Articles / October 6th, 2010
The RIGHTS DUB: How are the Civil Rights Movement, sampling, James Brown & Hip Hop connected?
A Pod Cast Presented by CHAI Artist-in-Residence Sean Taylor Leech
Recipient of the University of Melbourne’s Asialink Performing Arts Residency at CHAI, Sean Taylor is a sound designer and composer working with Instant Cafe Theatre on a number of upcoming performance, installation and recording projects.
Based in Sydney, Australia as a radio producer and multimedia designer, Sean also produces and DJ’s dance music. In 2003, he began working in Brisbane across many settings, ranging from night clubs and radio stations to galleries and street parties.
Synopsis
In September 2007, Sean Taylor (aka Prince Nod) produced a feature program called Rights Dub for The Night Air show on ABC Radio National, that was broadcast across Australia. The Night Air is a listening experience animated by dub versions of ABC Radio National’s distinctive programming. Obliquely connected material is re-assembled with sonic glue – letting the listener’s imagination build a new story. It’s a space to find the music in speech and the poetry in ideas, a show that invites you to take time to unravel the usual media tangle.
For The Night Air, Sean has created a pastiche of documentary come DJ mix that delves into the news, histories and sounds of the black civil rights movement in America; and examines the parallel cultural influence of black rights music and the dawn of digital sampling on the global music industry. The program captures the fragmented sound and music of an America coming to terms with the challenges of protecting and reviewing its civil and cultural rights.
‘Get up, Stand up’, the 1973 reggae song made famous by The Wailers is a nagging provocation to continue struggling for personal or group rights in an unjust world. But just what are ‘rights’ – who holds them, who’s being denied them and who benefits from getting rights? Using everything from Dubstep, Hip Hop and Baile Funk to speeches by the Black Panthers, Lawrence Lessig and George W Bush, Prince Nod dubs through the music and voices of the civil rights and music rights movements to find the two are connected today more than ever before.
