McLeod

As I read this chapter I found myself getting more and more frustrated. As McLeod described in the instance of folk music, musicians are taking other people's melodies or songs and changing them to make them their own. But then they put copyright restrictions on it so that no one else can change it. In my mind this is extremely greedy, selfish, and in no way fair. They are able to take an idea, expand it, and create a new expresssion of their own, but then they aren't allowing anyone else to do that as well. I found the example of the Happy Birthday copyright fiasco extremely interesting and am very happy with how the situation turned out. What would our world be like if we couldn't sing Happy Birthday and if we did we had to always be on the look out making sure nobody heard our singing or being able to trust that no one would snitch that we sang the 30 second song. There is no freedom in that.

Think of what our world would look like if we couldn't even go around campus humming a tune or singing our favorite song. It would be dull, would we even like to listen to music? I feel if a song is rewritten shouldn't that composer give the joy to the next composer in finding a way to take the song to the next level. Yes the original may be forgotten, but I would venture to guess if it was a good song it won't. For example the hymn Amazing Grace. There have been a number of revamps on the song including Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) which still has the orginial verses of the hymn but brings a new chorus that brings the song to a whole new meaning. (click here to watch the new version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqJsBRFdrA0) Both songs are still very much popular.

This is the beauty of learning from each other, bettering ourselves from each other, and bringing our society into a new level if we would share ideas in a positive light and maybe some really good things can happen. Maybe there will be a song that will change someone's life all because of the history of where it came from, how it was revamped, and where it is today (yes I realize this is extremely optomistic). My final question concerning all of this music rewritting is the in reference to McLeod's comment about copyright on pages 26-27, "...and anybody caught singin' it without permission will be a mighty good friend of ours, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." Guthrie just wanted to write the song. That's what he wanted to do and he did it. I feel like his next motion for us (after the copyright was up) would be to see what we can make of it, not to be greedy continually trying to get ownership rights and stack up property and money for ourselves.