Like Basinski’s tape loops morphing over time, appropriation loops are recurrent, fluctuant feedback loops in popular and unpopular culture. Rae Sremmund talks about how they’re the new black rock stars with guitars in 2016’s “Black Beatles”, but The Beatles appropriated black American rhythm and blues music from the American South to begin with. Kraftwerk’s mechanic interpretation of Motown hits of 60s and 70s Detroit was later echoed by Detroit techno producers who subsequently put the funk back in it and made it more minimal. Detroit techno, for one, could never have been without the device of appropriation…but the device is often misused. People want to know where their chicken comes from (free range ,grass fed, no antibiotics ) but they don’t want to know where their music comes from. Where does it come from ? Trace the appropriation loops to find out…
