The Covenant of Music

MIQDASH BETHEL COVENANT ASSEMBLY

Pearl River, Louisiana  ·  miqdashbethel@gmail.com

WITNESSES TO THE WOUND

A Covenant Investigation into the Exploitation of the Zamar Carriers

100 Years of the Music Business on Trial

A 20 + Part Research Series

Kepha Arcemont, Elder and Founder · Miqdash Bethel Covenant Assembly

To Everyone Who Has Ever Loved Music,

You know the songs. Maple Leaf Rag. Hound Dog. My Guy. Soul Man. Proud Mary. Fortunate Son. Imagine. Purple Haze. People Get Ready. Funky Drummer. You grew up with them, or your parents did, or you discovered them and they became part of the architecture of who you are. These songs are woven into American life the way rivers are woven into a landscape. They define the shape of the ground.

What you may not know is what happened to the people who made them.

Scott Joplin wrote Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 and died in a state institution in 1917, penniless and largely forgotten. Big Mama Thornton recorded Hound Dog in 1952 and received $500 flat — no royalties — while Elvis Presley sold ten million copies of the same song. Sam Moore of Sam & Dave received a pension of $73 per month after thirty years of million-selling records. John Fogerty waited fifty years to own the songs he wrote as a teenager.

This series is the documented account of what happened between the gift and the compensation. Between the music and the money. Between what these artists were worth and what they received.

Who I Am and Why I Wrote This

My name is Kepha Arcemont. I am the Elder and founder of Miqdash Bethel Covenant Assembly in Pearl River, Louisiana — a Hebrew covenant ministry grounded exclusively in the Tanakh as its doctrinal authority. I am also a blues-rock guitarist and vocalist who has been playing music since I was fourteen years old. I perform under the names The Kepha Arcemont Experiment and Peace of Blues. I have recorded with many session musicians, most notably, Kenny Aronoff and Philip Bynoe — two of the most accomplished hired-gun musicians in the industry. Kenny Aronoff appears in the documentary Hired Gun, which documents the exploitation of touring and studio musicians. I have spent thousands of dollars over fifty years pursuing the music I was called to make. I have received perhaps a few thousand dollars in return. So why do I and so many musicians pursue music in our lives? The answer is found within!

I am also a former New Orleans firefighter, retired early from an on-the-job injury, and a former volunteer fire chief for Irish Bayou Volunteer Fire Department. My father, SFC Terry Gilman Arcemont, was killed in action in 1967, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Oak Leaf Cluster. I grew up understanding what it means to give everything to a calling and receive, in return, not what the world calls adequate compensation — but something else. Something the covenant calls purpose.

I wrote this series because I am a musician who has read the contracts, lived the economics, and studied the Torah. And what I found, when I set those three things side by side, was that the ancient covenant texts of the Hebrew Bible had already named — with extraordinary precision — every mechanism of exploitation documented in these twenty - plus - reports. The Torah did not need to update its language to describe the streaming royalty ledger of 2026. The commands were already there. The violations were already named. The standard was already set.

I wrote this series as covenant testimony. As a witness. As a musician who believes that what was done to Scott Joplin and Bessie Smith and Sam Moore and Jimi Hendrix and John Fogerty and the three hundred and fifty session musicians who played every major pop hit of the 1960s and never received a royalty — was seen by Yahweh. Is in the permanent record. And deserves to be named.

What Yahweh Says About Music

Before this series can make its full case, one question must be answered directly: Why does it matter, from a covenant standpoint, what the music industry does to musicians? Why is this not simply a labor dispute — an economic injustice like any other? The answer is found in the Tanakh itself. Music in the Hebrew covenant tradition is not entertainment. It is not a commercial product. It is a covenant appointment. And when you understand what Yahweh says about music — what He created it for, who He appointed to carry it, and what He commissioned it to do — the exploitation documented in these twenty reports becomes something more than a business scandal. It becomes a covenant violation against something Yahweh specifically ordained.

