Sampling Politics Today

In this first issue of the Norient Sound Series, we examine how political contexts of our time are transformed into musical production. Among many further accounts, we follow the sampling of car horns in Indonesia, read about an Italian refugee project that uses smartphones as sampling resources, and reflect on ethical questions such as: can one sample sounds of war? With case studies from all around the world, this Norient Special approaches sampling as a tool for critical thought and a way of alternative storytelling. Download PDF with introduction and table of contents here. Edited by Hannes Liechti, Philipp Rhensius, and Thomas Burkhalter.

Pushing Critical Thought: Sampling Politics Today
Introduction by Hannes Liechti
In this first issue of the Norient Sound Series, we examine how political contexts of our time are transformed into musical production. With case studies from all around the world, this Norient Special approaches sampling as a tool for critical thought and a way of alternative storytelling.
The Indian Side of Sampling
Short Essay by Audio Pervert
SamratB aka Audio Pervert examines the aesthetics of «sampling the political» in contemporary Indian electronic music. He takes us on a journey through various ways of sampling political words and speeches, from the militant cutting of Bollywood soundtracks by MumBai Mafia to Kid Kishore, who samples Indian vernacular streams without understanding them.
Cut-Up as Political Practice
Short Essay by Vinícius Fernandes
The cut-up technique, developed by writer William S. Burroughs in the 1960s, can be considered one of sampling’s predecessors. Burroughs’ logic of the perverse agent stealthily using the medium for manipulation by producing an illusion of semiotic normality seems foreboding of 21st century phenomena like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. An astonishing and precise premonition as our author argues.
Complicating Critique
Short Essay by Vika Kirchenbauer
When artist, writer and music producer Vika Kirchenbauer started developing a body of work based on sampling the choral tradition of Sacred Harp, her initial interest was to research and critique the role of music within projects of colonization. Soon, the producer came to understand that practices such as «sampling as critique» are invariably marked by contradictory attachments to their sources and therefore require a more complex analysis.
Recovering Sample Authorship: The Case of Sohan Lal
Essay by Chris McGuinness
As digital samplers became more prominent during the 1990s, the «soundware» industry grew, providing sample libraries for music producers to use in their derivative works. South Asian sounds have long occupied a place in this market while being advertised as «world» sounds. Here, Chris McGuinness discusses the case of Sohan Lal, a Punjabi singer whose voice ended up in such a sample library and was used in many popular songs.
Sampling Sounds of War
Short Essay by Luis Velasco-Pufleau
What are the political implications and ethical concerns of sampling sounds of war? This is a critical question raised by «The End of Silence», a 2013 record from the British composer Matthew Herbert based entirely on a six-second field recording of the Libyan civil war. Musicologist Luis Velasco-Pufleau examines this question and argues that sound and music can enable critical examinations of the rationale of war.
The Politics of Sample Chopping in Belo Horizonte
Short Essay by Michel Brasil
Sampling is one of the most important techniques used in rap’s musical production. Restriction on the use of samples resulted in creative adaptations. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, hip hop producers increasingly use the technique of sample chopping because of both economic and political reasons. Our author argues that producers are even forced to chop samples due to copyright issues.
Spreading Cultural Heritage Through Remix and App Technology
Short Essay by Cristiano Figueiró, Henrique Souza Lima
Cristiano Figueiró and Henrique Souza Lima created a track made by sampling, editing, and remixing recordings from a performance made by the Brazilian group Côco de Umbigada (CdU). Here, Figuerió and Souza Lima contextualize the CdU as a cultural and political agent in the city of Olinda, Brazil, and they describe the choices they made while working with the recorded material.
The Politics of Sampling in the Age of Machine Learning
Short Essay by Eduardo Navas
In this essay, Eduardo Navas considers the political implications of sampling as a cultural variable in relation to aesthetics and labor in juxtaposition with the emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Navas reflects on how automated and self-training forms of production are reshaping the creative possibilities in music and culture.
The Learning Process of Sampling
Short Essay by Eomac
In this testimonial, the electronic music producer Eomac describes how his sampling strategy has changed over time. Starting out as a young producer, he used any sound available. Temporary ending as an experienced musician, he is confronted by complex ethical questions. Today, when using foreign sounds, Eomac emphasizes the intent behind as key.
Dancing to Colonial Archives
Short Essay by Harry Edwards
The label «Beating Heart Project» repurposes ethnomusicological recordings from the International Library of African Music (ILAM) in Grahamstown, South Africa, to raise money for its charitable projects in Malawi and South Africa. In this article, Harry Edwards discusses the project’s sampling ethics and the supposed unequal power relations inherent to sampling in electronic dance music.
