person:chuck berry

Londres : deux rappeurs condamnés à des peines de prison pour les paroles d’une de leurs chansons
▻https://lundi.am/Les-tentatives-de-censurer-la-drill-ont-franchi-un-nouveau-cap-alarmant

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Les beats sont délibérément épars et menaçants, et les paroles tendent vers le sombre, vers des récits violents de la vie de quartier.
Elle est criminalisée parce qu’elle décrit souvent des activités criminelles ; et ainsi, c’est plus facile pour la police d’aller chercher des personnes parlant juste du crime à Londres, que d’aller poursuivre les criminels avérés.
Qu’est-ce qui est reproché à Skengdo & AM ?

Les deux ont été condamnés à 9 mois de prison avec sursis parce qu’il ont joué un titre insultant contenant les noms de rappeurs rivaux.
Comment décrirais-tu le contexte raciste de l’affaire ?

Les hommes noirs sont considérés comme des malades et des criminels violents. L’idée que ces deux artistes pourraient avoir exprimé leurs conditions de vie avec habileté et esprit s’est complètement dissoute dans l’urgence qu’il y a eu de les étiqueter comme membres de gang, et malfrats. Il y a une longue histoire d’artistes blancs qui traitaient de thèmes inconfortables, mais leur liberté d’y impliquer des expériences vécues est rarement étendue aux jeunes noirs...

(1) Pour Scotland Yard, drill rime avec crime - Culture / Next
▻https://next.liberation.fr/musique/2018/10/12/pour-scotland-yard-drill-rime-avec-crime_1684990

https://medias.liberation.fr/photo/1163194-b169146-r1-13-12jpg.jpg?modified_at=1539364630&picto=fb&ratio_x=191&ratio_y=100&width=600

En Angleterre et au pays de Galles, les crimes à l’arme blanche ont augmenté de 22 % en 2017 par rapport à 2016 et 39 enfants et adolescents ont été poignardés à mort. En août, la capitale a passé la barre des 100 morts violentes. Les rappeurs sont en première ligne : entre mai et août, trois MCs sont morts par arme blanche ou arme à feu dans le quartier de Camberwell. « C’est triste, mais tu ne peux pas changer la volonté de Dieu. Qu’ils reposent en paix », jette Scribz, 26 ans, membre du groupe 67, également connu sous l’alias LD et pour son masque à la MF Doom. Dans la cour de l’immeuble où ils ont grandi, les jeunes rappeurs sont résignés - blasés presque. « C’est la loi de la rue, tout arrive pour une raison », assène Liquez, 21 ans, le plus jeune du groupe. De nombreux « drillers » sont passés par la prison, notamment pour possession d’armes.

Londres est une ville pétrie d’inégalités. 37 % des enfants y vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté, 81 clubs de jeunes ont fermé depuis 2011 à la suite de coupes budgétaires et les frais universitaires ont explosé (9 000 livres par an, soit 10 300 euros environ) pendant qu’une bourse destinée aux étudiants les plus pauvres (EMA) était supprimée. Un quotidien brutal aux minces perspectives qui se reflète dans les couplets des MCs. Mais pour la police, le lien est fait entre cette recrudescence de violence et le drill : « La musique drill est associée à des paroles qui rendent glamour de graves violences, des meurtres, des coups de couteau », a dénoncé en mai Cressida Dick, patronne de la Met, la police de Londres, appelant YouTube à supprimer certaines vidéos de la plateforme. Fin mai, l’agence Press Association annonçait que 30 vidéos environ avaient été supprimées. Un chiffre sous-évalué, corrige-t-on chez YouTube, sans donner de précisions.

