When the choreographer Christopher Hampson had to change the music for his piece Canciones four days before the premiere because City Ballet of London couldn’t get permission to use de Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares Españas for a ballet, I was so angry that I fantasized about bringing a case called ‘The People of Spain vs. Publisher X’, or putting the decision to the Spaniards in a referendum.
What vexed me was that these songs were, as the title suggests, based on public domain material. In an absolutely fair world, the ‘folk’ from whom these ‘folksongs’ came should have been party to the decision. Furthermore, if royalties were payable to The Folk for their contribution to the songs, then The Folk would have had a financial interest in the public performance of those songs.
Unlike the de Falla estate (or whoever it was who initiated the refusal), they might have been glad of the few pence owing to them, rather than saying sniffily ‘We don’t want ballet done to our songs!’.
Just when I had calmed down (about five years later) I came across a similar problem with another concert-hall composer and his folk song arrangements. I have been struggling with the morality of the question ever since – can copyright, designed to protect author’s rights, really be so exploitative?
[NB: 26/05/07 – on checking, half these links are dead now – but I’m leaving them in for historical accuracy, and for the sake of those who might want to follow them up]
Then I found this article in the South African Sunday Times from 2000 called ‘Where has all the money gone?‘. The article is mainly about the case of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ from the Lion King (Margo v. Weiss), but along the way, the author mentions the American folk singer Pete Seeger who feels it is wrong for songwriters to claim all the royalties from folk songs, and tries to put the money back somewhere, even if it’s a rather oblique target:
He [Seeger] has directed, for example, that royalties from the version of We Shall Overcome he recorded in 1959, with extra verses he penned, be directed to US trade union benefits – an arrangement that still continues. Elsewhere, he wants royalties from Where Have all the Flowers Gone? sent to a Russian folk-song archive – because he got the idea for the song from the Mikhail Sholokhov novel, And Quiet Flows the Don.
[from SA Sunday Times, 27/08/2000]
I’m glad that someone in Russia is getting some money from Russian ‘folk songs’. Consider how much cash has been made from the 1960s hit Those were the days my friend (Mary Hopkin, 1968), and then ask yourself how much of it found its way to the family of Boris Fomin 1900-1948 who wrote the song on which it was based (called Дорогой длинною, with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii). Anglophone sites talk vaguely and shamelessly about this as a ‘Russian folk song’ or ‘gipsy song’. To anyone except the anglophones, the provenance is clear (see Willy P’s diary on the subject, for example).
The absolute proof is in this recording of Дорогой длинною by Aleksander Vertinskii (track 3), from the wonderful Vertinsky website. [NB: 26/05/07: I’ve updated this link because the Vertinskii site has changed address – but the direct link to the track is yielding a 404 page – but the link just given points to the album tracklisting, and hopefully the site-owners will repair the link soon]. Boris Fomin’s grandson DJ Fomin is alive and well and dj-ing in Moscow and could buy some fantastic new gear with the royalties. The Copyright Term Extension Act put all kinds of Russian music (including the Rite of Spring) back into copyright in the USA, so I wonder how long it will be before the unrepresented Russians like the Fomin estate are able to collect in the way that ‘classical’ composers do?
Another ‘folk’ song which people seem happy to copy and post all over the net without fear of copyright infringement is Poliushko-pole, made famous by the Red Army Choir. Once again, this isn’t a folk song, but was written by Viktor Gusev to music by Lev Knipper in 1934.
More copyright fun…
I live in Charleston South Carolina and often frequent an Irish Pub down here in which the band has recently started singing, “Those Were the Days” on the occasional night. Hearing reminded me of how much I love that song, but it also frustrated me. I am so positive that the song has been used in a movie or TV show that I should remember, but cannot for the life of me think of what it is. Do you know??