Loss of Innocence
This case of music borrowing/sampling, dating from the late 1970s, encapsulates both the creative potential and ethical hazards of music borrowing, when doing so with “permission” in legal terms yet without full consent from the artists. It revisits My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, from Brian Eno and David Byrne (1981) in which sampled music, from the Arabic world and other sources, feature. This case study spotlights the long-overlooked voice and Lebanese musical traditions of the singer Dunya Yunis, whose performance of a well-known song in Lebanon and the wider region is sampled in two of the best known tracks from Eno and Byrne’s bestselling album. Based on extensive archival work, conversations with musicians, and personal recollections from Ms. Yunis herself, this chapter puts the historical and musical record straight around the Yunis recording sampled on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a track from the first volume of a vinyl box-set compilation of ethnomusicological field recordings, entitled Music in the World of Islam I: The Human Voice (Jenkins and Olsen 1976a).