Remixed music means, a new or different version of a recorded song that is made by changing or adding to the original recording of the song. On the other hand, a remix is therefore, a new version of a piece of music which has been created by putting together the individual instrumental and vocal parts in a different way. Some people use the term “recycled” to characterize some of the remixed music or songs in this country.
However, there is a basic difference between remixing and recycling something. Recycling is a “process of converting waste materials that would usually be thrown away, into new materials and objects.” The term “recycled” is therefore irrelevant to music unless it is used to denigrate the quality of music that is copied from its original one and presented as new as it is sometimes done in this country.
If memory does not fail me, in the 1970s or 1980s, there was a song by American, (originally from Trinidad and Tobago) vocalist, his name is Billy Ocean and the lyrics in one of his songs had one particularly memorable line that went something like, “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going”. That was presumably from his Grammy Award winning album called “Caribbean Queen”. This was a very popular and inspirational song at that time and the youth sometimes considered it a call for resilience in bad days, by fighting for their survival in a legitimate and culturally tolerable way.
Billy Ocean’s song was not definitively about the tough guys who were cheating or bullying the weak in order to get some benefits that could help them swim to the safety of the shores of the turbulent river by any means. It was a tribute to the strong men and women who fought to survive the bad times. He was saying that one has to be resilient in times of difficulties until better times come. Tough times may give artistic inspirations to the more creative among us but they also sharpen the imagination of a few of us in “the art of swindling”; if at all one can call swindling an art form.
The way some of the tough guys behave in our society does not bring Billy Ocean’s song to mind. It rather reminds us of some backstreet tough guys who try to survive in hard times by turning into muggers or swindlers. Some of them seem to take advantage of their “toughness” to survive at the cost of society and may not be ashamed of doing so particularly when their targets are innocent consumers. All traders are not bad guys but there are some among them who do not bat an eye to exploit temporary difficulties to their advantage. News about of a few businessmen trying to swindle the consumers by selling them adulterate goods has always been media sensations.
Recently, there was a video circulating on social media that went viral for something quite unimaginable. A man was apprehended after he was denounced for allegedly selling meat from an animal that was not supposed to find its way into one of the regular meat stalls. Without resorting to word mincing, we are talking here about the owner a business outlet was selling what appeared to be ‘donkey meat’ until he was exposed by his maid who, as it was reported in social media, had enough of his despicably criminal acts that her conscience could not tolerate. Tough times seem to create opportunities for greedy people to make profits by any means possible. Fortunately, there are courageous people among us who have the temerity to resort to the law to expose crimes against society.
The alleged crime took place here in Addis during the fasting period prior to Epiphany and the alleged criminal was apprehended by police following his exposure by his maid who witnessed what was going in the meat stall owned by her employer. The story made the rounds of the Addis cyber community and stopped at the time of the owner’s arrest and I don’t think there will a follow up. Bloggers are often busy chasing with new stuff that that earn them more money instead of investigating a single story in depth however sensational it might be.
In our culture, there are meats that can be eaten without any religious or traditional prohibitions. Meat from oxen sheep are among them. Orthodox Christians for instance do not want to touch or even see meat from swine let alone eat it. The same can be said about horse meat that is food for the rich in some Western countries while most Ethiopians feel nausea whenever they hear about it. Traditions and religions sanction most food while prohibiting others. This is the way it is. Yet, here in Ethiopia most people never tolerate the idea of buying let alone eating, donkey meat that was dangling from the hooks at the meat stall alongside regular meat. That is considered not only a business crime but also a crime against society’s morality. And a crime against social norms and tradition may be more serious than the usual swindling we can witness at shops and business outlets practiced by a few unethical or greedy business people.
It appears that the logic behind selling donkey meat as regular meat is pretty simple. Meat has these days become a luxury items for most people and this apparently gave the meat stall owner the idea of getting a few donkeys slaughtered somewhere in secret and sold as normal meat. Maybe the alleged culprit might have heard that donkey meat is consumed in some societies and that he thought it is alright to test it on his clients, who were for that matter, unsuspecting until the seller was exposed and apprehended by police.
Mixing authentic products with fake or adulterated ones may sometimes be taken as a form of “art” often practiced by a few traders in Addis judging by the media coverage or reports of such illegal and dangerous acts. What do you say about a few traders who mix grain flour with mortar or some other toxic byproducts in order to sell them at higher prices than the market price for such consumer goods. There were also stories of people who sold crushed red paper mixed with crushed red bricks that certainly led consumers to endure to serious health problems.
I have no idea why difficult times inspire some people to do unimaginable things. This is something that should be investigated not by journalists but by psychologists and criminologists in particular. Graduate students in social psychology could also use this theme to write a very interesting paper as their graduation theses.
The entrainment business in Addis is sometimes hard-hit by an epidemic of ‘mixed music’ disguised like original ones. At some time in the past, the industry was ravaged by reports of “stealing music” from some musician and selling it in the clandestine market after remixing it with some old tunes and presenting it to the unsuspecting or gullible music lovers who stood at long queues to buy the “new releases” repackaged as new or original songs.
Following such events, courts were very busy dealing with cases of “mixed music” stolen from old hits, remixed and sold to someone else bypassing the original creators who were furious when they realized how they were cheated living in the same city with the fraudsters. Those cases were sometimes settled amicably, the offenders paying some money to settle the matters behind the back of the judges. At other times, the offenders were apprehended and forced to pay the victims fines amounting a few thousand Birr, which was big deal in those times of innocence. They did this not out of morality but because they were mostly afraid that their businesses could suffer unless the disputes were quickly settled.
These acts of treachery were common occurrences in the local music industry where new and young musicians were eager to make names for themselves quickly without going through the laborious process of inventing and producing new music that was always damn expensive and laborious. In order to avoid the pains of making music, some of the most reckless among them often chose to go the “mixing way” and produced songs that were old but sound somehow new thanks to the “art of mixing and remixing” to make money and boost their names at the cost of the legitimate owners and actors in the industry.
In the old days, this deceitful tactic was the most preferred strategy by the con men of the music industry who chose a particular moment, say a New Year or some holiday, to present their mixed and remixed music to the market. Their criminal acts often raised storms in the industry that were quickly forgotten because music lovers were interested in music and not how it was made. Copyright laws were not known at that time and there were people among the music consuming society who expressed their admiration more to the mixed version rather than to the original version. My guess is that nowadays things have improved in this area since copyright laws were enforced after decades of efforts by insiders of the entertainment industry.
Tough times may give rise to some weird practices as I tried to pointed out above. But difficult times are bound to give rise to better times sooner or later while the swindlers, ‘mixers’ and their collaborators should be stopped by the law before other ‘mixers’ and adulterators resort to similar practices. The ‘art’ of making money quickly and by any means should not be allowed to become a normal behavior by some unscrupulous guys who now and then flaunt the laws to take advantage of difficult times that will certainly disappear sooner or later.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2024
