The Unsung (Heroes of the Break Beat) is a project whose goal is to find and give credit to the drummers of as many Break Beats as possible. Drummers who are rarely recognized or given proper credit, and in many cases any credit, for the incredibly important role they played in the creation of multiple genres of music spanning decades. The scope of this project will cover the eras of Soul, Funk &
Hip Hop to the present and so does by no means covers the uncountable numbers of drummers who through history have devoted their life's blood and sweat to move the dancers and serve as the backbone that allowed so much music to thrive who all deserve some credit in this story. So clearly the thing that drives funk, soul and hip hop and yet rarely if ever is a drummer held in as high esteem or as well known as a singer. So essential and yet so often taken for granted. This project hopes to shed some light on these unsung heroes and try to give them a small fraction of the credit they deserve as the driving force behind so much. The drummers are the manual laborers doing the heavy lifting, some might say the working class of musicians, they are the athletes, many with short careers that burn out too soon. The drum parts on many of these classic recordings have played a huge role in music but rarely have they been given any compositional credit. Because of the history of musical copyright and publishing laws coming from a strictly western European point of view, only lyrics and music (chords/melody) are rewarded with any royalties or credit of authorship. So in many cases these great drummers get no credit. Some of these grooves went on to be repurposed as loops for huge hit songs that have paid many people but as far as I know never to the drummer that played the groove. If money was ever paid it went to the owners of the actual recordings (those who own the mechanical master) and to the people who own the publishing and writing rights. Usually these loops have no instruments on them other than the drums and yet band leaders, singers, chord/melody writers and record companies all are more likely to get paid than the drummer who most likely came up with the beat and made it funky enough to keep people dancing generations later. Often even the DJ's and crate diggers get more credit for finding these gems than some of these great drummers do for playing them and companies and individuals have compiled and sold many copies without ever trying to pay or even credit the drummers. Part of the inspiration for this project came after seeing someone repost a video about the Amen beat. The video is a very good history of how the beat came into use and literally spawned at least one, arguably more, genres of dance music. The video is packed with detailed carefully collected information. I was completely baffled as a drummer that after nearly twenty minutes of talking about this beat, the band, band leader, record labels, styles of music...that the drummers name was never mentioned! I was actually kind of outraged. The video is quite interesting and worth checking out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac) not least because it points out many of the factors that make this project in my view important.