The Word That Names the Gift: Zamar

The Hebrew root zamar (זָמַר, Strong’s H2167) is the covenant word for music. Its core meaning is ‘to touch the strings of a musical instrument, to make music accompanied by the voice, to celebrate in song and music.’ From it comes mizmor — the noun used as the heading of 57 of the 150 Tehillim (Psalms). It is the word on which this entire series is built. The zamar carrier is not a performer in the commercial sense. The zamar carrier is the one who carries the musical offering — the covenant sound — into the presence of Yahweh on behalf of the community. The first appearance of zamar in the Tanakh is in Shoftim 5:3, when Deborah and Barak sing their victory hymn:

“Hear, O kings; give ear, O princes; to Yahweh I will sing, I will make music (zamar) to Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel.”

— Shoftim (Judges) 5:3

This is the covenant definition of what music is for: to make music to Yahweh. Not to the audience. Not to the market. Not to the label or the platform or the algorithm. To Yahweh. The commercial apparatus that surrounds music in every era documented in this series is a structure built around something that was never designed to serve commercial purposes. The gift precedes the industry. The covenant appointment precedes the contract. Understanding this distinction is the foundation of everything that follows in these twenty reports.

Yahweh Commissioned the Musicians: Divrei HaYamim Aleph 25

The most detailed covenant documentation of music’s role in the Tanakh is found in Divrei HaYamim Aleph (1 Chronicles) 25, where David, under Yahweh’s direction, formally organizes the Levitical musicians into covenant service. The passage is remarkable for its specificity. This is not a general encouragement to worship. It is a covenant organizational structure — a roster, a chain of command, a set of assignments — for the people whose function is to carry the music:

“David and the chiefs of the service also set apart for the service the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who prophesied with lyres, with harps, and with cymbals.”

— Divrei HaYamim Aleph (1 Chronicles) 25:1

Three guilds. Asaph. Heman. Jeduthun. Their sons were set apart — separated out from other service — for the specific covenant function of music. They prophesied through instruments. The text does not distinguish between ‘secular’ musical talent and ‘sacred’ musical calling. The instrument IS the prophetic vehicle. What comes through the strings and the voice is covenant communication.

“The number of them along with their brothers, who were trained in singing to Yahweh, all who were skillful, was 288.”

— Divrei HaYamim Aleph (1 Chronicles) 25:7

288 musicians. Trained. Skilled. Appointed. Named. The covenant did not leave music to amateurs or to whoever happened to be available. It created a formal, documented, funded structure for the people who carried the sound. The Levitical musicians received their provision from the community tithe — an ongoing proportion of what the whole covenant community produced — because their service was understood as essential to the covenant community’s life. This is not a performance fee. This is covenant provision for covenant function.

Music was of the highest importance in Israelite worship. The Levitical musicians’ role in leading and directing worship was crucial, for it was they who encouraged the people to worship Yahweh with conviction, harmony, and vitality.

— Martin Selman, commentary on Divrei HaYamim Aleph 25, documenting the covenant structure of musical appointment

Music as Prophecy: The Covenant Sound That Carries the Word

The Tanakh does not separate musical excellence from prophetic function. The sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun prophesied through their instruments. This is why the Tehillim — the 150 psalms — are simultaneously poetry, music, prayer, prophecy, lament, praise, and covenant testimony. They are not one of these things. They are all of them at once, because the zamar carrier occupies all of these roles simultaneously.

“Then Moshe and the people of Israel sang this song to Yahweh, saying, ‘I will sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.’”

— Shemot (Exodus) 15:1

The Song of the Sea — Shirat HaYam — is the first fully documented song in the Tanakh. The entire community sang it after the crossing of the Red Sea. Moshe led it. Miriam repeated it. Music was the covenant community’s first response to Yahweh’s most dramatic act of deliverance. Not silence. Not a speech. A song. This establishes from the earliest pages of the Tanakh that music is the medium through which Yahweh’s acts are transmitted from the event into the community’s memory, identity, and covenant life.