Nés pour le rap
▻http://www.revue21.fr/zoom_sur/nes-pour-le-rap

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Chief Keef porte un bracelet électronique, condamné pour « fabrication et vente d’héroïne ». Il s’en moque : « Rien à foutre de cette merde, je sais que j’irai en enfer. » Né en 1995 dans le ghetto de Chicago, élevé par la rue, il appartient au gang des Black Disciples. « Bang » est sa première chanson. Elle est vue dix millions de fois. Les suivantes – « I don’t like », « Love Sosa » – font de lui une star mondiale. D’autres jeunes le suivent et on se met à parler du rap « drill » de Chicago. La drill n’a pas de définition officielle. C’est une mise en scène de la violence sur un rythme planant, c’est jeune et brut, ça marche parce que c’est réel. « Bang. »

« Chief Keef est Chicago, il n’aurait pas pu venir d’ailleurs. Les rappeurs drill n’inventent rien. Ils mettent des rimes au bout de leur vie, et leurs vies ne sont pas belles à voir », explique son producteur. Pas aussi branchée que New York, moins pailletée que Los Angeles, la troisième ville des États-Unis est une boiteuse. Blancs et Noirs vivent à part : les riches au nord, les pauvres autour. En 2012, la ville a enregistré 532 meurtres et 2 670 blessés par balle.

▻https://zone024.fr/2018/01/28/uk-drill

Plagiarists or innovators ? The Led Zeppelin paradox endures
▻https://theconversation.com/plagiarists-or-innovators-the-led-zeppelin-paradox-endures-102368

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La musique entre usage des communs et plagiat, entre appropriation et « just have fun ». Superbe article.

Fifty years ago – in September 1968 – the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin first performed together, kicking off a Scandinavian tour billed as the New Yardbirds.

The new, better name would come later that fall, while drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980 effectively ended their decade-defining reign. But to this day, the band retains the same iconic status it held back in the 1970s: It ranks as one of the best-selling music acts of all time and continues to shape the sounds of new and emerging groups young enough to be the band members’ grandchildren.

Yet, even after all this time – when every note, riff and growl of Zeppelin’s nine-album catalog has been pored over by fans, cover artists and musicologists – a dark paradox still lurks at the heart of its mystique. How can a band so slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright plagiaristic – be simultaneously considered so innovative and influential?

How, in other words, did it get to have its custard pie and eat it, too?

As a scholar who researches the subtle complexities of musical style and originality as well as the legal mechanisms that police and enforce them, such as copyright law, I find this a particularly devilish conundrum. The fact that I’m also a bassist in a band that fuses multiple styles of music makes it personal.
A pattern of ‘borrowing’

For anyone who quests after the holy grail of creative success, Led Zeppelin has achieved something mythical in stature: a place in the musical firmament, on its own terms, outside of the rules and without compromise.

When Led Zeppelin debuted its eponymous first album in 1969, there’s no question that it sounded new and exciting. My father, a baby boomer and dedicated Beatles fan, remembers his chagrin that year when his middle school math students threw over the Fab Four for Zeppelin, seemingly overnight. Even the stodgy New York Times, which decried the band’s “plastic sexual superficiality,” felt compelled, in the same article, to acknowledge its “enormously successful … electronically intense blending” of musical styles.

Yet, from the very beginning, the band was also dogged with accusations of musical pilfering, plagiarism and copyright infringement – often justifiably.

The band’s first album, “Led Zeppelin,” contained several songs that drew from earlier compositions, arrangements and recordings, sometimes with attribution and often without. It included two Willie Dixon songs, and the band credited both to the influential Chicago blues composer. But it didn’t credit Anne Bredon when it covered her song “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.”

The hit “Dazed and Confused,” also from that first album, was originally attributed to Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. However in 2010, songwriter Jake Holmes filed a lawsuit claiming that he’d written and recorded it in 1967. After the lawsuit was settled out of court, the song is now credited in the liner notes of re-releases as “inspired by” Holmes.
‘Dazed and Confused’ by Jake Holmes.

