When the Pritams, Anumaliks, Devas and Yuvans of India are busy lifting tunes from all over the world, people from around the world are lifting tunes composed by one Indian - do I even have to mention that the Indian in question is A.R.Rahman?

I had written about Uzbek singer Iroda Dilroz using ARR's Kadhal Sadugudu (alaipayuthe) and Mustafa. But, she had credited A.R.Rahman! Ottagathai kattiko was used by La Caution for their song Pilotes Automatiques.

Now, Shakalaka Baby is in China and it is already a hit. Mandarin singer Kelly Poon has included this song in her album titled Shakalaka Baby.
Listen to it here.

The sad part is that A.R.Rahman is not credited for this till now!

(Thanks to Vinod and NoorulWahid from arrahmanfans for the info)


Update 1:
AR Rahman and Lyrics writer Don Black have been credited in the music video. But, it still remains to be seen if they have got the rights to use the song.

Update 2:
The mails from arrahmanfans Yahoo group, reagarding this issue, were forwarded to A.R.Rahman and ARR's legal advisers and Andrew Lloyd Weber escalated the issue to Universal Music, who are releasing the Kelly Poon album. They have agreed to add AR Rahman's name in the credits. Glad to see that the group has done some really active work for ARR!!!

This must be the worst instance of copying from Yuvan! Song in question: "Karuppaana Kaiyaale" from "Thamirabarani". This was obvious right on my first listening - the original song, being the famous devotional song "Karpoora Nayagiyae" by LR Eswari.
Listen to the songs here:
Yuvan's "Karuppaana":
http://www.raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0001120.html

"Karpoora Nayagiyae" sung by LR Eswari
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/aUK98RXn1t.As1NMvHdW/

I had heard this song quite sometime back but only recently, came to know that the culprit was Yuvan. I assumed the composer must be Shrikanth Deva (who had shamelessly lifted the MGR song, "Koduppadhellaam Koduppaan" in one of his earlier movies). Never thought that Yuvan would stoop so low.

Agreed... Yuvan is no original composer, with many of his famous hits (including the 3 songs in Kadhal Kondein) being blatant lifts - but in those cases, it was only the first few lines and the sources were pretty unknown in India - they ranged from Indonesian to Nordic folk. But, here the source is a very famous devotional song, and the entire song is copied. Despite his copycat reputation, I had a little respect for him, but with this song, even that is gone. To me, he is now on par with the Shrikanth Devas orDhinas of the world!!!

PS: The song "Karpoora Nayagiyae" itself is inspired from the Navrang song Aadha hai Chandrama, but in this case the similarity ends after the first 4 lines.
Listen to Aadha hai chandrama, here:
http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/artist/Mahendra_Kapoor.html

It was just a coincidence that I watched Lage Raho Munnabhai on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti for I did not know that the movie was even related to Mahatma Gandhi.

The gorgeous Vidya Balan plays the role of Jhaanvi, a bubbly Worldspace RJ. There is not much screentime for her in this movie, but she has done her bit perfectly! Her "Good Morniiinnnnnnnnng Mumbaaaaai" has become famous and is already being commonly used by youth when they meet thier friends and also in Yahoo Chats!
Check out Jhanvi's Good Morniiiinnnnng Mumbai clip here
Dialogues were good in many places, especially the ones carrying Gandhiji's messages. Some of my favourites:

"chaata maarna aasaan hai, maafi maangne ke liye himmat chahiye, beta.. yeh kaarayon ka kaam nahin hai" (It is easy to slap someone, but to apologise, one needs courage. It is not something for cowards.)
"Bhai, mujhe to barso pehle maar diya tha.. Par mere vichaaar teen goliyon se nahin marne wale hain." (I was assassinated years back, but my thoughts are not the ones which die because of 3 bullets!)

"Bachpan mein jab tu jhooth bolti thi, to tera baap taxi pakad ke bhaag jaata tha kya?"

Films like Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai are the only hopes of saving Bollywood from the Karan Johars of the world! Kudos to Vidhu Vinod Chopra & Rajkumar Hirani for this brilliant effort.

Positives: Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani and of course, the theme of "Gandhigiri".
Negatives: Gets a bit preachy, but it is inevitable.

Kya jhakaas movie hai! Aise picture bahut kam ich dekhne ko milte hain aajkal... Apun bolta hai, miss nahin karne ka, maamoo!

This is old news... There is stiff competition for this record now... And again, the source is A.R.Rahman. The Background music in almost every new tamil and Hindi movie trailer is directly lifted from the Chinese movie, Warriors of Heaven and Earth (WOHE), for which ARR composed the music. Here is the list:

1. Majaa (MD: Vidyasagar) - track used is Dacoit Duel from WOHE.
2. Cheran's Thavamaai Thavamirundhu - Track used: Golden Age
3. Kalaaba Kadhalan - Dacoit Duel and Golden Age
4. Ramakrishna - Dacoit Duel
5. ThagappanSamy - Dacoit Duel
6. Oru Kallooriyin Kadhai - Dacoit Duel, Warriors in Peace

This list is not complete... There are many more tamil movies.

Coming to hindi movie trailers:
1. James - Dacoit Duel
2. Ek Ajnabee - Dacoit Duel
3. Hul Chal - Dacoit Duel

This list is, again, not complete... And as is obvious, it is Dacoit Duel all the way!!! All the copycats seem to love this track!

Apart from movie trailers, the tracks of WOHE are being used for Hanniffa Textiles Ad., title songs of many game shows (including the one hosted by Ramya Krishnan), almost in all episodes of Paadhaigal serial (in Podhigai) and many other programs in Sun, Podhigai and all other Tamil Channels!

By lift, I do not mean inspiration - I mean direct rip-off - copy-paste job!!! Ivanga ellam thirundhave maattangalaaaa?

The music rights for WOHE are with SONY. I wonder how Sony is quiet for so long about this issue! This is no one-off incident... Every music director is lifting left, right and center from this ARR classic! Isn't this illegal? Aren't the copyright laws in India strong enough?

CopyCats have alwas existed in Indian film music - right from SD Burman, RD Burman to the recent Vishal-Shekhar, Nadeem Shravan and of course Anu Malik. This phenomenon has been there in tamil movies too - right from the Un Aattamellaam song from Ali Baba-vum 40 thirudargalum (copied from Ya Habibi Taala By Asmahan) to the three blatant lifts in Kadhal Kondein (by Yuvan Shankar) . However, the originality seems to be lower in Hindi movies. This is what I could infer from the site www.itwofs.com, which is a great database of copied songs! Look at the sheer number of hindi songs that have been copied -way too high!

Sometimes, u feel so shocked to find that the song which was a big hit and the one that u liked was copied. I got such a shock, when I came across this on www.itwofs.com:

The song that made Hassan Jehangir a household name across the 2 countries - Hawa hawa. This chartbuster was first released in 1990 in Pakistan, but strangely enough, its Iranian original is as old as the 70s! Yes, the original is called 'Havar havar' and was by Persian singer Kourosh Yaghmai.

U can listen to the source song at the address mentioned above.

(In this site, ITWOFS, a convention is followed. A TC tag next to an entry means that the tune itself is lifted. The lack of creativity (or shall we say, absence of it?) of the music director can be gauged from this.)

Continuing from where I left off yesterday, here is one more copying case... This one is definitely more stupid.

The song Hima Kannangal from the Malayalam Movie Aye Taxi (2005, starring Mohan Lal, Music: Anu Malik) is lifted from .......guess what......... the Airtel Tune by ARR.

U can listen to the song at Music India Online.

First I thought, may be they would have bought the rights for the tune or some thing like that... But, given Anu Malik's track record, there is no benefit-of-doubt for him!!!

Vishal-Shekhar - This music director duo were touted as very good after the release of Jhankar Beats and were referred to as "musical whiz-kids who are about to rock hindi film music". But now, with the movie Salaam Namaste they have proved that they are in no way different from copy cats like Anu Malik, Nadeem-Shravan, Ismail Durbar and Jatin-Lalit.

The song "My Dil goes hmmm..." is a total rip-off of a background music in Swades (the scene where Gayatri Joshi helps Shah Rukh in tying dhoti). It is a note-be-note copy of the above-said BGM. It is absulutely disgusting to see these people getting famous by doing nothing more than a copy-paste job.

Here are the two clips:

My Dil Goes mmm


Swades - Dhoti BGM

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