Via Digg: A video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop (Amen Break).
A YouTube video (18:08) that narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures...
watch the video | digg story
I love Digg, but it's depressing how frequently readers get off topic. Digg thought this was saying hip-hop made the beat famous, and digressed into a discussion of the authenticity of hip-hop versus the artistry that came before.
Even the blurb calls this a "video" missing the point that you're listening to an acetate, a transient pressing of an original work likely to last only about 50 plays in the analog world.
If you're interested in his "point", skip to 14:45, and listen to something often discussed on Digg but rarely illustrated so artistically.
Although the Digg story links to YouTube, the original piece is called "Can I Get an Amen?" by Nate Harrison, 2004. Here, let me "sample" it for you:
"I'm talking about [the Amen Break] here because I think its story is a good example illustrating the rise and subsequent problematic of digital sampling in relation to today's increasingly stringent copyright and trademark laws.
"To trace the history of the Amen Break is to trace the history of a brief period of time when it seemed digital tools offered a potentially unlimited amount of new forms of expression. Where cultural production, at least musically, was full of possibilities by virture of being able to freely appropriate from the musical past, to make new combinations, and thus, new meanings.
"The story demonstrates that a society 'free to borrow and build upon the past is culturally richer than a controlled one.'"
The last 5 minutes riff on this theme.