The band’s second album, “Led Zeppelin II,” picked up where the first left off. Following a series of lawsuits, the band agreed to list Dixon as a previously uncredited author on two of the tracks, including its first hit single, “Whole Lotta Love.” An additional lawsuit established that blues legend Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett was a previously uncredited author on another track called “The Lemon Song.”

Musical copyright infringement is notoriously challenging to establish in court, hence the settlements. But there’s no question the band engaged in what musicologists typically call “borrowing.” Any blues fan, for instance, would have recognized the lyrics of Dixon’s “You Need Love” – as recorded by Muddy Waters – on a first listen of “Whole Lotta Love.”
Dipping into the commons or appropriation?

Should the band be condemned for taking other people’s songs and fusing them into its own style?

Or should this actually be a point of celebration?

The answer is a matter of perspective. In Zeppelin’s defense, the band is hardly alone in the practice. The 1960s folk music revival movement, which was central to the careers of Baez, Holmes, Bredon, Dixon and Burnett, was rooted in an ethic that typically treated musical material as a “commons” – a wellspring of shared culture from which all may draw, and to which all may contribute.

Most performers in the era routinely covered “authorless” traditional and blues songs, and the movement’s shining star, Bob Dylan, used lyrical and musical pastiche as a badge of pride and display of erudition – “Look how many old songs I can cram into this new song!” – rather than as a guilty, secret crutch to hold up his own compositions.

Why shouldn’t Zeppelin be able to do the same?
Willie Dixon’s imprint can be found on a number of Led Zeppelin songs. Brianmcmillen, CC BY-SA

On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the racial dynamics inherent in Led Zeppelin’s borrowing. Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf were African-Americans, members of a subjugated minority who were – especially back then – excluded from reaping their fair share of the enormous profits they generated for music labels, publishers and other artists.

Like their English countrymen Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, Zeppelin’s attitude toward black culture seems eerily reminiscent of Lord Elgin’s approach to the marble statues of the Parthenon and Queen Victoria’s policy on the Koh-i-Noor diamond: Take what you can and don’t ask permission; if you get caught, apologize without ceding ownership.

Led Zeppelin was also accused of lifting from white artists such as Bredon and the band Spirit, the aggrieved party in a recent lawsuit over the rights to Zeppelin’s signature song “Stairway to Heaven.” Even in these cases, the power dynamics were iffy.

Bredon and Spirit are lesser-known composers with lower profiles and shallower pockets. Neither has benefited from the glow of Zeppelin’s glory, which has only grown over the decades despite the accusations and lawsuits leveled against them.
A matter of motives

So how did the band pull it off, when so many of its contemporaries have been forgotten or diminished? How did it find and keep the holy grail? What makes Led Zeppelin so special?

I could speculate about its cultural status as an avatar of trans-Atlantic, post-hippie self-indulgence and “me generation” rebellion. I could wax poetic about its musical fusion of pre-Baroque and non-Western harmonies with blues rhythms and Celtic timbres. I could even accuse it, as many have over the years, of cutting a deal with the devil.

Instead, I’ll simply relate a personal anecdote from almost 20 years ago. I actually met frontman Robert Plant. I was waiting in line at a lower Manhattan bodega around 2 a.m. and suddenly realized Plant was waiting in front of me. A classic Chuck Berry song was playing on the overhead speakers. Plant turned to look at me and mused, “I wonder what he’s up to now?” We chatted about Berry for a few moments, then paid and went our separate ways.

Brief and banal though it was, I think this little interlude – more than the reams of music scholarship and journalism I’ve read and written – might hold the key to solving the paradox.

Maybe Led Zeppelin is worthy because, like Sir Galahad, the knight who finally gets the holy grail, its members’ hearts were pure.

During our brief exchange, it was clear Plant didn’t want to be adulated – he didn’t need his ego stroked by a fawning fan. Furthermore, he and his bandmates were never even in it for the money. In fact, for decades, Zeppelin refused to license its songs for television commercials. In Plant’s own words, “I only wanted to have some fun.”