A Viral Horn for the Global Village
Short Essay by Luigi Monteanni
In 2016, the Indonesian practice «om telolet om» related to the playing of bus horns went viral. It has reached the EDM music community and generated several remixes featuring samples from various Indonesian cellphone videos. Here, our author problematizes the phenomenon in relation to global and local cultures and creative production in contemporary music.
The Material Politics of Techno Punk
Short Essay by Marcel Zaes
Experimental electronic producer Kyoka’s track «Toy Planet» is not overtly political. Yet, our author argues that the frenetic cutting techniques that Kyoka uses to arrange her sampled sound materials stand for what he calls «techno punk», an attitude that emerges at the re-contextualization of samples that reduces them to a pure sonic fabric devoid of semantics or extra-musical meaning. And the unpolitical becomes political.
Arbiters of Taste: Poptimist Sampling in Experimental Club Music
Short Essay by Giuseppe Zevolli
The encounter between experimental club music and mainstream pop has become ubiquitous in the sampling practices of avant-garde electronic musicians of the 2010s. Far from being ironic takes on the originals, our author argues that these practices have worked to question the inclusivity of electronic music scenes, demonstrating that the critical work of poptimism may be unfinished business.
Sounding the Afterglow
Short Essay by Guy Baron
Can music production portray nuanced, complex subjectivities relating to reminiscence and retrospection? In a detailed examination of his track «22 – 122», Guy Baron shows how a musical interpretation of an «afterglow» can be made with audio processing and sampling techniques. By offering a radically prolonged and re-imagined impression of a past, he asks how such interpretation challenges conceptions of temporality.
Sampling the Sacred in House Music
Short Essay by Liam Thomas Maloney
Since 1984, house music has plundered the musical language and recordings of Christianity, particularly the Pentecostal and Gospel traditions, without stirring any apparent backlash. Yet, in recent years dance music producers have attempted to sample comparable Islamic sonic materials and courted controversy with the establishment in North Africa and the Middle East. Is sampling a tool that can be used indiscriminately across cultures? Or are there limits to its reach?
Sampling Between Safeguarding and Renovating
Short Essay by Noel James Lobley
In response to Harry Edwards’ article «Dancing to Colonial Archives», Noel Lobley considers if sampling ethnographic sound fragments must inevitably operate under pre-existing power dynamics or if there are other independent ways to sample, remix, and curate locally-owned culture.
Sounding Indigenous Imaginaries?
Short Essay by Laura
To what extent do sampling practices maintain or disrupt an exoticized ideal of indigenous populations? The Brazilian research collective Laura confronts two sampling strategies performed by different artists in Brazil. On one hand, a worldwide EDM artist who repeats the clichés of exotizing cultural appropriation, and on the other indigenous artists who use rap as a mode of enunciation.
Sampled Identity: Smartphone as a (Re)source
Short Essay by Mattia Zanotti
Music is certainly a way to express or reinforce our identity, but is it possible to represent and recreate an identity through the process of sampling? Our author says yes and mentions Stregoni, an Italian refugee project. Stregoni offers an experimental space for music production to its participants, using smartphones as sample libraries. Stregoni creates, our author argues, both subjective and collective identity, even if transitory.
Blending Music and Politics at the Margins of Beirut
Essay by Nicolas Puig
Sampling is an approach to composing music «with» others by incorporating audio fragments from various sources. Here, Nicolas Puig discusses sample-based tracks by the Palestinian artist Osloob. This innovative rapper and electronic music composer uses sampling to link the politicized art created in refugee camps to other critical art forms that redefine the relationship between the aesthetic and the political.
Ain’t Nothing Wrong (With Political Dance Music)
Short Essay by Francesco Fusaro
In this article, music scholar and producer Francesco Fusaro discusses one of his sample-based tracks. As he argues, it is through the voice that dance music has proven a fertile territory for the expression of the political and social concerns that underpinned its history from the very beginning.
Sound Collage as Political Chronic
Short Essay by Henrique Souza Lima
The song «Apesar de Você» («In Spite of You») by Brazilian musician and writer Chico Buarque is one of the most iconic protest songs published in the context of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Here, sound researcher Henrique Souza Lima presents a sound collage made from clippings of the word «despite» in various instances of Brazilian pop music.
Sampling Politics Today
Book
An examination of how political contexts of our time are transformed into musical production. Among other accounts from around the world, we follow the sampling of car horns in Indonesia or read about an Italian refugee project that uses smartphones as sampling resources.
Sampling as Satire: The Medium Shakes the Message
Short Essay by Lola Baraldi
Since hip hop’s birth, samples of politicized words have resonated across genres. In the following examples, Lola Baraldi traces out music that gives political words a new meaning through distortion, cutting and pasting, amplification, and camouflage. These approaches, Baraldi argues, break out from traditional modes of social commentary and denunciation, often taking the shape of danceable satire.