Tag: Enigma

  • Carl Orff – O Fortuna

    This is the last Origin of Samples post for now. It gave me great pleasure digging through the history of sampling, even discovering a few new things myself. Hopefully I can pick it up some time in the future, but for now I’ll be focussing my energy on my own music. More about that next week! For now let’s end with something epic:

    Classical composer Carl Orff”s masterpiece Carmina Burana, composed between 1935 and 1936, contains the most familiar movement of his work which has been used countless times in popular culture: O Fortuna. In music this often meant just playing it before a show to make the entrance of the artist more glorious.

    Sampling didn’t really happen until the early 90’s when KMFDM used bits of it in Liebeslied (1990) . The most infamous samplings of O Fortuna happened simultaneously in 1991 however.

    At the early peak of house music two Belgian producers sampled O Fortuna, had the songs played in clubs and decided to release it. Their bombastic track O Fortuna was released in 1991 under their recording name Apotheosis. Right in the same week, a group that called themselves Fortuna feat. Satenig released their song O Fortuna. The song was much more mellow and radio-friendly and didn’t use a sample from any recording, but clearly replayed the tunes from Carl Orff’s version.

    By this time the heirs of the deceased Carl Orff had gotten wind of this and sued. They managed to ban both tracks in the week that they were released. This meant that the cd-singles were on the shelves still on Saturday, but by Monday were all gone. I know, because I managed to snatch up a copy of the Apotheosis version the Saturday after it was announced the songs would be banned.

    The tracks entered the Dutch charts at #4 and #1 that week and then the week after dropped out of the charts completely, which had never happened before. The radio stations couldn’t play the songs (even though Fortuna feat. Satenig had made a different version with different note progression).

    Interestingly though, even though the songs still aren’t released, the original O Fortuna was sampled countless times after that. You can see the list on WhoSampled.com, but here’s some notable examples. Enigma used it twice in the track Modern Crusaders (1999) and more prominently in Gravity of Love (1999).

    In hiphop where the ego’s match the grandeur of the song perfectly, it was sampled by Nas ft. Puff Daddy in Hate Me Now (1999), by Cam’ron in Get’Em Girls (2004), Stack Bundles in Ya Dig (2006) and many others after that.

    Dance music, despite two dance tracks being banned because of the sampling, kept on using it too. Most were samples in gabber/hardcore: Chosen Few in 2006, DJ Wicked in 2000 (who actually sampled the Apotheosis track!), DJ Outblast in 2001. Even a rather more radio-friendly non-hardcore dance track O Fortuna by Hypster seems okay in 2011.

    Probably the most interesting dance version post-Apotheosis is the Anthem for the huge dance party Sensation White 2004 (annually held in a stadium) by The Rush. Though it doesn’t sample anything directly, it’s obvious what the inspiration for the track is.

    And of course there’s a few odd ones out. Ministry used it in their anti-Bush song No W in 2004. Clan of Xymox got away with sampling it in 2006 in Be My Friend. BOB released a song called O Fortuna in 2008, with different lyrics but a familiar melody. No one was sued.

    So if you plan on covering or sampling Carl Orff, apparently it’s okay if you clear the rights or make sure his heirs don’t find out about it. And with that advise I’ll end this column for now. Hit it it Carl!

  • Led Zeppelin – When the Levee Breaks

    There’s a number of drum samples that are have become the grand daddy’s of entire genres and have been extensively used in hiphop, dance and such. I could talk about the Amen break, but luckily there’s an excellent documentary on that. There’s a more peculiar history surrounding the drum loop from Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks. Or more specifically, an old blues song called When the Levee Breaks.

    In 1927 the levee did break and cause the Great Mississippi Flood. Two years after, Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie wrote, performed and recorded a song entitled When the Levee Breaks. The lyrics deal with losing everything in the flood and having to move from South to the North (Chicago), thus also exporting many blues musicians and blues lovers there.

    More than 40 years later in 1971, Led Zeppelin dusts off the original and makes their own reworked cover version, in essence ‘sampling’ it and making it into something new. On drums as always is legendary drummer John Bonham. The track opens with just a few seconds of his drums.

    The fact that it’s just the drums however makes it ideal for sampling and when sampling takes a rise starting in the late 80’s Bonham’s drums end up on many, many records. Not just whole but cut up as a breakbeat as well. Just to name a few where the drum loop is intact: Eminem’s Kim, Coldcut & Steinski’s Beats & Pieces and Enigma’s Gravity of Love.

    The ultimate bit of irony is that while all the music I linked above is on YouTube, the YouTube video containing the original 1929 version of When the Levee Breaks has been pulled due to copyright claims by Sony, despite it being way pas it copyright date. So for now, here’s the sampled ‘original’ by Led Zeppelin: