Cheekily Yours: The sound of copied music

While Bollywood has always been embroiled with scoops and scandals, the music industry hasn’t been far behind. One can look at the songs with double-meanings that disparage women or the flack that leading names in rap faced thanks to their misogynistic lyrics. Then there’s the questionable legal battles of a once-popular singer of Bengali origin, and the odd rebellion by a maverick with a voice reminiscent of Rafi saab, all has been relatively quiet on the music front. Lyrics.

But there’s still more dirty linen that hasn’t been as obviously exposed as yet. Industry insiders complain about credit passed off to other, better-known voices. A well-known Kishore kanthi, for instance, tells this fly on the wall that he had sung several songs for movies that were then passed off in the name of a more renowned voice of the 90s in the same genre. The disappointed singer made his way back to his hometown soon after.

But it’s not just in swapping credits where music directors have bent the rules. One of the most well-known music directors in the industry, whose young relative is lending his voice to hit numbers nowadays, has been caught multiple times for copying his tunes. What some may not know is that even this is not his work. A source close to the music director says, “He has very little idea about music. It’s his assistants who do all the work. He may know a bit about the technical aspect of making music but that’s it.”

The same source goes on to relate the plight of another copy cat music director. Having copied Bengali and Korean origin music, among others, he has not only courted controversy but also trapped himself in a vicious cycle of copying. “Once a movie director’s assistant gave him a CD, saying that he wanted a music score similar that one within a week’s time. When the music director tried to refuse, asking for a little more time to do some original work, the other guy told him, ‘time leke original karna hota toh AR Rahman ke paas jata na’ (if I wanted an original time-consuming work, I’d just go to AR Rahman)!”

One can only wonder if we can see some originality from the industry, or if the Golden Era has given way to half-baked copies and auto-tuning. More on that next time!