Well, I'm the old one now.

I was listening to “Funky Drummer” this past weekend (and fondly remembering mom). It sounded familiar, so I did a quick search and found out that “Funky Drummer” (featuring drummer Clyde Stubblefield) is sampled in over 1,000 tracks, but he never received royalties for his work.

What really made me pause is the incredible number of times it has been sampled. That makes the fact that Clyde never got paid royalties all the more shocking.

However, if I pause to think about it, I shouldn't really be surprised. Record labels were incredibly unfair to artists. It seems studio artists like Clyde had even less protections.

Take the Temptations for example. Their singles were selling for 70 cents up to a dollar. For every single that was sold, they got three cents. Not three cents each.

Just. Three. Cents.

Such inequalities weren't unnoticed. Abe Somer, the entertainment attorney, gave Williams one word to understand his own exploitation – slavery. It hit so hard that decades later Williams still remembers it.

Somer used the word “slavery” to make his point while Clyde's point was made for him by the sheer number of times that 20-second drum break was sampled.

Stubblefield didn't get paid royalties but that didn't mean nobody got paid.

The royalties went to James Brown. The law at the time allowed James to pay his studio musicians a flat fee while he took credit for the music.

Stubblefield may not even have expected to receive royalties from any of his work as a session musician. However, he is quoted as saying, “It didn't bug me or disturb me, but I think it's disrespectful not to pay people for what they use”.

The distinction here is that the cold gaze of the law saw no wrong-doing. But it is still similar to how artists were exploited.

M'Dear knew this. The music industry wasn't the only place that treated Blacks as second-class citizens.

M'Dear grew up in a small southern town that still had a “Whites Only” sign on the water fountain on the Courthouse wall. She and my dad attended a segregated school and were taught lessons from hand-me-down text books from the Whites-only school (I still have dad's text book).

So yes, she knew about the unfairness of it all, including the music industry. She would grit her teeth at the very mention of Elvis.

She resented Elvis and at the same time loved James Brown. I was a witness to her unfiltered joy when, during the holiday season, she heard “Merry Christmas, from the Temptations”.

My mind keeps coming back to one of my favorite hip-hop groups: NWA.

Different time (almost 30 years later) and a different genre.

Similar recording industry. Similar issue.

The industry's normal financial architecture makes it hard to tell exploitation from legitimate risk-sharing from the outside. I believe the “cold gaze of the law” would not find fault – legally.

It would be easy for Jerry Heller and Ruthless Records to exploit young black teenagers even within the bounds of the law. These were nineteen and twenty-year-olds straight out of Compton signing their first contract.

Music contracts and the people who wielded them created a power imbalance when it came to Black artists and their works. The record labels and managers created a structure that took advantage of people. And it wasn't just White managers.

Black managers were just as guilty of exploiting Black artists. However, I think White Privilege somewhat shielded White artists.

Blacks were seen as second class citizens which made them more vulnerable to structural leverage, an industry-wide power structure that abuses the disadvantaged.

This is vastly different from the fairy tale I was letting myself believe. In my naive view, Black record labels and managers, seeing the inequality, would not willingly take part in the exploitation of Black artists.

I think that “the system” (the structural leverage) is so powerful that standing together doesn't stand a chance.

The system should not be given a pass. It should definitely be called out for its exploitative practices.

I'm not going to stop enjoying the music. I'd like to believe that's what Stubblefield would have wanted. He improvised that drum beat from his heart. He wanted people to hear it, to feel the driving beat deep in their chest. But from this day forward, every hearing will be just a little bit different. Every time I hear The Funky Drummer or one of its many samples, I will also hear “he didn't get fairly paid for that work”.

#funkydrummer #motown #nwa #copyrightlaw #racialexploitation #structuralpower #inheritedmemory #complicity #PersonalEssay