COPY CATS or INSPIRATION????
After the American idol, its now the apna Desi Idol....coming soon on Sony TV. And guess who are the judges...Farah Khan, Sonu Nigam and the very great and 'talented' Anu Malik!!! Dunno much about the first two but I know Anu Malik and how he gets 'inspired' by other people's music!!! When asked about copying music in an interview long time ago, he actually gave an explaination that he is inspired by the tune and tries to blend it with the desi taste. Then he also sings two different songs apparently based on the same raga and tries to prove innocence about how two songs can be similar.
Other copy cats that I have come across are:
The latest ET flick- Koi Mil Gaya starring Hrithik Roshan, the music that is used to call/communicate with the aliens, is a straight lift up from music composed by Kraftwerk, a German pioneer group in electronic-techno music which became famous in about 70's-80's. The song is known as Trans-Europa Express from the album of the same name.
The movie 'Gupt' became famous inspite of the 'great-talented' Bobby Deol for its Stereophonic-Dolby-Digital-Electronic beats with Dynamic Bass-Boost. But many will be surprised to know, the music in most of Gupt songs is based on the music by New Age composer Kitaro's albums thro' the 80's. I am specifying the years to clarify the doubt that Kitaro would not copy music compositions from Viju 'Saa' (Shah), the music director of Gupt.
Then also the ever hit movie 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' has a song "Koi Mil Gaya...Kya Batao Yaaro...Main To Hil/Khil gaya....." the music for which is based on an opera melody "Take that look off your face" by Andrew Lloyd Webber, from the opera 'Tell Me On a Sunday and Song and Dance'. No doubt the movie was good but I was indeed surprised to know this kind of 'inspirational work'.
There are many more, but these are the ones I can recollect anytime from the top of my head....Well, the post seems like hard-core criticism, but I do not have those intentions cos I believe that if you like a certain type of music then you are free to listen to it in any form and the copy right business is upto the composer and the stealer. But I am definitely against music piracy and do believe in spending money and buying the albums rather than picking it up from Kazaa or any other P2P services.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004