Reflection 4.

I have been thinking about copyright, intellectual property, and creative commons licenses this week. My class readings for this week focused on attribution on social media platforms and educational materials culled from online sources. I had to be honest with myself, finally acknowledging the overwhelming feeling that churns in my chest when I think about these issues. And since I’m being honest about my commitment to understanding intellectual property and copyright, I will admit that I knew that I should take the time to sit down and really learn the difference between the two but I never did. There is some guilt there. Maybe some embarrassment for not having the discipline to do it sooner. Why was that? I asked myself “What is causing me to drag my feet on this issue?” 

“Blurred Lines” Robin Thick (feat. T.I., Pharrell Williams) music video 2013

I believe part of my anxiety lies in my work as Pharrell Williams scholar and imagining how to respond inquiries about my take on the Blurred Lines case. I actively avoid it. The copyright infringement lawsuit involving Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, and Marvin Gaye’s family was a big deal in my profession. Matthew D. Morrison describes the court case from a musicological perspective writing, “ Because the law is still primarily steeped in assigning copyright to “original” written works, lyrics, or recordings generally owned by record companies, a legal discussion of “groove” or “feel” leads to what musicologists call “structural listening/analysis”—where musical elements are singled out by the chosen examiner to show how what we hear might be quantified.” So I have mixed feelings about it. Most importantly, the song itself is hard for me to listen to as a Black woman who is also a survivor. Now I understand why one of my professors, who happens to be a woman, questioned me about why I insisted on historicizing the work of male producers and artists. The ones who create tracks like “Blurred Lines.” The artists whose sonic footprint describes incredibly imaginative forms of violence against women. 

If you were to ask these men it’s all articulated in jest, and despite the biological markers of their age I hear the immaturity in their voices.  At least I want to believe that. Although the violence written in their songs are supposedly never acted upon, I believe tracks that spew misogynoir involve subtle transmission of energy to listeners, like a slow poisoning. There is a special kind of irony that reverberates in the work of Black women hip-hop scholars who chose male subjects. It is the paradox that gnaws on my conscious because I know deep down I could be moving leaps and bounds by championing artists like Noname,  Missy Elliot and Rapsody  whose albums deserve not just to be observed in music history, to exist as music history. In addition to this, the musicologists who testified on the Blurred Lines case have mighty professional legacies that I am afraid to oppose. Based on that reason alone l have vowed to myself that I won’t touch “Blurred Lines” in my dissertation.

So there is this constant tension within me as a young researcher regarding intellectual property. I recognize that in order to be a specialist on a particular musician or artist, I must know and intellectualize the good, the bad, and the ugly within my subject’s oeuvre. Yes, I believe must be shame mixed into my apprehension to write about “Blurred Lines.” When I lie awake at night sometimes, I wonder if this is a familiar feeling to historical musicologists. Do wrestle with this angst as they formulate contemporary interpretations of some dead white man’s music... let’s say in Wagner’s compositions?

There is a heap of social capital transferred to one’s research regarding the works of a vetted Western European composer, anti-Semitic or not. So maybe they don’t. After all, Wagner is solidified into the dominant canon of “generic” music history. His transgressions, although debated for many years seem to be swept under the rug so easily. I sense a vast difference between their work and mine, because at times I feel legitimizing my work in field like (ethno)musicology may be an uphill battle. As I stake out the dimensions of my own intellectual property, I take great care in considering the politics of identity and exclusion, and alienation and inclusion noting their presence in worlds of sound that I enter–whether it is gender and Hip-hop or Western European art music and Black musics. To me, no divide could be greater.