Plagiarism- Copying music in the name Of Insipiration
Posted by Anandhan Subbiah on Jul 17, 2007 in Music, Personal • 20 commentsI think the Indian music industry is the best in Asia even though most people might disagree . I am confident in making this statement simply due to the variety and abundant talent and lately there has been a world wide appeal to Indian music , Thanks primarily to Rehman . For all the movie fans who watched the “Inside Man” the title song in the beginning of the movie is a very famous Hindi hit composed by A.R Rehman for the Mani rathnam movie “Dil Se” starring the King Khan and Manisha Koirala. Rehman has also worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber for the Broadway show “Bombay dreams”.Time magazine recognized the music for Roja , the first major album by Rehman by rating it one of the top ten soundtracks ever to be released.
However there is a big problem which I strongly believe can derail the originality of Indian Music. Most South Indian music fans will remember Deva for his ability to rip music from anywhere in the world and customize it to suit the local audience. Anu Malik is the Hindi music director who made it big just by his sheer ability to copy western songs. Lately this disturbing trend has grown to mammoth proportions with most music directors copying music in the name of inspiration when it is simply Plagiarism
Pritam one of the famous music directors from North India has managed to enter into the hall of fame for copycats with his ability to copy music from all over the globe without making any distinction between genre , race , country etc. Simply visit the Wikipedia link and search for Pritam and you can see that they have dedicated a special page for Plagiarism
Yuvan Shankar Raja the hot music director from south India is not far behind. It is frustrating to read this article in Behindwoods as it is very obvious that this son of one of India’s talented Music director has literally ripped music from other albums and made the singers sing in Tamil. Itr gets worse when you find out that he even ripped BGM’s from his father . The song manmadhane is a lift from the BGM of Siva and his more famous Theme song from 7 G Rainbow colony is a direct rip off his fathers BGM from the movie Johnny. I personally like Yuvan a lot but when he has shamelessly copied music without making a refrence to the original in the CD’s you can only conclude the only genuine artist in India is Rehman. There are some references to some of his songs in behindwoods but if you listen carefully it is very obvious that Rehman is the only director who can genuinely use the term “inspiration”. Harris Jeyaraj another popular music director is also guilty but definitely not as bad as Yuvan.
The main problem in India is the lack of copyright protection. There is no law to protect an artist or prevent someone from copying music and releasing it in thier name. Amr Diab , the awesome Arab music star can easily sue Pritam for a million dollars or even more as almost 90% of his hit songs are carbon copies of Amr Diab’s albums.
One thing we can do from a moral standpoint is not to recognize these artists who commit plagiarism . They should never ever nominate anyone who has copied songs for awards. In Europe and the United States people do release various versions of the same song but they make sure that they refrence the original version in the records and the original artists even get compensated. This sort of model helps people to innovate than trying to copy songs.
Hopefully the Indian government can amend the law to prevent copyright violation and also penalize artists proven guilty of Plagiarism
Yes yuvan has copied. But IMO he did not try the same after Kadhal Konden in which three copied songs Manasu rendum, Kadhal kadhal and Nejodu kalanthathu. Here i did’nt include lifting/inspiration from his dad.
But still the leader is harris who needs one example song to compose a new one. Recently he copied 3 or 4 songs for Patchaikili muthusaram and Unnalae Unnalae.
hey fools u people don’t seem to understand filmi music uuuuuuu.don’t blame yuvan and harris b’coz they are the best music directors not like rehman b’coz he is the king of copying gfrom english album uu music sense less people .harris and yuvan r better than rehman.and listen to they songs though the song and genre may me similar to the songs u listen but not tune and bgm ,harris the best back ruound music dir in the country better than even the king illayaraja uuuuuuuuu don’t simply blame uuu sense less people.once again yuvan and harris the best.
hey corect dude u seem to have judged correctly harris is the best bgm scorer and his songs are definetly a inspiration when it comes to any situation he is the master of giving according to the situation take a listen to songs from minnalae to beema he has given the best not even single has gone boring when even the rehman my fav could not give all songs great but harris each and every song is a beauty it seems harris has overtaken rehman and he will b the best.
okay i change my opinion…
haris jayraj is a waste director . a stupid copycat . copies almost all the songs. boring idiotic ssongs he has .. shit is he..