The Closing Command: Tehillim 150

The Tehillim — the book of Psalms — is the largest book in the Tanakh. It contains 150 songs spanning the full range of human experience before Yahweh: praise, lament, gratitude, anguish, confession, wonder, grief, joy, and covenant appeal. It closes with Tehillim 150, which is the Tanakh’s final and most comprehensive statement about music:

“Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp. Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise Yahweh. Praise Yahweh.”

— Tehillim (Psalms) 150:3-6

Every instrument named. Every musician implied. Let everything that has breath — not every person who has signed a record deal, not every artist who has achieved commercial success, but everything that has breath — is called to this. The covenant does not restrict the musical calling to professionals, to Levites, to the trained and the successful. It extends it to everyone who breathes. And if everything that has breath is called to praise Yahweh through music, then the one who carries that calling as a primary covenant function — the zamar carrier, the musician by appointment and by gift — carries something Yahweh specifically values, specifically commissioned, and specifically protects under covenant law.

Why This Makes the Wound a Covenant Matter

When Scott Joplin received a one-cent royalty for Maple Leaf Rag, the music industry was not merely underpaying an entertainer. It was extracting commercial value from a gift that Yahweh gave, through a vessel Yahweh appointed, for a purpose that Yahweh designated. The zamar carrier’s gift is not the industry’s property. It was never the industry’s property. The industry’s function — in the covenant framework — is to serve as a distribution mechanism for what 

Yahweh sends through the musician into the world. When the distribution mechanism captures the gift for its own enrichment rather than returning the fruit of the gift to the one who carried it, it has violated a covenant structure that precedes it by millennia. This is what the Torah’s commands regarding just weights, unprevented wages, stumbling blocks, and false dealing are protecting. Not abstract economic principles. The covenant appointment of the zamar carrier.

The music industry did not create the gift it has spent one hundred and twenty-seven years monetizing. Yahweh did. The covenant record of what was done with that gift — documented across these twenty reports — is therefore not merely an economic accounting. It is a covenant audit.

That is what this series is. A covenant audit. Conducted by the standard of the one who gave the gift in the first place.

What This Series Is

Witnesses to the Wound is a twenty+ part research series documenting one hundred and twenty-seven years of the music industry's exploitation of the artists who built it — from Scott Joplin's one-cent royalty contract of 1899 to the streaming fractions and platform economy of 2026.

Each report follows the same covenant research standard, drawn from Devarim 19:15 — the two or three witnesses principle. No claim is entered without independent corroboration from at least two separate authoritative sources. No charge is made without documented evidence. The Torah charges applied in each report are drawn from the text of the Tanakh, not from commentary or tradition. Every Hebrew citation is sourced to BDB, HALOT, or Gesenius. Every factual claim is traceable.

The reports are not hate documents. They are not attacks on the music industry as a monolith. They are a formal covenant record — the kind of careful, documented testimony that the Torah's legal framework requires before any judgment can be entered. Several reports apply what the series calls the full-truth bilateral standard: where an artist was both victim and perpetrator, both accounts are entered. The covenant does not simplify complicated people. It holds the full account.

The first twenty reports cover:

1.  Scott Joplin (1868–1917)  —  The Father of Ragtime — one-cent royalty — died in a state institution

2.  Ma Rainey (1886–1939)  —  The Mother of the Blues — Paramount Records — discovered and discarded

3.  Bessie Smith (1894–1937)  —  The Empress of the Blues — $125 per side, no royalties — Columbia earned millions

4.  Billie Holiday (1915–1959)  —  Drug conviction stripped her cabaret card — banned from New York clubs for years — died under arrest

5.  Robert Johnson (1911–1938)  —  The Delta Bluesman — died at 27 — Sony paid $1.5M for his catalog decades later; his son drove a gravel truck until 1998

6.  Big Bill Broonzy (1903–1958)  —  Primary testimony: ‘I didn’t get no royalties because I didn’t know nothing about trying to demand for no money’

