Book Review: Music Borrowing and Copyright Law

This is a review of Music Borrowing and Copyright Law, a Genre-by-Genre Analysis, edited by Enrico Bonadio (City, University of London) and Chen Wei Zhu (University of Birmingham). The book examines the multifaceted dynamics between copyright law and music borrowing within different music genres from across the world, including pop, hip-hop, jazz, blues, electronic and dance music, as well as region-specific genres, such as Jamaican music, River Plate Tango, Irish folk music, Hungarian folk music, Flamenco, Indian traditional music, Australian indigenous music, and Māori music. There are over 30 contributors to the volume, including academics, musicologists, and lawyers.  

 

In the foreword, Paul Heald situates this edited collection alongside Aplin and Bently’s Global Mandatory Fair Use (IPKat review here) in offering a solution to the question of “how can the law better align with the expectations of musicians with the structures of copyright?” Heald suggests that Aplin and Bently offer one half of the response, and this volume provides the other, within the music context.

The introduction, written by the editors, sets out the aim of the collection as “forging a forum where international experts in music and law share their views on how the theory and practice of music copyright may be recalibrated in the fascinating field of music borrowing.” 

The book is divided into two main parts. Part one consists of six chapters and includes chapters that consider music borrowing in relation to genre formation, historical typology, copyright jurisprudence, forensic musicology, and music as traditional cultural expression. 

Part two consists of 22 chapters that analyse genre-specific music borrowing. This part is divided into five subsections, according to “rough” geographical affiliation (general; Americas; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia and Oceania). The editors explain that this categorisation of genres is ontologically problematic, and the grouping is for the purpose of organising the chapters. The editors consider that these chapters are the “beginning of a much longer music-legal journey that we hope many more interested people will join beyond this book in the future.”

There are a total of 28 chapters. Readers who have watched Sir Robin Jacob’s lecture On Trial: Mozart and Other Pirates will be particularly intrigued by chapter five. In the lecture, Sir Robin tells the story of the musicologist who joined the case involving Vangelis and his song Chariots of Fire. Chapter five of this volume is written by that musicologist, Guy Protheroe. He shares the story from his perspective on that first case which led him to give opinions “on several thousand matters since.”

In the final chapter, Jonathan Barrett considers the delicate balance between open engagement between cultures and cultural appropriation, within the context of Māori music of the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. Māori song stems from the emotions of the gods during the creation of aeons, the music “summoned the universe into existence.” Each of their musical instruments is derived from a particular god, therefore the Māori instruments have a spiritual meaning as well as an entertainment value. Barrett explains that this chapter “examines the fundamental importance of music and musicality to Māori culture, the obligations undertaken by the Crown to protect this cultural treasure; the Crown’s failure to honour its duties; the inadequacies of British-heritage copyright laws in protecting Māori cultural treasures; and the potential for laws that synthesise different world views to protect indigenous culture, while upholding basic copyright culture.” An ambitious aim that Barrett achieves in an engaging and candid chapter.  

This edited collection will be enjoyed by scholars and practitioners interested in music and copyright, as well as musical cultural heritage. The in-depth genre-by-genre analysis provides a unique contribution to the literature on music borrowing.

Details:

Published: 2023

Format: Hardback, Ebook (PDF)

Extent 704

ISBN 9781509949403

Imprint Hart Publishing

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing