Pre-Digital Sample Culture and The Funky Drummer
Memetics, Drum Samples and DJs
More than colors and forms, it is sounds and their arrangements that fashion societies. With noise is born disorder and it’s opposite: the world. — Jacques Attali
The meme is the unit of cultural inheritance — Richard Dawkins
In the grand mosaic of musical history, “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy stands as a potent totem to the transformative power of the beat sample from James Brown’s 1970 classic “Funky Drummer”. This anthem served as the thematic heartbeat for Spike Lee’s cinematic opus, “Do the Right Thing,” catapulting it into the vanguard of hip-hop as film. In “Funky Drummer,” Brown’s drummer, Clyde Stubblefield, unleashes a torrent of syncopated rhythms and infectious grooves that propel the song to anthem status.
“1989, the number, another summer (get down)
Sound of the funky drummer”
–Public Enemy “Fight The Power”
“Fight the Power” became a sonic emblem for resistance, etched in the collective consciousness of 1989. The sampled drum break, a mosaic of beats and breaks, galvanized Public Enemy’s lyrical arteries, propelling their message. Within the grooves of “Fight the Power,” the “Funky Drummer” sample emerges not merely as a sonic artifact but as a cultural binder.
The opening of Do the Right Thing, is a resonating dance sequence that sets the heartbeat for the film. The scene opens with Rosie Perez’s character, Tina, dancing as the camera captures her movements with intense close-ups and dynamic angles. Like Manet’s painting, “Olympia”, Tina’s direct gaze represents a real woman whose movements reflect the reportage of her current moment a physical stance.
As Tina continues to move through the sequence, the unmistakable drum break from “The Funky Drummer” by James Brown kicks in through “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy. Clyde Stubblefield’s powerful drum solo takes center stage, driving the rhythm.
In essence, Clyde Stubblefield’s drum sample from “Funky Drummer” serves as a unique example of the expansive possibilities of a musical meme triggering repetition, reaction and reinterpretation. Its rhythm, versatility, and cultural impact have made it an enduring crossover accelerant with the sample finding life in the progression of genres from the origins of its birth in the dance funk of 1970 to igniting the rapid growth of rap, to pop music and post genre defining electronic memetics.
“Fight the Power ‘’ was commissioned by Spike Lee for his film Do the Right Thing and released in the Summer of 1989. The escalation of heat and boiling points in culture playing into both the lyrics of the song and in the visualized symbolism that ignites the start of the film.
“Fight the Power” became Public Enemy’s break out hit of 1989, “The Funky Drummer” sample went on the following year to serve as the backbone of Sinéad O’Connor’s “I am Stretched on Your Grave”(March 1990) , George Michael’s “Freedom” (October 1990), and Madonna’s “Justify My Love” (November 1990). The widespread use of this sample not only pays homage to Stubblefield’s percussive artistry but exemplifies DJ culture’s ability to transform and build upon themes, testing and developing a sound on a dancefloor while reusing the segments and frameworks of the same rhythms for studio engineering in a wide range of generations and augmentations.
4/4 Time Signature
The drum break is notable for its use of a syncopated 4/4 time signature. The 4/4 time signature is almost a forced monotony, a standard, and steady, a basic. In the realm of musical time signatures, the 4/4 configuration emerges as an almost inexorable foundation — an insistent standardization that asserts its presence with unwavering steadiness. It stands as a musical bedrock, a fundamental cadence, unfettered by complexities and steadfast in its elemental simplicity.
This signature is the metronomic heartbeat of countless compositions, a rhythmic backbone that propels music forward with a relentless regularity. It is the outlined canvas upon which melodies become illustrated, providing a foundation for expression while adhering to a sense of order and predictability.
In the hands of music engineers and DJs, the 4/4 time signature becomes a blueprint, both a constraint and a liberation. Its ubiquity in popular music, rock, and various genres ensures its familiarity to listeners across diverse tastes.
Syncopated rhythms emphasize off-beats or weak beats, creating a sense of rhythmic tension and groove. The placement of accents on off-beats, particularly on the snare drum, is a defining characteristic of the drum solo. Stubblefield’s use of off-beat accents created a bouncing and energetic feel. He employs dynamic variations within the 4/4 time signature, adding nuance to the drum solo. He plays with the dynamics of the different drum elements, such as the snare, kick, and hi-hat, creating a dynamic and expressive performance. While the primary time signature is 4/4, Stubblefield incorporates polyrhythmic elements, playing patterns that may create the illusion of different rhythms occurring simultaneously. While the 4/4 time signature is the most common and versatile time signature in music, it is considered somewhat unusual for a drum solo in certain contexts.
Between 1989 and 1990 DJs harnessed the potent rhythmic framework of “The Funky Drummer” sample, as a conduit to disparate dance floor subcultures that had previously lacked cohesive bridges. “The Funky Drummer” sample laid a path between a shaven headed, doe eyed girl singing a 17th-century Irish poem, Sinéad O’Connor’s ,“I am Stretched on Your Grave” and the seminal rap anthem, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. Sonic movement between the range of songs and subsequent collective motions of mass heart rates being retimed fed a wave of culture mapping that was unprecedented and unparalleled.
1989–1990 fed the rapid wave of transference of culture in the appetites of scarcity between the moments of “freshness” and “played out”. The currency of discovery was enriched by the potential of the novel becoming over exposed but the “Funky Drummer” sample transferred its rhythm connection feeding every expression of reuse. For this brief part of history the subconscious echo of revolution, desire, and breaking through classifications was timed to the 4/4 signature feed from a foundation of a 1970 funk track and multiplied by hedonists and audiophiles until it hit a ceiling of pop chart topping on repeat.
In the digital era “The Funky Drummer” drum solo has been sampled by Aphex Twin “Blackbox Life” (2023), Pete Rock — “Sweet Dreams” (2019), Black Eyed Peas -”4Ever” (2018), Eminem — “Detroit vs. Everyone” (2014), Ed Sheeran — “Shirtsleeves” (2014) and Nicki Minaj -” Save Me” (2010). However, between 1989 and 1990, the media lifespan of the sample played a critical role in fueling a vibrant event-based dance culture, enabling the movement of audio-based symbols across various platforms, from dance floors to film, and onto music videos. This demonstrates the cultural power of audio sample memetics for media design.
“The Funky Drummer” sample offers a compelling vantage on authorship in memetics, inviting creators to consider how notions of spectatorship and participation extend beyond the visual realm and into the broader sensory experiences in a manner of a networked spiritual transference.
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