Authorship in other cultures

Today in my Sociology of Popular Music class we began our unit on reggae and dancehall music by watching several video clips, including the documentary “Roots Rock Reggae” (1977). The video features performances, interviews of artists, and artists in the studio. However, unlike many documentaries, the name of the person speaking or performing is not captioned at all. Afterwards, one of the first questions asked was who were the musicians in the video. Though the professor knew a lot of the names, there were still a few left unknown. This, of course, led us to a discussion of authorship, particularly how notions of authorship may vary outside of a Western or U.S. context. In the U.S., because we’re a very capitalist society, notions of authorship tend to be linked to ownership and copyrights (which I’m sure we’ll get more into with “Free Culture”). These ideas are particularly relevant to music today, with the way that new technologies are changing the way we consume it.

But back to the reggae film. One thing our professor noted was the idea of insider knowledge. For my class of American students, most of us were not familiar with the artists who were in the film. However, someone who is a part of that culture probably would not need to have the name of a musician every time they appear. Also, perhaps the traditions of oral culture and collectivity disseminated through the African diaspora have led to a totally different conception of authorship. Our professor also mentioned novels in India, and how the author tends to be downplayed, no matter how successful the book is. This left me wondering what it is about American culture (besides the capitalism and copyright stuff) that makes knowing the identity of the author so important. There was one song in particular from the film that I thought was beautiful, just a man singing and playing the acoustic guitar. The first thing I thought was “Wow, who is that?”. I felt a need to know who the author was; his name was like my key to finding that song again, and I felt like I was grasping in the dark without it. Unfortunately for me, he was one my professor didn’t know. In the end I used a piece of a lyric to find the song online. Perhaps in other cultures, even more use is made of other ways to refer to works besides naming the author.

P.S. The song is “There’s a Reward” by Joe Higgs