At my son’s fourth birthday party, a classmate
presented him with a toy recycling truck. Atop
it was a button that, when pushed, uncorked a
familiar tune with the words: “To the dump, to
the dump, to the dump dump dump!” An adult
nearby heard the melody and said, “Hey — that’s
the ‘Lone Ranger’ theme song.”
Well, yes and no. It is indeed the fanfare to
the famed 1950s TV series. But before that it
was something even more venerable — the
William Tell Overture, by a 19th-century Italian
composer named Gioachino Rossini.
So goes the story of modern music. A century
of near-continuous recording, packaging,
repackaging, riffing and — more recently
— the technical ability for anyone to create
cultural collage and sample all facets of creative
expression, has turned our musical reservoir into
a collection of quotations. Millions of snippets,
words and music sit at the ready, waiting to be
recruited into the service of something new.
Or, occasionally, retooled into something
legally actionable.