New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Neil Young on May 3, and May 4, 1970

My colleague Carolyn Jack today is blogging about the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, a stirring example of art’s power to give vitality to a troubled city.  It isn’t easy to figure out an angle that ties the Jazz Fest to law, but I don’t need to.  One of my favorite lawyer/bloggers is Ray Ward, who blogs as Minor Wisdom (the name a paranomasia apparent to any lawyer). Ray lives in New Orleans, and for him the night before Jazz Fest is “Like Christmas Eve.” He’s my source for all things Jazz Fest, from the proper gear to all the performance schedules. I’m looking forward to his reports from the scene. He will be my link between law and Jazz Fest.  But, most of all, I wish I were there.

I would love to see Neil Young on May 3.  One amazing thing about that show on that date is its proximity to May 4. I’m not sure how many people think each year about May 4. I do.  I was 10 years old on May 4, 1970.  I remember coming home from school and hearing that Ohio National Guardsmen 45 minutes away from my house had shot students who had been protesting the Vietnam War.  I was young, but I was a dark kid, and I felt destroyed by the thought that in this land of free speech, where protest is considered an inalienable right, students could be shot dead for protesting a war, much less that war.  That Neil Young soon after gave voice to my utterly inarticulate despair forever made me devoted to him.

We are all cultural magpies.

I’ve written before that many consider all creative endeavors collaborative. This collaborative quality obviously has significance in an environment in which, for example, the RIAA states that “generally speaking, the use of any part of a song requires a license.” (emphasis added). Although until now the courts have indeed found that a sample of any part of a song does require a license, a more nuanced approach is, I think, inevitable. That inevitability is not just because groups like Girl Talk and Negativeland are creating works that sound genuinely “original” by weaving together pieces of other recordings. It is also because there is a growing recognition that some of the people we consider our greatest originals are cultural magpies.  And pop music, the “property” the record industry protects most fiercely, is likely the most unoriginal original art there is. As the KLF put it in The Manual (How to have a Number One the Easy Way):

Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No changes untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality. In the past, most writers of songs spent months in their lonely rooms strumming their guitars or bands in rehearsals have ground their way through endless riffs before arriving at the song that takes them to the very top. Of course, most of them would be mortally upset to be told that all they were doing was leaving it to chance before they stumbled across the tried and tested.

You don’t believe them? Check out Kid Rock (and don’t get me wrong — I like the song, but no small part of my liking it is knowing the songs it’s derived from):

And just to make your head spin, read this.