Oh dear.

Evidently last year (and in some quarters, dating back rather a aways before that), there was a flurry of accusations within fandom that Yoko Kanno substantially plagiarizes much of her music. There was even some escalation to the point of direct professional confrontation, at least in terms of contacting other musicians; I don't know whether Kanno has made any statements of her own on the subject.

I suppose I should be outraged, but instead I'm just bemused.( Read more... )

Later addendum: evidently someone has written a book on the prevalence of such "borrowing" in popular music by/from just about everyone. I have no idea what is the minimum threshold of similarity to consider a suit worthwhile-- okay, sure, I'd consider outright blatant sampling of someone else's voice to be worthy of rights negotiation, but I've had the impression that the holders of song copyrights may *not* block other performers from doing their own cover versions as long as the proper credit/royalties are given.