World of Music, Arts and Dance
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Many other British and American artists contributed to the growing popular awareness of "world music" during this period. After establishing his solo career in the late 1970s and early 1980s, former Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel was heavily influenced by African and Middle Eastern music; he became a key figure in the founding of the WOMAD organisation and later established his own "world music" label, Real World, which recorded and released successful albums by artists such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. Gabriel featured Senegalese mbalax singer Youssou N'Dour in a song on his hit album So in 1986, paving the way for N'Dour's success as one of the biggest "world music" stars in the West. The later music of American New Wave band Talking Heads drew heavily on influences from African and Afro-Cuban music, notably on their album Remain In Light. The album was among several experimental post-punk recordings directly inspired by the Afrobeat of bandleader Fela Kuti. Kuti's style itself began as an appropriation—a merger between the traditional styles of Kuti's home Nigeria and the R&B and funk music of African American artists like James Brown. Many other African musicians, as well as those from other regions of the world, also drew influence from African American music, Afro Cuban music and other music from the West, ensuring that appropriation was continuous in many directions.
In the early 1980s, Talking Heads' main writer and lead singer David Byrne also recorded a significant album called My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, in collaboration with the band's producer of the time, Brian Eno. It was strongly influenced by musical styles outside the standard "rock" genre, employing African-style percussion and Afro-American funk rhythms. It is also notable as one of the first rock albums to make extensive use of the then novel technology of sampling, incorporating vocal and musical samples from a wide range of sources including Arabic music. Dub music, a more atmospheric offshoot of reggae, was also appropriated as a rhythmic and production influence by many electronic musicians and underground rock bands of the era, particularly in the United Kingdom, where reggae had achieved mainstream success.
Sampling came into wider use among hip hop DJs, who appropriated rhythms, vocal parts or backing music from existing songs and pieces and combined and manipulated them, usually to serve as backing for rap vocals by an MC. Hip hop music began as an underground urban phenomenon in the 1970s, achieved mass popular success by the late 1980s and early 1990s, and by the end of the century it had become dominant over rock as the largest selling style of pop music and the primary musical export of the United States. The importance of musical appropriation to hip hop culture has often been controversial, with many legal challenges to uncredited samples, and heavy criticism for instances where paid samples simply copied the sound of the original song (for example, Puff Daddy's sampling of a hit by The Police). However, many hip hop musicians and others have argued that sampling in hip hop is no different from the often uncredited appropriation white classical and rock musicians made of earlier black music styles such as jazz and blues, and that the DJ's creativity, as well as that of the rapper, allows the song to depart significantly from the original sources. Samples in hip hop are typically only brief snippets of the original, though they often utilize the most recognizeable riff or hook of the song. Many hip hop songs sample other forms of African American music, as well. Hank Shocklee of the influential hip hop group Public Enemy has publicly debated the practice with funk bandleader George Clinton, who sued Public Enemy for sampling one of his songs without permission.
As of the 2000s, sampling has become a common form of appropriation in pop music, which has drawn increased influence from hip hop. For example, Barbadian dancehall/pop singer Rihanna's 2006 hit "SOS" drew directly from the song "Tainted Love" by 1980s English synth pop band Soft Cell. Although both were successful on the Western pop charts, the two acts may have been seen to reflect very different cultures before the appropriation.
