{"id":3647,"date":"2021-06-15T15:06:36","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T20:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=3647"},"modified":"2024-12-31T19:20:48","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T00:20:48","slug":"a-history-emerging-out-of-slavery-denying-black-musicians-their-royalties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=3647","title":{"rendered":"A History Emerging Out Of Slavery – Denying Black Musicians Their Royalties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Stahl<\/a>, Western University<\/a><\/em> and Olufunmilayo Arewa<\/a>, Temple University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and activism included voices arguing for economic justice in the recording industry. The Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC)<\/a> demanded music industry executives account for \u201cinequities in the treatment of Black artists<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

BLM and the BMAC spotlighted what cultural anthropologist Maureen Mahon<\/a> calls the recording industry\u2019s \u201cracialized political economy.\u201d Mahon writes that Black performers \u201coccupy a subordinate position,\u201d even as their music serves as a \u201ccentral creative resource\u201d in the industry and the culture.<\/p>\n

Since the early 20th century at least, the recording industry in the United States routinely underpaid African American artists.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s long been suspected by performers, their families, music fans, scholars and critics that negligent and even fraudulent accounting practices denied African American artists and their families opportunities to accumulate wealth and enter the American middle class \u2014 our research shows how those practices worked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We \u2014 a communication professor<\/a> and a law professor<\/a> \u2014 have been studying racialized contracting and accounting in the recording industries since 2015. We have presented our findings at academic conferences, in academic journals<\/a> and a forthcoming book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We have discovered archival evidence \u2014 preserved by activists, lawyers and labour organizations \u2014 that demonstrates in detail how some of these systems produced tragic outcomes for many artists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sam Moore\u2019s lawsuit<\/h2>\n

In the spring of 1993, at the age of 57, Sam Moore (of soul and R&B duo Sam & Dave) wrote to his union\u2019s health and retirement plan to inquire about the status of his pension account. As a singer of long-lived hits including \u201cSoul Man<\/a>\u201d and \u201cHold On, I\u2019m Coming<\/a>,\u201d he planned to quit touring and enjoy the fruits of his decades-long career. The Health and Retirement Funds (H&R Funds) of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) did not reply with good news.<\/p>\n

Moore learned he was entitled to a single payment of US$2,285, and a monthly payment of US$67, for up to five years. These figures, the H&R Funds told Moore, were based on his earnings since the early 1960s: around US$66,000. With the help of a pension expert, Moore and his wife (who was also his manager) estimated these decades of earnings added up to more like US$3 million. They believed his pension should have been around US$9,000 per month.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
An extract from the letter sent by the AFTRA H&R Funds to Sam Moore detailing his benefits.<\/span>
\n(California State Archives)<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Along with a dozen other singers, all but one of them African American, Moore sued the AFTRA H&R Funds for failing to monitor his earnings and to enforce Atlantic Records\u2019 contractually mandated employer contributions to his health-care and retirement accounts. The suit wound on for nine years, and settled in 2002<\/a> for US$8.4 million, to be distributed among hundreds of artists (minus the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys\u2019 33 per cent cut).<\/p>\n

Historical precedents<\/h2>\n

Nearly 20 years later, BLM and BMAC have provoked renewed industrial self-scrutiny. In December 2020, BMG Rights Management (the successor to the multinational Sony\/BMG) completed a review of its recording contracts for racial discrimination<\/a>. BMG found \u201csignificant\u201d racial disparities in royalty payouts to Black and racialized artists in four of its labels.<\/p>\n

The BMG findings<\/a> were not surprising. Commentators have long noted pervasive adverse contractual terms for African American recording artists.<\/p>\n

Systematic exploitation and appropriation of African American musicians reflects patterns of relationships established during and after slavery. Slave plantations were business enterprises that accounted for their most valuable assets \u2014 slaves \u2014 in ways that continue to shape business practice today.<\/p>\n

Historian Caitlin Rosenthal writes that \u201cslaveholders (and those who bought their products) built an innovative, global, profit-hungry labor regime that contributed to the emergence of the modern economy<\/a>.\u201d Slaveholders \u201cbenefited from their control over enslaved people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"title<\/a>
Tom Wiggins was born into slavery, but his blindness meant that wasn\u2019t able to work. He became one of the most popular pianists and composers of his time.<\/span>
\n(Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Slaveholders adjusted the value of enslaved people in their accounting records up and down based upon various factors, including age, reproduction, health and disobedience. Slaves experienced systematic and socially sanctioned control, violence and oppression. The control, deprivation, violence and lack of opportunities did not end with slavery.<\/p>\n

African-American musical forms had a vibrancy and appeal that gave former slaves and their descendants slivers of opportunities within the shadows of pervasive oppression. Well into the 20th century, entertainment was among the few socially sanctioned avenues of employment for African Americans within contexts of pervasive formal and informal modes of social control.<\/p>\n

Such social control was evident in widespread segregation, including through Jim Crow laws<\/a> (the phrase \u201cJim Crow\u201d appears to come from a minstrel song<\/a>), the black codes<\/a> and other practices that limited opportunities and facilitated forced labor<\/a>, some of which continue to the present day.<\/p>\n

As journalist Douglas A. Blackmon notes, by 1900:<\/p>\n

\u201cthe South\u2019s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites\u2026 this quasi-slavery of the twentieth century was rooted in the nascent industrial slavery that had begun to flourish in the last years before the Civil War<\/a>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The regime of dispossession and control that was an essential element of slaveholder treatment of enslaved African Americans continued into the recording era. Since the dawn of the recording industry, industry representatives have denied many Black artists compensation commensurate to that given to other artists.<\/p>\n

From an economic perspective, former slaves, who were once owned as assets, and their descendants, have often been denied control over their creations. This lack of control has extended to the right to own varied things, including tangible property such as land<\/a>, and intangible property, such as royalties from record sales.<\/p>\n

Industrial racism<\/h2>\n

Artists have been wronged by racialized business practices but so have behind-the-scenes music and entertainment industry professionals.<\/p>\n

In 2002, around the time Sam Moore and his co-plaintiffs settled with the AFTRA H&R Funds, activist Al Sharpton and songwriter and performing artist Michael Jackson were drawing attention to racism\u2019s effects in the U.S. recording industry<\/a>. Sharpton highlighted onerous artist contracts, but also argued that \u201cthe record industry at the top needs to become more inclusive. There are no Black presidents, distributors, or Black-owned advertising firms used despite millions in promotion money spent<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America retorted that Sharpton\u2019s analysis was \u201cill-informed and outdated.\u201d Eighteen years later, BMAC called out inequities in \u201cthe recruitment, advancement and salary parity of Black executives<\/a>\u201d as a persisting problem.<\/p>\n

BLM and the BMAC point to future possibilities for the recording industry to rectify past wrongs. These social movements also show us ways that we can create a future that does not repeat patterns of the past.\"The<\/p>\n

Matt Stahl<\/a>, associate professor of media and information studies, Western University<\/a><\/em> and Olufunmilayo Arewa<\/a>, Shusterman Professor of Business & Transactional Law, Temple University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Stahl, Western University and Olufunmilayo Arewa, Temple University In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and activism included voices arguing for economic justice in the recording industry. The Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) demanded music industry executives account for \u201cinequities in the treatment of Black artists.\u201d BLM and the BMAC spotlighted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[921,30],"tags":[161,542,543,285,544,545,195],"class_list":["post-3647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-streamapse-highlights","category-streamapse-reports","tag-black","tag-denying","tag-emerging","tag-history","tag-musicians","tag-slavery","tag-their"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5421,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions\/5421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}