Sampling Politics: Music and the Geocultural

This exploration of the geocultural politics of music sampling considers sampling as an under-explored dimension of the relationship between music and politics. Based on extensive archival research, close-listening musical analysis, and interviews with artists - or their estates, each case unpacks each piece, as sampled and sampling music-making, work, on its own musico-cultural and sonic terms. Some errors in the public record, misperceptions about some of the works and artists who feature, are corrected in light of debates over the creative, legal, and cultural legacy of music sampling as “borrowing,” “cultural appropriation,” or even “theft.”