A Wrap Up of My Panel at the RE/Mixed Media Festival 2011

This past Saturday I was in Brooklyn, NY, to moderate a panel at the RE/Mixed Media Festival. The festival took place over the entire weekend, featured dozens of events, and was listed as a critics' pick in Time Out New York. My panel was titled Remixing Culture - A Panel on Sampling & The Global Appropriation of Hip-Hop, and we had a fantastic group of folks sharing their knowledge on the subjects.

The panel of artists and writers included Conscious, Tah Phrum Duh Bush, Rabbi Darkside, Creature, Metermaids, MeccaGodZilla, Knewdles MC, Appl Juic, The Company Man, and Christopher Weingarten aka Whiney G.

We started off by discussing the global impact of hip-hop, how the hip-hop scenes overseas are being built, and why they embrace so many of America’s underground artists, as well as old school artists that laid the foundation of hip-hop. The discussion then turned to the idea that the hip-hop scene in America may be xenophobic as we rarely embrace foreign artists, even when there isn’t a language barrier issue.

The sampling portion of the discussion started with the panel talking about the legal perils of sampling, and if underground artists really need to worry about getting sued. A brief history of why sampling is so important to hip-hop, and what makes it a special part of the music of the culture, ensued. Everyone agreed that sampling has resurrected some older artists’ careers, and extended the careers of others, but that the proliferation of the mp3, and people not having liner notes to read through, has negatively affected people’s ability to learn about the music of the past through the samples of the present.

Overall it was a fantastic panel that lasted 90 minutes, featured a lot of information, and left everyone with plenty of things to think about.

I hope to have the opportunity to work with the RE/Mixed Media Festival again next year.