Something New in Africa? Intellectual Property Rights and the African Music Industry

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Abstract:

In my paper I will present the preliminary findings of a project that deals with the current situation of intellectual property (IP) protection in the African music industry. Although in 1999 the retail value of soundcarrier sales in Africa represented a mere 0.5% of the global value of soundcarrier sales (and of that figure 95% had been realized in South Africa alone), there are signs that the African music industry is rebounding. Observers argue for a more stringent approach to IP within the framework of TRIPS as a mean to encourage increased artistic production and, by extension, to bolster the music industry's potential as a leading force in expanding African participation in international trade.

Biographical Note:

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Veit Erlmann holds the Endowed Chair of Music History at University of Texas at Austin. He studied musicology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy in Berlin and Cologne, where he obtained a Dr.phil. in 1978 and did a habilitation in musicology in 1989 and in anthropology in 1994. He has done fieldwork in Ecuador and in several African countries such as Cameroon, Niger, Ghana, South Africa and Lesotho. Currently he is doing research in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Dr. Erlmann has been on the faculties of the University of Natal, the University of Chicago, the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and the Free University of Berlin. Among his publications are African Stars, Studies in Black South African Performance and Nightsong, and Performance, Power and Practice in South Africa, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His most recent book, Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination, published by Oxford University Press won the Alan P.Merriam Prize for the best English-language monograph in ethnomusicology.

Source: Veit Erlmann, “Direcotry,” University of Texas at Austin: Butler School of Music, http://www.music.utexas.edu/directory/details.aspx?id=37