Seeger Ethnomusicology PDF
Seeger Ethnomusicology PDF
Seeger Ethnomusicology PDF
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VOL.36, No. 3 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FALL
1992
345
346 Ethnomusicology, Fall 1992
(described in Seeger 1981, 1987), and then move through stages of research,
publication, and dissemination of their music. This approach is meant to be
cautionary as well as illustrative-I did not pay as much attention to these
issues then as I would today, and there are no clear answers to some
questions. Furthermore, many of these considerations apply to video and
print media, as well as our own use of our colleagues' publications.
powerful invocation to remove the pain of scorpion and spider bites, the
owner/controller thought it was so valuable that he didn't teach it to anyone,
and died its sole possessor. In this case an individual may compose an
invocation, perform it on sick people (who will give him a gift if they get
better), and decide when and if they will teach it to someone else (also with
the obligation for a return gift).4
observe their desires. But how would future users know about our
agreements-and would the Suya in the futureremember that they had given
me permission to record these songs?
I thought I needed evidence of my right to make the recordings in the
first place. I tried to have performers state their permission to record them
at the startof every tape or every event (not being literate,it would have been
absurd to ask them to sign a release they could not read in a language they
did not understand). Who, though, was I asking?I may have been asking the
wrong person. Or once asked, it may be difficultto say no, and possible only
to say "hmmmm,what?"-easily misunderstood to be agreement in the heat
of the event.5 Who should I have asked? The animal who originated the
song?6The person who transmittedit?The person who was dead who had
sung it?The person who was singing it?These issues were never clarified,
partly because I wasn't very concerned with them myself, at the time.
heard, and play it there?Once in the archives, who should be able to consult
the recordings?I found out laterthat restrictionswere such that in some cases
members of the community recorded were prevented from listening to
recordings of their own music because the depositor had restricted access,
without exceptions. He/she had probably done so inadvertently, and then
disappeared from the address list, so that the Archives could not request
permission for others to use the material. Regardless of the motive, the
enduring legacy was one of rights, and the collector claimed them all.7
One of the things I subsequently did as Director of the Archives of
Traditional Music was to revise the contracts to correct some of the
inadequacies that stood out when I was trying to decide how to allocate
rights to the sounds between the Suya, myself, and the Archives. But it is
difficult to predict future inadequacies. The point here is that although
Western copyright law hasn't even been invoked yet, the networks of rights
and obligations on these sounds are already very complex indeed. Each
intermediary adds a level of overlapping rights.
company proven to be scrupulous. Nor have ethics about the recording and
use of other people's music always been the same. Using the intellectual
property of non-Western societies is still unregulated today, but our
awareness is changing (see CulturalSurvival 1991).
Record companies and commercial recordings are the interface between
communities like the Suya and the multi-national recording industry. That
industry operates according to a highly complex set of rules of its own that
have nothing to do with the original animal composers, the people-without-
spirits,the kandewho sang the song for the firsttime, the moiety that controls
its performance, or even the ethnomusicologist who supplies them with a
tape. Record companies usually copyright the recording and negotiate for
its subleasing. Most record companies also have a publishing company,
which may take out the copyright on any recently composed songs.
Copyright at Work
A composer once wrote a song to celebrate birthdays, and copyrighted
it under the name of "Happy Birthday."Happily for him, the song became
an integral partof rites of passage in the United States, and since a publishing
company vigilantly administered the copyright, every concert performance,
commercial recording, television performance, and film performance of that
simple melody and repetitive text brings money to the composer and his
publishing company-nearly one million dollars a year in the 1980s (David
Sengstack, former administrator of the copyright, conversation). Under
existing copyright law a composer writes a song, copyrights it with a
publishing company, and they both receive a considerable amount of money
from the music industry, which is set up to allocate such royalties.
Copyright Unworkable
Compare "Happy Birthday"with a Suya song called "Big Turtle Song"
published on A Arte Vocaldos Suya (Seeger e Comunidade Suya 1982). Sung
during the dry season, its authorship in the distant past is attributed to a
species of honey bee. Sharing its name ("Big Turtle Song") with dozens of
other melodies and texts sung at the same time of year, "Big Turtle Song"
doesn't fit the U.S. popular music-based model. It was originally composed
over seventy-five years ago, and is "owned" by a community, not an
individual. To complicate this, the Suya are not considered fully "adult"in
Brazilian law, and have neither corporate nor individual legal identity.
