‘A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition.’ Jacques Derrida, Dissemination
‘It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.’ Franz Kafka, Before the Law
Polysemy (noun) – the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Oxford Languages
I would like to stress and re-stress in order to affect a kind of re-dress, with the impact of Hannibal’s army of elephants, the importance of music. Frank Kafka states in his short parable on legal systems and bureaucracy that ‘before the law sits a gatekeeper’. To ‘this gatekeeper comes a man from the country’ asking ’to gain entry into the law.’ The gatekeeper says that he ’cannot grant him entry at the moment.’ The man never gains entry to the law because of the gatekeeper’s continual equivocations. In a striking similar way music has its own gatekeepers, who hide from the listener the intricacies of its composition and distribution.
At the end of 2024 Universal Music Group, ABKCO Music & Records and Concord Music Group filed a complaint for copyright infringement against distributers Believe and its subsidiary Tunecore. Believe were accused of being ‘overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and ‘pirate record labels’ who were bringing the industry, and other musicians and labels into disrepute by infringing on copyrighted music. This small insight into the internal workings of some aspects of the music business leaves the reader, like Kafka’s man from the country, peering at the music and musicians from behind hugely complicated legalistic gates.
The effect of this type of legal case is to divert, or distract, the reader from the music and musicians. Clearly the legalities of the music business are important, but they do leave one wondering, what about the music? Under the weight of legalisation and bureaucracy, the appreciation and development of music and artists becomes obscured. My own back catalogue has been distributed and re-distributed a number of times and each time I am bought to question how the value of music is affected by these changes.
In Dissemination Derrida draws a distinction between polysemy and the spread of information. The spread of information is defined as the opposite of polysemy, closing down the possibility of our words having a potentially infinite number of meanings. Once music is distributed, by Believe or Universal, ‘its continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out’.
Music means so much to so many people, that dissecting it down to its legal niceties thus removes our focus from interacting with, and creating the pieces of music, which are of course necessary for the ongoing legal battles in the first instance. As can be seen from the recent defamation case between artists Drake and Kendrick Lamar, Something of the meaning of the music is lost when the music enters a legal context. After attempting to sue Universal Music Group over one of Kendrick Lamar’s songs, the record company has stated that ‘not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist – let alone Drake – is illogical.’ The legal context here closes down the potential for the song to be enjoyed, rather it becomes part of a legal case with wider implications for both artists and their respective labels. Listeners are again left standing behind the gates of legislation.
Thus, as can be seen from the various legal disputes between labels and artists, the dissemination of music is of course both valuable and necessary. It does however close many avenues for that same music to be interpreted and enjoyed by listeners, record companies and critics, just as the gatekeeper in the parable closes the gates to Kafka.