Re: Indigenous music

Kathy Tadlock wrote:
> A professor on campus owns a large collection of cassettes containing
> music, home and field recorded in Africa.

This is a fascinating, and, I suggest, an important question that touches on far more than copyright.

On the question of strict legality of the proposed acts, US colleagues will be better placed than I to comment, but many of the issues are of much wider relevance, touching the nature of the relationship between the developed and the developing worlds and our respective attitudes to creativity.

  These recordings has been
> accumulated over a long period of time and were recorded by/with the
> permission of the artists,

The recordings are, presumably, recordings of performances of musical works. The artists as performers have rights in the performances, but they only have rights in the musical works to the extent that they composed them.

But assuming that the people who gave permission for the performances to be recorded were entitled to do so, the question turns on the nature and extent of that permission.

I think that your professor must look to his conscience. Presumably he can recall the circumstances in which the permission was granted. Will what he proposes to do honour or betray the trust placed in him by the people whose permission he obtained and whose performances he recorded? This is a genuinely open question, and the answer may vary for different recordings.

then duplicated many times and either given
> away or sold at local markets. The recordings have been passed around
> but never commercially released.

If money were to be made from them, equity would suggest that some of it at least should be returned to the music's originators.

> In conjunction with the campus radio station, the professor would like
> to digitize these recordings and creating a compact disc library both
> for use at the campus radio station and storing a copy in the campus
> library.

> I'm interested in people's perspective on the copyright issues that
> might be involved in digitizing and copying these recordings.

> My initial reaction was that digitizing the collection for the library
> would be OK but broadcasting on the campus radio station might be a
> different problem.

It might be, but I doubt it. The issue is one of respect for the creators of the music, not of technical detail. The chances are that the original performers will be delighted that their works are being enjoyed by American college students, but it would be arrogant in the extreme to assume that this is necessarily the case.

-- 
Edward Barrow
Copyright Consultant
edward[_at_]copyweb.co.uk
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