Tacape Records and I may indicate our control of the use of the master tape
on which that particular version of "Big Turtle Song" is recorded, but if
someone else wants to use its musical ideas, there isn't much that I, the
record company, or the Suya can do about it. Even if we stretched some of
the intentions of internationalcopyright law and copyrighted the song as an
arrangement of traditionalmaterial,we would not have the staff or expertise
to ensure compliance.9
Copyright Contested
Those are the pure cases. U.S. musical practice is filled with conflict and
adjudication, as anyone who has spent much time with professional
musicians or reads Billboard can attest. Whether the conflict is with
management, boards of directors, recording companies, copyright infringe-
ment, or colleagues, it is clear that music is made in a social matrix as
contentious as most of the rest of the society.
354 Ethnomusicology, Fall 1992
In fact, the copyright law is far from equitable, and the U.S. is less
generous than most to artists.The new GATTtalks (the so-called Uruguay
round) may result in some changes of international copyright codes,
however, and UNESCOhas been working on statutes for controlling cultural
property (CulturalSurvival 1991). But there is a long way to go before "Big
Turtle Song" is protected and the Suya are collecting from public perfor-
mances.
attention altogether. Our discipline will be poorer for neglecting the rights
and obligations associated with music, and we will have less and less to
contribute to a dialogue about contemporary music, which is increasingly
shaped by the very processes we appear to be ignoring.
Notes
1. I am indebted to AlanJabbour,KristerMalm,JudithMcColloh,and Steven Feld for sending
me their publications (Hickerson 1978;Jabbour 1982) and discussing this subject with me, and
to CulturalSurvivalfor giving me an opportunity to write some initialideas about it. My research
on the topic has been supported by the Center for Folklife Programs and CulturalHistory of
the Smithsonian Institution. My research among the Suya was funded by many different
agencies over the years (see Seeger 1987, acknowledgements, for a complete list), to all of which
I continue to be grateful.
2. For information on this, or a copy of the form, write to KristerMalm, ICTMCopyright
Committee, Musikmuseet, Box 16236, S-103 26 Stockholm, Sweden.
3. Actually, they literally said that if someone sang it and fooled around singing it, I could
say "hmmmm,what?"I am not exactly sure what my rights might be beyond calling attention
to the fact that I am the owner/controller and therefore the person in a position to say whether
a performance is suitable or not.
4. Men-without-spiritswho teach songs to their "owner/controllers"are not given any gifts,
nor do they willfully withhold a song from people who ask for one.
5. Suya etiquette demands that when you are asked for something you must give it, or at
the most postpone giving it. Refusal to give something is a strong social act, and implies a
severing of relationships. Thus it might be very difficult for the Suya to respond to a direct
question "mayI record this"with anything stronger than a "hmmmm,what? Later."This raises
quite a few questions about the legitimacy of even formal contractual agreements between
members of hierarchically ranged and culturally different communities.
6. When I was particularly insistent on knowing the meaning of a song text the ritual
specialist couldn't understand, he said "the only one who knows is the jaguarwho taught us."
The author seemed a bit beyond reach to me, and I dropped the question.
7. There are, of course, reasons that one might restrict members of the originating
community from listening to tapes. For example, secret songs of one moiety or social group
might need to be kept from another moiety or social group, or interviews about politics could
be dangerous if they fell into the hands of the opposition.
8. For more details consult James and Kleiner (1982) for general information and Shemel
(1990) for details about U.S. copyright practices in music. For criticism of current practices see
Wallis and Malm (1984) and Dannen (1990).
9. This doesn't mean that one is always without recourse. At least one ethnomusicologist,
Ellen Leichtman, has set up a publishing company to protect musicians whose music is often
unprotected; some record companies copyright arrangements and protect the interest of the
artist;and there may be more coordinated ways ethnomusicologists interested in this subject
can act in the future. Judith McColloh tells me that Earl Spielman, A Ph.D. in Musicology, has
created a field he calls "ForensicMusicology,"he serves as an expert witness in cases of alleged
infringement of musical copyrights. There are certainly other interesting possibilities for the
applications of ethnomusicological and musicological thought.
Ethnomusicologyand MusicLaw 359
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