There’s a cool scene in the TV Movie “The Jacksons – An American Dream” showing Michael in the studio recording “Human Nature.” It’s at around 6:58 and unfortunately the sound isn’t lined up too closely.

Here’s a cool fan video:

SWV samples “Human Nature” for their song “Right Here (Human Nature Mix.)

“Human Nature” is extensively quoted, if not actually sampled, in Tupac’s “Thug Nature.”

Miles Davis played it a lot his last few years, unfortunately not while he was at the peak of his game. Still, it’s intriguing to hear his interpretation.

A sample of “Human Nature” runs under the verses in Nas’ song “It Ain’t Hard To Tell.”

The track was produced by Large Professor. It also includes samples of “NT” by Kool and the Gang, “Why Can’t People Be Colors Too?” by the Whatnauts, “Slow Dance” by Stanley Clarke, “What Do You Want From Me Woman” by The Blue Jays, “Long Red” by Mountain and “Sorcerer Of Isis” by Power Of Zeus. Nas himself sampled “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” in his later song “Nas Is Like”. He isn’t the only one. “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” has been sampled in “Killing Fieldz” by Gravediggaz, “Invasion” by Jeru the Damaja, “Survival Of The Fittest” by Mobb Deep, “Half Man Half Amazin” by Pete Rock and others. Here’s a diagram of all the samples Nas used on Illmatic:

Where else is “Human Nature” out there in pop culture? Any other samples or covers I should be aware of? Hit me in the comments.

Here’s a mashup including many of the tracks mentioned in this post:

Human Nature Megamix by ethanhein

And here’s a mashup with Björk’s “Human Behaviour.”

Human Nature And Behaviour by ethanhein

Manu Dibango

He wrote “Soul Makossa,” the inspiration for MJ’s chant.

“Soul Makossa” isn’t exactly the same as MJ’s version. Manu Dibango speak/sings “ma ma ko, ma ko sa, ma ko ma ko sa” on one note. MJ sings “ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa” as a sus chord resolving to a major chord.

Michael Jackson

Wrote “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” On the recording he sings lead and backing vocals, and he did some of the production and arrangement.

Quincy Jones

Produced the track, which in this context means he supervised the recording sessions, probably wrote the horn chart and did some other musical shaping. I have no idea what legal rights Quincy Jones has over the recording or composition, if any.

The other musicians

Along with MJ, the track features three synth and keyboard players, a guitarist, a bassist, a percussionist, a horn section and bunch of backing vocalists. Plus somebody programmed the drum machine. Legally, these folks aren’t entitled to anything beyond the union scale they got paid for the recording sessions, but my musician friends would say there’s an element of spiritual ownership.

Bruce Swedian

He was the lead recording engineer. He probably had some other engineers and assistants working with him as well, the internet doesn’t say. As with the backing musicians, he has zero ownership beyond what he got paid for the original sessions. His fellow recording engineers would stick up passionately for his spiritual ownership over the track, since it wouldn’t exist without him, and it wouldn’t have its arrestingly distinctive sound.

Sony Music Distribution

The label that presently puts out Thriller and, presumably, owns the master recording rights. There may be other co-owners, including MJ and his various financial partners and creditors.

BMG

The rights-management company that handles Sony’s publishing. Again, I’m sure there are other complex co-owners, from MJ on out.

Me

I paid ninety-nine cents for the mp4 on the iTunes store. I co-owned a cassette copy with my sister and stepbrother as a kid. I have a decades-long emotional relationship with the song.

Apple

They sold me the mp4 and the hardware I mostly use to listen to it.

My dad or stepmother

Or my stepbrother’s dad or whoever bought us the cassette of Thriller back in the eighties. Plus whoever they bought the cassette from (I’m guessing Sam Goody on 59th and Third), plus whoever was distributing Thriller on cassettes back then.

The situation only gets more complicated as I follow the chant’s path through my life. A few months ago I went with Anna and our neighbor to hear Zap Mama at Joe’s Pub. During one of her songs, she quoted MJ’s chant. Who owned that instance of the chant? Zap Mama? Joe’s Pub? Us, for buying tickets? Who owned the experience of me hearing the chant at Papaya King, or in Prospect Park, or on the computer network in my office? What about when the guy with the motorcycle was riding around Park Slope blasting “Soul Makossa” from his speakers and I mistook it for a remix of MJ?

What about the copy of “Don’t Stop The Music” by Rihanna that I bought from Apple? I assume that Rihanna’s producers and management paid some sort of licensing fee to Michael Jackson and/or his copyright holders to use the sample, or maybe they got a cut of my ninety-nine cents. They didn’t pay Manu Dibango anything.

Sampling makes people anxious because it raises so many questions about ownership. These questions are only going to get more complicated as technology evolves. The emotional questions are every bit as complex as the legal ones, if not more so. My feeling is, everybody who’s ever heard the chant owns it. Which means that no one does.

Here’s a mashup of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Soul Makossa” with many related and derivative works.

Wanna Be Startin’ Something megamix by ethanhein

Update: within an hour of posting this, Otis Taylor tweeted me from a concert where Jamie Foxx was leading the crowd in the chant.

There was no caption or any other context. So I posted it on my Flickr with a note asking if anyone could identify the computer Herbie is sitting in front of. A couple of days later my friend Mike responded with this video of Herbie and Quincy Jones demonstrating Herbie’s Fairlight CMI in 1983.

There’s so much to love about this clip, from the light pen interface onwards. Youtube doesn’t provide much context, so I don’t know who was shooting this or why. But I’m glad they did. Quincy poetically describes playing a synthesizer as “sculpting a pure electronic waveform.” The interviewer observes that the African blood is streaming through the electronics. Quincy laughs and says: “The funk will prevail.” Herbie laughs too, and then says probably the wisest thing I’ve heard anyone say about technology in music:

It’s interesting, cause you know, these instruments were designed for people to use, for people to use. It’s just a tool, another tool, the way an axe is a tool, an axe can be a tool to cut wood to build a house, or can be a tool to slaughter your neighbor… A synthesizer can be a tool to really hurt people’s ears or interfere with their lives, or can be a tool to make a really nice-sounding instrument that can affect people in a positive way. It all depends on the person who’s using it… The machine doesn’t do anything but sit there until we plug it in… It doesn’t program itself. Yet.

Herbie was acknowledging the angst that a lot of his fellow jazz musicians were feeling about synthesizers and other electronic music gadgetry (angst that hasn’t diminished in the years since.) Herbie titled his album of that year Future Shock for good reason. But ultimately, he’s right, the tools aren’t as important as the people behind them. You couldn’t ask for a better electronic music manifesto than that.

Mike also posted this video of Herbie on Sesame Street demonstrating the Fairlight for a group of kids that included Mohammed Ali’s daughter Tatiana.

Since these videos were made, the price of digital synths and sequencers has undergone the same extraordinarily rapid plunge as all other computer equipment. The first Fairlight model cost £20,000 in 1979. I have no idea what that is in dollars adjusted for inflation, but it’s definitely not cheap. You can have an identical setup on any laptop computer for a few hundred dollars today. What was the cutting edge of futuristic exotica in the early eighties has become ordinary.

The history of technology has this way of making the strange familiar. The tools advance much faster than our understanding of them, or our ability to make the best use of them. Will the funk prevail? It’s up to the musicians.

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