Question… can we do multiple entries?
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Hmmm. I’m not sure.
On the one hand, I think the more tracks, the better.
On the other hand, since it’s sort of a competition, it seems wrong to “stack” the playlist with more than one entry.
(I once got burned by this; came in fourth when 1st and 3rd place went to the same person.)
What do you guys think?
The easiest would be imo: one entry into the battle and after voting is done you can place another track in the thread with some info so people can react to it.
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Yeah, I would say pick one for the battle, then if you want to throw in an extra track for discussion I have no issues with it.
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Someone should sample the first 30 seconds of this (the rest is pretty boring).
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That first 30 seconds is a song in itself!
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Alright, so the group stage is almost wrapped up, the USNMT still hasn’t embarrassed themselves (Good on you, Türkiye!), and we already have 3 beats submitted to this battle.
So now’s a good time to announce the Grand Prize CD!
The top vote-getter for Battle #10 will win…
Under the Basothos: African Covers
2021 WFMU Marathon DJ Premium
Compiled by Underwater Theme Park
for patrons of WFMU. Never sold in stores.
17 tracks of rock, soul, and pop covers from across the world’s second-largest continent
So, how’s everyone’s tracks coming?
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I’ve started something then got distracted, but I’m still planing to get something in.
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I’ve got 2 different projects on my DT with samples from different groups on them.
I’m still in what I tend to think of as the “smash a lot of crap together” phase where I see what plays well against each other.
But my friend who lives upstate just sent me a folder full of bird noises she recorded, so I’ve been distracted having fun with those.
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I’m pretty happy with the track l submitted. It did take me a long time to clean it up and get it to a stage where it wasn’t just messy overlapping items.
I came up with a fairly nice idea that unlocked the “hook” thankfully, but it was much harder than my previous battle track admittedly. Realistically I could’ve spent a much longer time making more edits but I just decided to commit. Very curious as to how people are going to implement the different countries (and I guess explanations are due after the voting?)
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I can proudly say in put the time my country played last time to good use. Since the country stops and i could not give less of a fuck about 22 idiots chasing a ball, i used those two hours to work on the track. I recon i can get it over the line ( yes a football metaphor, why not?) by the end of this week.
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I’ve send something to @KingDuppy . Most of the time I was happy with my idea/track - then I’ve felt different. Maybe too much time. 
Does anyone else sometimes feel conflicted about sampling music from non-Western cultures? I know I’m not making money off it, but there’s still something that sits uneasily with me — using sounds from a culture that hasn’t had the same privilege or platform as the one I come from.
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I think about this a lot, and not just in terms of non-western music—for instance using some kinds of religious music is kind of a similar question for me. Or stuff from cults, or true-crime documentaries that could cheapen someone’s misfortune.
And I’m actually struggling with it a bit in this challenge as I sample some sung lines that I don’t understand. I can’t help but think “I hope I’m not repeating some horrible thing that I don’t even know what it says!”
(I’ve tried using Google Translate to decrypt the line but it just tells me I’m listening to music. Helpful!)
Aaanyway my long-held opinion on this subject, which some might call cultural appropriation, is that if you’re sampling or quoting something because it truly speaks to you, and you’re engaging with it as an artist in conversation with a piece of art, then that’s fair game and is how a lot of great art is made. Without that give-and-take (appropriation), most of my favorite genres of art, music, books, and movies wouldn’t exist, because they’re all evolutions of other genres. The way Punk borrows from Reggae while also borrowing from Doo Wop (via Lou Reed and then the Ramones) which themselves pulled from the Quadrille form and Tin Pan Alley. You can follow the roots back forever, which is part of what makes music so cool to me. The eternal grind of culture remaking itself.
BUT I think it gets dicier when you use something you don’t really know or care much about. Or if it’s something very meaningful to people and you use it without considering its cultural weight. I think that’s where it can become bad quickly.
And that dicyness gets much much worse if you’re taking something you don’t really care about and making money off it, because then it’s basically just exploitation. Because it’s taking from the tradition without giving anything back.
This is all so long! I think it really comes down to your own personal sense of comfort. For me, I’d say that since what we’re doing here is a creative exercise that no one’s making money from, it’s fine as long as you’re not taking something that has some massive cultural import that you’re somehow cheapening or ignoring.
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I won’t sample sacred/religious/ceremonial music but anything commercial is fair game in my book. And I don’t see the line between sacred and secular as fuzzy. It either is or it isn’t.
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This was definitely a topic on my mind while outing together the track. I was worried about sounding like generic orientalism and/or appropriating things that hold a specific meaning in a given context.
The way I’ve ended up making my track should hopefully avoid most of those concerns, but hard for myself to be the arbiter of that.
To KingDuppy’s point, at the end of the day this is a creative exercise made for fun, so unless you’re actively doing something disrespectful it’s probably fine. We’re not top 40 artists sampling random shit and trying to get away with it when called out.
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Thank you for your long and thoughtful answer. I love the term “creative exercise” which fits perfectly to what we are doing. 
Thinking about it, I’'m ok with what I’ve sampled and why I sampled it for this battle. I feel slightly embarrassed regarding former battles (“gospel battle”) - but that’s ok.
Your answers @pandanaut and @AMBello also helped me to feel more comfortable.
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Music is made of borrowing elements, that’s the essence of how it spread throughout ages and countries.
I would not mind so much : the simple fact you wonder about it means you are careful enough to not behave like Shakira, Madonna or Andrew Sisters and act like you invented something when you simply stole it.
I play African music and white people are obsessed by authenticity. Somehow they come with stupid questions like “you must have lived there, right ?” and I just answered I learnt on YouTube. Only white people come to me speaking about cultural appropriation (very few ones fortunately) when people from African continent love it. It’s a thing to lie about where it comes from and go undercover for the sake of money and it’s another one to just borrow, copy, get inspired, cover things you like with all respect due. I don’t treat stuff from non western culture differentky than western stuff, it’s all culture and people are not responsible about where they born.
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Sometimes I make Indian-style curry at home 
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Do we need to discuss the Amen break?
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I’m still using it even though the US isn’t in my group.
(I started with the US group but it felt like cheating.)
Edit: or do you mean because Gregory Coleman never saw a dime for it?
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