- This comic lays out 2000 years of musical history. A neglected part of musical history. Again and again there have been attempts to police music; to restrict borrowing and cultural cross-fertilization. But music builds on itself. To those who think that mash-ups and sampling started with YouTube or the DJ’s turntables, it might be shocking to find that musicians have been borrowing—extensively borrowing—from each other since music began. Then why try to stop that process? The reasons varied. Philosophy, religion, politics, race—again and again, race—and law. And because music affects us so deeply, those struggles were passionate ones. They still are.
The history in this book runs from Plato to Blurred Lines and beyond. You will read about the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to standardize religious music with the first great musical technology (notation) and the inevitable backfire of that attempt. You will read about troubadours and church composers, swapping tunes (and remarkably profane lyrics), changing both religion and music in the process. You will see diatribes against jazz for corrupting musical culture, against rock and roll for breaching the color-line. You will learn about the lawsuits that, surprisingly, shaped rap. You will read the story of some of music’s iconoclasts—from Handel and Beethoven to Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ray Charles, the British Invasion and Public Enemy.
To understand this history fully, one has to roam wider still—into musical technologies from notation to the sample deck, aesthetics, the incentive systems that got musicians paid, and law’s 250 year struggle to assimilate music, without destroying it in the process. Would jazz, soul or rock and roll be legal if they were reinvented today? We are not sure. Which as you will read, is profoundly worrying because today, more than ever, we need the arts.
All of this makes up our story. It is assuredly not the only history of music. But it is definitely a part—a fascinating part—of that history. We hope you like it.
I haven't learned so much from a comic since Google Chrome appeared, though Korean in 15 minutes was more effective than expected, and Larry Gonick was great fun.
This wide-ranging history is as much the story of music as that of intellectual property; both aspects are riveting. Remember that time the artists stole church music, replacing God with a girl, and enjoyed the popularity and scandal of mixing sacred and profane? Remember the time they did it again, 800 years later?
Visual nods to icons like Kafka, Escher, Bosch, Hokusai, cameo appearances by every musical hero of the last century, and pop culture references like wardrobe malfunctions make the overview of the contemporary legal environment completely unboring. John Fogerty got in trouble for sounding like John Fogerty. Michael Bolton got busted for sounding like a song he may have heard as a kid. Courts still disagree over whether samples as short as 0.23 seconds require a license.
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