From one copy to another

Originality in our music has been at a premium since the turn of the ’90s anyway. But of late, a lot of songs are sounding remarkably familiar indeed. And suddenly our music makers are taking too many easy ways out.

Those who have heard the Tarkieb soundtrack will have found a certain sense of deja vu when listening to Dil mera tarse sung with cute flatness by Shaan and Sagarika. Composer C. Ramachandra would have found the song familiar and said wryly, Yeh to Bhagwan ka gaana hai! No, that does not mean a divine ditty but comedian Bhagwan’s song from his evergreen combo with that composer - Shola jo bhadke from the 1951 Albela. What a tribute (?!) to that composition in its golden jubilee year!

Sandeep Chowta, who loves R.D. Burman (the man who fine-tuned the art of inspiration and was not averse to a bit of “lifting” too) and considers Laxmikant Pyarelal lower for lifting a tune or two in Karz takes a general dollop from Usha Khanna’s Bom bom bom bom Bombay meri hai as the base of Patli kamar in Jungle. In the same film, he takes a tune R.D.Burman has used twice over (as Tu pyar tu preet in the 1971 Paraya Dhan and as Yaari ho gayi yaar se in the 1972 Do Chor) and brings it to us as Do pyar karne wale jungle mein, complete with a Rehman-esque sound!

Anu Malik reworks (by coincidence?) Yeh shaam ki tanhaiyaan as Mere humsafar in Refugee. The song gets by on the strength of its innate melody: after all, when the source is so solid, how can Malik go wrong? Rajesh Roshan goes the Western way again with Kya kehna the title song of the film of that name, filched wholesale from the vintage hit O Carol. In Pyaara bhaiyya mera in the same film, he adapts Laxmikant Pyarelal’s Mera raja beta lock, stock and barrel from the 1991 non-starter Deshwasi.

But this is where the fun starts. This song was a not-too-accomplished rehash by L-P of their own 1983 super-hit Tu mera jaanoo hai (Hero), and Anu Malik, looking as usual for inspiration everywhere, plonks for that original to come out with Tere aagey peeche in Hum To Muhabbat Karega. What con and fusion! Anand-Milind, of course, pay open tribute to L-P’s Naseeb hit Chal mere bhai in the title-track from the film of that name. The lyrics (by Sameer) play the same theme - drinking alcohol is bad. So is unoriginality, sir!

Finally, even the non-film albums have been stuck by the malaise. After everyone from Anaida and Annamika to Shaan and who-have-you have incorporated remixes of hit film songs in their albums, the Bela album Kaisa Yeh Jadoo goes one better with composer Saurabh Bhatt dressing up vintage S.D.Burman wine in a new bottle. For what else is Main to deewani ho gayi but Haal kaisa hai janaab ka from Chalti Ka Naam Gadi tritely re-packaged?

What is particularly obnoxious today is that those who rehash songs are brazen and even self-righteous (!) about it. “Why do you critics only notice which tune or line is taken from where?” storms Anu Malik. “We work our butts off from morning to night. Are we supposed to work keeping only critics’ opinions in mind?” Now this is a marked change for the worse from the time he merely would say - with some truth - that his producers expected him to churn out hit tunes every day when he was no Beethoven, Mozart or Shanker Jaikishan and he was left with no option but to er., adapt hits!

As I have had occasion to say so before, inspiration and a little amount of chori is unavoidable in our film music, which definitely would lose out in its richness and variety if everyone were 100 per cent original. But why can’t our composers do the kind of hard work even when borrowing a tune as was done by Shanker Jaikishan and C. Ramachandra when both these maestros lifted the same Greek original, and yet the result was so characteristic of each and thus startlingly and almost unrecognisably different? For SJ came up with Yeh mera diwanapan hai (Yahudi) and C. Ramachandra with Dekh hamein awaaz na dena (Amar Deep) from a common source! And what’s more, both these songs sound purely Indian!

Not taking the easy way out is what separates the really hard-working men from the boys!


Rajiv Vijayakar