What is best known as the Amen Break, was originally played by the Winsten’s from their album, “Amen Brother,” is almost irreplaceable. I did not know what I was expecting, but as soon as I saw the 20 minute movie  about the drum roll (see below), it was easily recognizable.

What is called a sampler, the amen drum roll was one of the first segments of music to be repeatedly used in other genres of music. National Public Radio defines sampling as, “re purposing a snippet of another artist’s music.” Sampling is a part of our pop culture. In the case of Imogen Heap’s popular song “Hide and Seek,” which was used for Jason Derulo’s “Whatcha Say.”

However, Imogen Heap’s original song was used a sampler for Derulo’s song:

National Public Radio’s Science Friday, delved into this concept. What sampling involves is taking something and make the sound your own. However, if you are not careful sampling can get you into some legal trouble. Artists whose work is sampled aren’t often compensated, even if it is for just a six second clip.

Professor McLeod of Iowa State University, whose a professor of Communications noted on NPR that sampling  is, ”

basically the central part of popular culture if you think about social networking and the way that people interact with each other across great distances. And they get to collaborate with each other, you think about open-source software, the way that people collaboratively create stuff, they’re essentially taking samples of computer code and remixing them.

And the same is true with music. I mean, I know a 12-year-old who make mash-up videos on YouTube and upload them. It’s just – it’s almost part of the DNA of – not just youth culture but just popular culture more generally.

What he says is true. We are so confused by our everyday culture that we are constantly surrounded by un-authenticity. It brings about, as discussed in last week’s blog post and this week’s lecture, of what is truly authentic. Is it OK for people to place other items into their work, whether it be music or digitized photography? What are loosing and gaining from a world of sampled music? We are now skeptical of everything. We are even skeptical of humans, as in the case with lip singing. We always wonder if an artist is actually producing the sound that they are making. Sampling is just part of that.