soul Gender Politics
Discussion Question (# 5)
Week 9—Sampling Black Thought
Voices of the Post-Soul Intelligentsia
November 1, 2011
Armed with access to new and innovative technologies and an affinity for popular culture, the post-Soul generation began to articulate a view of the world that samples, appropriated, remixed, mashed, parodied, etc existing black thought.
Readings: Neal, Soul Babies | Chap 4: The Post-Soul Intelligentsia: Mass Media, Popular Culture, and Social Praxis; Chap 5: Native Tongues: Voices of the Post-Soul Intelligentsia
Discussion Question (# 6)
Week 10—Sampling Queer
Queer Sounds, Queer Samples
November 8, 2011
Although African American musical forms like hip hop are now accepted forms of mainstream popular music, not all of the music produced within these genres are accepted. Sampling Queer offers a critical way of thinking about how various sonic tropes that are sampled are often rendered queer by virtue of not adhering to conventional understandings of soul, hip hop, and R&B.
Readings: “Feeling like a woman, looking like a man, sounding like a no-no”: Grace Jones and the performance of Strange in the Post-Soul Moment, ”Francesca Royster, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Volume 19, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 77-94(18); “Any Love: Silence, Theft, and Rumor in the Work of Luther Vandross,” Jason King , Callaloo, Vol. 23, No. 1, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender: Literature and Culture (Winter, 2000), pp. 422-447 Discussion Question (# 7)
Week 11—Sampling Marvin
The Art, Loves & Demons of a Soul Man
November 15, 2011
As the “Crown Prince” of Motown Records, Marvin Gaye as an example of the quintessential “Soul Man,” a secular figure who often carried a much cultural weight as his “Race Man,” counterparts. In this session we will examine the career and influence of Gaye and the way he has been sampled.
Readings: Dyson, Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye
Discussion Question (# 8)
Week 12—Sampling Hypertext
Hypertext/Hypermedia as Sampling
November 29, 2011
Ricardo Cortez Cruz’s 1995 novel Five Days of Bleeding offers a brilliant entry into the sampling of everyday life, using hypertext, in a historical moment when hypertext was just becoming available to many via the internet.
Readings: Cruz, Five Days of Bleeding.
Discussion Question (#9)
Week 13—Sampling Shawn Carter
Sampling and Cosmopolitan Identity in Hip-Hop
December 6, 2011
Jay Z offers an interesting “text” to examine how sampling might be manifested in performance, musical production, identity politics and notions of black masculinity.
Readings: Bailey, ed., Jay Z: Essays on Hip-Hop’s Philosopher King
Discussion Question (#10)
Final Examination Distributed
