Cal State music professor sues rap group for copyright infringement; case opens up new debate on intellectual property rights - Faculty Club - James Newton - Beastie Boys

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 10, 2002 by Kendra Hamilton

"They told me to bring my flute," Newton says. "Even though I was young and green and country with a capital K, they had the patience to teach me, and they taught me the whole jazz tradition--from King Oliver to Billie Holiday to Cecil Taylor. It just opened up an incredible world for me."

As a younger man, Newton faced criticism from those who "police" Black creativity, notes George Lewis, a professor of music at University of California-San Diego. He calls it a form of racial profiling, visited on the Black creative body.

"There are all sorts of people who become threatened when we write string quartets, which means that they have a fixed and limited notion of what Blackness means. `Blackness means jazz. Blackness means hip hop,' they say. Yes, Blackness means all these things and much more," Lewis says.

Newton agrees. "We see consistently in our culture a substandard treatment that's given to Black culture--particularly Black culture that embraces the intellectual. We can be entertainers, and everybody is happy. But when we embrace profound thought, that is not given a resonance." Newton admits that it's a difficult time to be an artist. "We're like dinosaurs in a way," he says. But the act of creation--and sharing that creation with the corner of the world that's listening--is, he says, its own reward.