Top Banana Blues

The slidecast below represents the confluence of two different forms I've been playing with. One is the writing of rhymes that criticize/lampoon current events items. In this case, it's about excessive CEO compensation, particularly now when wages are flat and unemployment is high. The other form is writing pieces as a slidecast, with a brief text narrative, images to illustrate the ideas, and a musical number to tie the whole thing together.

In doing this I was partially motivated to reduce verbiage in my rhymes and also to let the rhythm of the lines be dictated by the music more that anything else. One of the discoveries for me doing this is the sense that repetition adds value. In the music that is definitely true with the refrain repeating. It simply hadn't occurred to me to have some repetition in the verse other than in the rhyme scheme itself.

Top banana blues

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I've thought a little bit about copyright regarding this piece and my tentative conclusions are as follows. A reasonable fair use case can be made, in my view, on the grounds that the piece is educational and should not steal market from any of the creators whose works were used. The copyright issue only really crops up if the piece catches on. If there are no eyeballs going to it, who cares? For the music, Beggar's Blues by Duke Ellington from the album The Okeh Ellington, there already is a rendition by Sonny Greer and his Memphis Men on YouTube. For the images, the slidecast can be paused at any juncture and since the image is linked to the source the viewer can readily find the source. If the piece happens to get some eyeballs, this should only increase the eyeballs on the source works rather than steal from them. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but this makes sense to me.