The bottom line of this question: Is it possible to pay for performance rights for a song that's not covered by ASCAP/BMI?
I'm doing a TYA show right now about Mayan indigenous folklore. We've found a song by a Yucatec artist that we really want to use. Our actors would be performing it onstage, we're not using a recording.
As far as I can tell, the only official recording of this song is in a Yucatec documentary about indigenous music. I don't believe there's a 'studio version.' The artist has two albums on iTunes but neither one has this song. We found it by looking for Mayan songs on youtube, and found a clip from the documentary. The documentary doesn't seem to be on sale on Amazon, so I don't know how to get that either!
We'd like to be able to give the composer a little money for our use of his song. We are trying very hard to be supportive of indigenous artists. Even though we know he will never know about our use of it unless we tell him, we want to pay him because it's important to our mission with this play.
But, because his song doesn't seem to be covered by an American performance rights organization... is it even possible?
I'm thinking the only way to do it might be to track down the guy personally... which looks like it might be difficult. Which basically means either we use the song for free, or we find another song that's easier to pay for.
But we really love this song and have already translated it (so we sing one verse in Yucatec, one in Spanish, one in English) and arranged it... and the show techs in one week. So we would be very sad to change it.