7.  Big Mama Thornton (1926–1984)  —  $500 for Hound Dog versus Elvis’s ten million copies — died in a rooming house with $3,000 to her name

8.  Chuck Berry (born 1926)  —  Maybellene credit stolen for 31 years — bilateral account of artist as both victim and wrongdoer

9.  Little Richard (1932–2020)  —  Half a cent per record — $50 for publishing rights — $11,000 settlement waiving all future royalties

10.  Ruth Brown (1928–2006)  —  $785 royalty statement — RICO threat — founded the Rhythm and Blues Foundation — Devarim 16:20: Justice, justice shall you pursue

11.  Sam Cooke (1931–1964)  —  Murdered at 33 — 15-minute coroner’s inquest — Allen Klein acquired catalog within three months of his death

12.  Mary Wells (1943–1992)  —  Signed at 17 as a minor — My Guy royalties redirected to promote the Supremes — died at 49 with friends paying her medical bills

13.  James Brown (1933–2006)  —  Bilateral account: poverty wages and fine system imposed on his musicians; 16-year estate battle; scholarship fund blocked

14.  Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999)  —  Paralyzed at 48 by a falling stage lighting rig — recorded his final album lying on his back, one vocal line at a time

15.  Sam Moore (1935–2025)  —  $2,285 total pension after 30 years of million-selling records — ‘Don’t give me cornbread and tell me it’s biscuits’

16.  Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970)  —  $1 PPX contract signed at 23 in poverty — royalties frozen — died at 27 still in litigation — 49 years before his family owned what he made

17.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney  —  Northern Songs — ‘We just signed this thing, not knowing what it was at all’ — catalog sold to Sony for $750 million

18.  John Fogerty / CCR  —  ‘Unending horrible legal slavery’ — 50 years — sued for plagiarizing himself — refused to perform his own songs for years

19.  Studio Musicians  —  The Wrecking Crew, Hired Gun, and the Nameless Oxen — flat fees, no royalties, no credit, disposable as toilet paper

20.  The Hip-Hop Era to 2026  —  360 deals, streaming fractions, platform virality — the mechanism unchanged — the names different — the wound continuous

What This Series Is Not

This series is not anti-music. It is pro-music — so pro-music that it refuses to allow what was done to the people who made the music to go unnamed and unrecorded.

This series is not a theological tract requiring agreement with any religious tradition. The Torah charges applied in each report are the analytical framework — the legal standard against which the industry's conduct is measured. Readers of every background or no religious background will find the factual record complete and independently verifiable. The covenant lens is offered, not imposed. What the Torah says about wages, weights, contracts, and the treatment of the creative worker stands on its own regardless of the reader's tradition.

This series is not a claim that no artist was ever treated fairly or that every record label was corrupt. It documents a structural pattern — mechanisms of extraction that recur across eras, across genres, across racial lines, across commercial contexts. The pattern is not a conspiracy. It is an industry logic. And industry logic, like any other logic, can be named, analyzed, and held accountable.

This series is not the final word. Bob Marley is not in these pages — his case is complex enough to warrant its own series, and that work is coming. There are artists from every era not yet documented. The series is a beginning, not a conclusion. An opening of the record, not its sealing.

Why It Matters Now

Sam Moore died January 10, 2025 — two months before this series was completed. He was 89 years old. He spent the last thirty years of his life fighting for what the industry owed him. He testified before Congress. He filed lawsuits. He gave interviews. He and his wife Joyce Moore advocated for artists’ rights until the end. He left this world still fighting.

In 2026, a mid-level streaming artist with ten million monthly listeners earns approximately the same proportion of the commercial value their music generates as Scott Joplin earned in 1899. The technology is different. The extraction ratio is not. The platforms have changed. The directional imprecision of the accounting — always flowing away from the artist and toward the commercial entity — has not.

