Ethics

Ghana has a budding music scene with many talented artists. Over the past ten years, many of them are doing great with little or no support. This however, isn’t stopping these musicians from creating – and churning out greatness.

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 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.

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.