Maybe the band retained its fame because it lived, loved and embodied rock and roll so absolutely and totally – to the degree that Plant would start a conversation with a total stranger in the middle of the night just to chat about one of his heroes.

This love, this purity of focus, comes out in its music, and for this, we can forgive Led Zeppelin’s many trespasses.

#Communs #Led_Zeppelin #Musique

In Defense of Cultural Appropriation - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/in-defense-of-cultural-appropriation.html

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What is cultural appropriation, and why is it so controversial? Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University, defines it as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission.” This can include the “unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

Appropriation suggests theft, and a process analogous to the seizure of land or artifacts. In the case of culture, however, what is called appropriation is not theft but messy interaction. Writers and artists necessarily engage with the experiences of others. Nobody owns a culture, but everyone inhabits one, and in inhabiting a culture, one finds the tools for reaching out to other cultures.

Critics of cultural appropriation insist that they are opposed not to cultural engagement, but to racism. They want to protect marginalized cultures and ensure that such cultures speak for themselves, not simply be seen through the eyes of more privileged groups.

There are few figures more important to the development of rock ’n’ roll than Chuck Berry (who died in March). In the 1950s, white radio stations refused to play his songs, categorizing them as “race music.” Then came Elvis Presley. A white boy playing the same tunes was cool. Elvis was feted, Mr. Berry and other black pioneers largely ignored. Racism defined who became the cultural icon.

But imagine that Elvis had been prevented from appropriating so-called black music. Would that have challenged racism, or eradicated Jim Crow laws? Clearly not. It took a social struggle — the civil rights movement — to bring about change. That struggle was built not on cultural separation, but on the demand for equal rights and universal values.

#Appropriabilité #racisme #folklore #culture

Mort de Chuck Berry, la légende du rock’n’roll
▻http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/musique/rock/mort-de-chuck-berry-la-legende-du-rock-n-roll-253885

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Chuck Berry, un des pères fondateurs du rock’n roll, est décédé samedi 18 mars à l’âge de 90 ans. Le guitariste et chanteur américain pouvait s’enorgueillir d’avoir révolutionné la musique.
[...]
Si Chuck Berry est peut-être monté au ciel, son légendaire « Johnny B. Goode » l’y a précédé. C’est le seul morceau de musique rock gravé sur le disque d’or emporté par les sondes Voyager I et II avec d’autres trésors de l’Humanité dans l’espoir qu’ils puissent être décryptés par des extra-terrestres.

#rock #rocknroll #infopunk #chuck_berry

Mort de Chuck Berry, l’un des pères fondateurs du rock’n’roll
▻http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2017/03/19/mort-de-chuck-berry-l-un-des-peres-fondateurs-du-rock-n-roll_5096973

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En février 1972, lors d’une émission de télévision, John Lennon (1940-1980), avait été affirmatif : « Si vous cherchez un autre nom à donner au rock’n’roll, vous devez l’appeler Chuck Berry. » Père fondateur du rock’n’roll. Même si les concurrents les plus directs de Chuck Berry, lors de l’âge d’or du genre, dans les années 1950, les pianistes et chanteurs Jerry Lee Lewis et Little Richard, les guitaristes et chanteurs Bo Diddley (1928-2008), Buddy Holly (1936-1959) et Eddie Cochran (1938-1960) ou Elvis Presley (1935-1977) se sont vus aussi, en diverses occasions, décernés ce titre.

Et si le guitariste, chanteur et auteur-compositeur américain, mort samedi 18 mars à son domicile de Saint Charles (Missouri), à l’âge de 90 ans, pouvait leur reconnaître du talent, c’était aussitôt pour déclarer qu’il était, lui, Charles Edward Anderson Berry, « meilleur interprète, meilleur instrumentiste, meilleur chanteur et meilleur homme de scène ». Les causes de sa mort n’ont pas été indiquées.