Every young musician reading this series before they sign their first contract is the audience this work was written for. Every independent artist navigating the streaming economy deserves to know the full history of how this industry operates — not the version the industry tells about itself, but the version the artists themselves testified to, in their own words, under oath, in interviews, in books, in courtrooms, in conversations with the Associated Press.

The music industry did not give these artists their gifts. It cannot take those gifts. What it can take — and has taken, systematically, across one hundred and twenty-seven years — is the financial inheritance of those gifts. This series is the formal covenant record of that taking. And the covenant record does not expire.

How to Use This Series

Each of the twenty+ reports is a standalone document. You can read them in order or go directly to the artist whose story you know. The research standard is consistent across all twenty — each report applies the Devarim 19:15 two-or-three-witnesses corroboration standard, identifies the specific Torah charges with their Hebrew citations, and closes with a covenant verdict.

You do not need to be a Torah scholar to read these reports. You need only to believe that the people who make the music the world cannot stop listening to deserve to be paid what their work is worth, to be credited for what they contribute, and to be treated with the dignity owed to anyone who carries a genuine gift into the world in service of others. If you believe that, you will find the covenant framework in these reports saying the same thing you already know — in older and more precise language.

If you are a musician — especially an independent artist — the final document in this collection, Why Would Anyone Do This? A Covenant Word to the Indie Artist, was written directly for you. It is the answer to the question these twenty reports make unavoidable. Read the indictments. Then read the encouragement. Both are necessary. Both are true.

A Final Word

I have been playing music since I was fourteen. I have spent more than I have received and given more than I have been paid. I have done this in the same tradition as every artist in these twenty reports: not because the commercial calculation made sense, but because the music required it. Because the gift does not consult the ledger before it arrives. Because there is, as the prophet Yirmeyahu said, something like a burning fire shut up in the bones, and the weariness of holding it in becomes greater than the cost of letting it out.

That fire is not the industry’s property. It never was. These twenty plus reports are the formal covenant documentation of what the industry attempted to do with it anyway.

The music remains. The accounting is open. The covenant is watching. More parts will continue in this important series, stay tuned!

Kepha Arcemont

Elder and Founder, Miqdash Bethel Covenant Assembly

Blues-Rock Guitarist and Vocalist — The Kepha Arcemont Experiment · Peace of Blues

Pearl River, Louisiana · March 2026

miqdashbethel@gmail.com

SERIES INDEX

Attached documents — 30 plus reports plus the series conclusion

Introduction:  Singers/Strings Sacred Covenant Music — The Beginning of the 20-Part Series

Part 1:  Scott Joplin

Part 2:  Ma Rainey

Part 3:  Bessie Smith

Part 4:  Billie Holiday

Part 5:  Robert Johnson

Part 6:  Big Bill Broonzy

Part 7:  Big Mama Thornton

Part 8:  Chuck Berry

Part 9:  Little Richard

Part 10:  Ruth Brown

Part 11:  Sam Cooke

Part 12:  Mary Wells

Part 13:  James Brown

Part 14:  Curtis Mayfield

Part 15:  Sam Moore

Part 16:  Jimi Hendrix

Part 17:  John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Part 18:  John Fogerty / Creedence Clearwater Revival

Part 19:  The Nameless Oxen — Studio Musicians, Session Players, and the Hired Guns

Part 20:  The Wound Continues — The Hip-Hop Era to 2026 (Final Report)

Part 21:  Steve Marriott

Part 22: Sammy Davis Jr.

Part 23:  Badfinger

Part 24: Sly Stone

Part 25:  David Bowie

Part 26:  Billy Joel

Part 27:  John Cougar Mellencamp

Part 28:  George Clinton

Part 29:  Leonard Cohen

Part 30: Bob Dylan

Conclusion Part 31:  Why Would Anyone Do This? — A Covenant Word to the Indie Artist

Selah.

Miqdash Bethel Covenant Assembly  ·  Pearl River, Louisiana  ·  miqdashbethel@gmail.com  ·  Doctrinal Authority: The Tanakh Alone