Sir i read your article with total neutral mind. And hence want to show you some facts. 1) A R Rehman is also a copycat. 2) every music director has copied or got inspiration from other songs. R D BURMAN SALIL CHAUDHARI RAJESH ROSHAN SHANKAR JAIKISHAN ANU MALIK AR REHMAN PRITAM AND RESHAMMIYA all of these legends HAVE lifted the songs or got inspired. 3) I have some collection of web pages which proves these gentlemen have surely done that & If you want i can send all these proofs to your Email ID.
And for your information i tell you that barring following three music directors no one has crystal clear record. Yes you will be surprised to know these exists these originals in the totally plagiarised film industry. These 3 composers have neve copied a single song from others. They are 1) SHANKAR EHSAN LOY 2) M M KREEM 3) VISHAL SHEKHAR and just to clarify you the song PRETTY WOMEN from film KAL HO NA HO is not lifted from original. Karan Johar wanted that song & after paying much money he included that
another thing, ANU MALIK is very much talented than u think. I totally agree ur point that he is also a copycat like every other composers but he has genuinely created many good creations. And for every single tune he lifted he has at least 20 genuine superb tunes of his own to show. Not surprisingly after 25 long years he is ruling music industry while his contemporaries are well forgotten. This is the basic diff. between him & pritam. if u remove lifted songs from pritam nothing remains, unlike anu
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
Hi ,
Nice article .
Anyways we should think of one thing , indian music industry is
the biggest music industry in terms no of songs composed ,so we cant expect songs to be too unique .
It is too hard to get a unique tune and most music directors draw inspirations from old songs or foreign albums ….like harris jeyaraj [Inspired by christian religious songs], yuvan [Inspired by old songs composed by his father].
In software terms “Reusing” is very high in indian music industry , hope atleast they give credits to original tune makers in future .
Well i would also add another line to this comment ..your website user interface is very nice .
I really like the template , can you plate lend me your website template
If you are interested , please reply to my id . Well i would give credits for sure in my blog ! [No Plagiarism]
Keep writing , ciao !
AR Rehman is also guilty of plagiarism as much as any other director. Just listen to the song “Roja Roja”. The tune is lifted from “Ye lal Rang” screened on Rajesh Khanna. He just increased the tempo and changed the beats. This is not inspiration. This is pure copy.
As somebody mentioned Shankar Jaykishan, let me tell u that there is a difference between shamelessly lifting a tune like rehman did (which i mentioned above) and basing a song on a classical chord. Shankar Jaikishan’s songs were based on European classical music just as many of the great songs of old were based on ragas of Indian classical music. That is not called copy or even inspiration. That is pure music.
And I think everybody forgot about Naushad who was undoubtedly the best music director of our country. Somebody listed three directors who have no record of copying etc. I would like to say that u have not heard about Naushad I think.
where can i get songs from Shankar Jaikishan ?
wel i think we shd stop talking bout al this we are here to listen to music enjoy it wel i can understand it feels a bit heart broken wen the actual creditor is not an indian specialy wen we like the particular song
bt lets just enjoy music coz in the end wat maters is wat we are listening is good to listen or not
I like your perspective ! It makes a lot of sense from a consumer view point.
Many musics were copied by a.r. Rahuman such as Telephone manipol….in the shanker’s film and Harris,Yuvan and all the tamil music directors are copying …..So listen to your favorite and Enjoy…. That”s to say….Guys
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Nice post. I guess unless these guys are fined heavly there isnt going to be any improvement.
Check the post of mine where I tried to list all the “inspired” ones.
Songs-copied from english to tamil
Please listen to this Aladdin theme song ( listen closely to the violin piece) and compare it to the Manmathan theme music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEGlJP4X4vc