#musique #Chuck_Berry #Rock_n_roll

#music
Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell (Lyrics)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeKPkGflDB4

The record NASA sent to aliens is now on SoundCloud | Chart Attack
▻http://www.chartattack.com/news/2015/07/30/the-record-nasa-sent-to-aliens-is-now-on-soundcloud

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Launched in 1977, the two Voyager spacecrafts were each loaded with a golden phonograph record documenting life on Earth should either probe ever contact aliens. Their mission was to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune before floating out of our solar system into interstellar space, hurtling away from the sun at 17 kilometres a second. Famous space guy Carl Sagan called the project a “bottle in the cosmic ocean.” Now, for your enjoyment, NASA has uploaded their message to SoundCloud.

The recordings contain greetings in 55 languages, from Akkadian to Wu, as well as an assortment of sounds representative of life on earth, like a heartbeat, a mother kissing her child and the whistle of a train. The golden records also carry 90 minutes of music (not upped to SoundCloud, presumably for copyright reasons), including standards like Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, First Movement.

▻https://soundcloud.com/nasa/sets/golden-record-greetings-to-the

Larsens III. Chuck Berry. Club To Ten. #Paris. Février 66
▻http://www.larevuedesressources.org/larsens-iii-chuck-berry-club-to-ten-paris-fevrier-66,2834.html

À peine quelques photos et je sens déjà l’effet d’une sorte de persistance rétinienne. Les images commencent à se chevaucher, voire à se superposer les unes sur les autres. Bien sûr, la posture de Chuck y est pour quelque chose, tellement proche de celle que prenait Johnny Ramone à l’Eric’s Club une semaine avant ou onze ans plus tard : retour de ces jambes qu’on lance de part et d’autre du buste, loin, le plus loin possible, histoire peut-être de s’ancrer plus fortement dans le sol, peut-être aussi pour (...)

#Larsens_-_Grégory_Hosteins

/ #Musiques_populaires_contemporaines_et_actuelles, Paris, #Altermondialisme

Chuck Berry | Lost Broadcasts 2012
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFecEj0HUrY

Chuck Berry - Rock and Roll Music - Toronto, Canada - 1969
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U_hRhImaBU

PENNEBAKER HEGEDUS FILMS
▻http://phfilms.com/films

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D A (Donn Alan) Pennebaker is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of cinema verite filmmaking. In the early sixties, Pennebaker and his colleague Richard Leacock developed one of the first fully portable 16mm synchronized camera and sound recording systems which revolutionized filmmaking and helped to created the immediate style of shooting so popular today. Pennebaker is the recipient of numerous filmmaking awards including the IFP’s Gotham Award. Pennebaker made his first film, the short DAYBREAK EXPRESS, in 1953. In 1959, he joined Drew Associates, which produced for Time-Life the highly acclaimed “Living Camera” series in the early 1960s. The filmmakers’ subjects ranged from the Broadway debut of Jane Fonda (Jane), to President Kennedy’s presidential primary run against Hubert Humphrey (Primary), to the desegregation of the University of Alabama (Crisis). In 1967, Pennebaker released the seminal film DONT LOOK BACK, which followed Bob Dylan’s last acoustic concert tour in England. The film broke box office records and is considered a classic of both documentary and rock filmmaking.
...

How an Electric Guitar Actually Works
►http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/electric-guitar

The electric guitar has become a staple in jazz, rock and pop music. Today, many of us couldn’t even imagine our favorite tunes without the influences of Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and countless others — and who could forget how Jimi Hendrix forever changed the American national anthem?

But before that sweet sound can come through your speakers, a fascinating technological process takes place. Electric guitars essentially transform string vibrations into electromagnetic energy. The process is quick and simple to understand, but pretty impressive for a 1931 invention.

To understand how an electric guitar works, first you need to know its various components. Let’s take a closer look at one of the most popular instruments in the world.

#AC/DC - School Days (Chuck Berry cover)
►http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htvPTP67qOQ