activefreemedia

In what was the most energetic and intense panel of the conference, Walter F. McDonough, the General Counsel for Future of Music, moderated a panel called Into the Grey on copyright, sampling, and creator's rights. Towards the end of the panel, Holmes and Nicholas from downhill battle questioned how there were no black or hip hop artists on the panel. McDonough reacted strongly, calling them out for bringing racism into the room. He passionately stated his own roots back to Kool Herc in the Bronx back in the day, while also sharing his own efforts to reach out to hip hop artists who couldn't be there for the panel. When I talked to Holmes from downhill battle afterward, he wanted to make it clear that their point was not racial, but that it at least needed to be acknowledged that the perspective of sampling based artists/musicians was not represented on the panel.

Given the history of jazz, blues, rock n roll, and hip hop in America, I think there is a racial element to the culture of sampling (not to mention our white history of stealing/remixing black music). And if the the current attempts to criminalize the culture of sampling are successful, then the usual stereotypical suspects would probably suffer the consequences. So while Hip Hop is and has always been a multiracial culture, I do think that the Future of Music Summit would be taken to a whole other level if Hip Hop generation leaders were in the room and on the panels. At the upcoming Hip Hop Political Convention June 16-19 in Newark, it's important for the Hip Hop generation to take a stand not only for great technology resources in our schools, but also for sampling friendly policies and laws, so that the next Grandmaster Flash or DJ Dangermouse won't be thrown in jail or fined heavily for his next art project. Personally, I'm looking to continue participating the free culture movement by reading Lessig's book, continuing with my performance, and using Creative Commons licenses everywhere I can.

The Future of Music Coalition is great because it gets politicians, laywers, musicians, and industry folks in the same room. It's the healthy disagreement that pushes ideas forward and demonstrates the value of diversity and democracy. Fortunately, as FCC commissioner Michael Copps said in his keynote, "This is the best opportunity the country is going to have, perhaps in a generation, to work to fix media concentration and create media democracy in this country." So next year, when congress comes back in January, and the telecommunications industry has pumped in $40 million into rewriting telecommunications policy, let's continue to bridge our differences and continue to shift the momentum to make sure that our national conversation about music and media includes localism, ownership, democracy, and justice.