Surpassing the Inspirations..
So it is Pancham again for today as I have told you before that there are few things which I can keep going on and on, and Pancham is one of them.
Pancham for that matter has never been shy to accept his western influence in the music he produced, but I believe that it has become a fashion these days to list out the songs which are claimed to copied by Pancham. Again and Again, I keep on telling the simple thing, songs here can be categorized as Inspired, heavily Inspired or Copied. And copying is completely legal if the due credit has been given to the original composer. If you guys remember the song Pretty woman from movie Kal Ho Naa Ho, Music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy. Producer of the movie Karan Johar actually worked on international copyright laws and took the permission to even re-work the original from Roy Orbison Oh Pretty Woman, That was a great gesture from KJo and the right thing to do, but then it would be wrong of us if we would claim that song as plagiarism.
Now going back to the time we are discussing, the copyright laws were loose, there was no internet and hard for people to actually find the inspiration. I am not saying that this is an excuse to do plagiarism. So if someone comes out in open public and had an acceptance that his music is inspired by west or else, says a lot about the character of the person. For instance, talking about the song from the movie Kaalia (1981), Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai is a heavily inspired improvised version of Iranian Singer Zia Atabay's Heleh Maali (1977). Zia used to work for CBS in Iran before Religious revolutionaries took over the office, he then fled to Europe and finally settled in Los Angeles in 1986. AB in his recent interview after composing the song Badoombaaa for 102 Not Out told that he had provided the tune for Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai to R D B, In a much earlier interview he said that He listened to an Iranian tune (Maybe He heard during the shoots of Lawaris from the Iranian extra Neilla and some arguments with Rekha as well, but this just a calculated speculation on my end) and worked with Pancham to create the Song for Kaalia. One more trivia about this song, the song was added into the movie much later and was actually shot at the sets of movie Namak Halaal, so if you see Jawani Jaaneman from Namak Halal and Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai, they were actually shot at same sets. So Yes this was a heavily inspired song. Much Much Later in time, Sajid-Wajid took inspiration from this song and ended up putting a number in Varun Dhawan's 2014 movie Main Tera Hero as Palat sung by Arijit Singh
There was a time when BMW vehicles if purchased from Germany, would cost at least 5K to 6K cheaper than in the US and the vehicle could be shipped to the USA if used for a period of 2 weeks. (This used to case back in early 2000's, I don't know whether they entertain that anymore)So my then apartment mate Ashish was super interested in pursuing that option. He had to pre-order the car from here, pick it up in Germany, Keeps the car for the period of 2 weeks and gives it back to them to ship it to the USA. They would ship it to two ports in the USA; one in LA and another in NY. So it was decided in the Summer of 2003, we went to Germany for the period of 3 weeks to purchase his car, do the road trip and come back to the USA. The trip was effectively free to us, because of the savings he had from the cost of the car. So while on road trip, we were going into a lot of local German breweries. One of them which we visited was an old Brewery (Sorry Don't remember the name) and had old German music playing all along. In Germany, when you visit a restaurant or Bar, once you place the order it is really hard to find the waiter. I mean to say there were times when you have to literally beg them to bring the cheque. The only reason I am telling you is when sitting there, we heard the song which was very similar to another song from the movie Kaalia and We had to wait close to 45 mins to get attention from waiter to ask the question, and the song was long gone. We were the first timers in Germany and had no local friends and language was the problem as well. Ashish was getting fed up with my tantrums as we had planned to leave for Hamburg that evening and we were getting late. So I messed up the German etiquettes and straight away went to the owner ( I believe ? ) and started asking him questions about the song which they were playing like an hour ago. Well after a lot of back and forth, All I could get the name of the song as Zigeunerjunge. Much later when I started working for Bosch a German Company :), I was able to get more information on the song. So this song was from Doris Nefedov (Treitz) popularly known as Alexandra in 1967. Alexandra died too young (age 27), and there are conspiracy theories around her death as well. The song was her first Hit single.
It means Gypsy Boy and song was about a young girl who falls for this gypsy boy and could not express her love, but she would visit the gypsy group every day and gets deeply saddened when she does not find the group one day.
The Hindi Version which is a beautiful number sung by Kishore Kumar and penned by Majrooh was about a guy expressing his love for the girl and actually showing her the effects of his surroundings on her. It is considered to be one of the best all-time Proposal songs, and a lot of us has grown up listening to this number. Enough of build up, the song is Dilbar Mere
So that concludes my story for today, I will leave up to your wisdom whether you want to call it Plagiarism or Inspiration, I am very certain what I am calling it. All I can say the Hindi numbers which were created has surpassed their inspirations in every aspect.
Please provide me the feedback on today's story and if you like it, please share with friends or family who loves Indian music.
Till then...
Pancham for that matter has never been shy to accept his western influence in the music he produced, but I believe that it has become a fashion these days to list out the songs which are claimed to copied by Pancham. Again and Again, I keep on telling the simple thing, songs here can be categorized as Inspired, heavily Inspired or Copied. And copying is completely legal if the due credit has been given to the original composer. If you guys remember the song Pretty woman from movie Kal Ho Naa Ho, Music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy. Producer of the movie Karan Johar actually worked on international copyright laws and took the permission to even re-work the original from Roy Orbison Oh Pretty Woman, That was a great gesture from KJo and the right thing to do, but then it would be wrong of us if we would claim that song as plagiarism.
Now going back to the time we are discussing, the copyright laws were loose, there was no internet and hard for people to actually find the inspiration. I am not saying that this is an excuse to do plagiarism. So if someone comes out in open public and had an acceptance that his music is inspired by west or else, says a lot about the character of the person. For instance, talking about the song from the movie Kaalia (1981), Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai is a heavily inspired improvised version of Iranian Singer Zia Atabay's Heleh Maali (1977). Zia used to work for CBS in Iran before Religious revolutionaries took over the office, he then fled to Europe and finally settled in Los Angeles in 1986. AB in his recent interview after composing the song Badoombaaa for 102 Not Out told that he had provided the tune for Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai to R D B, In a much earlier interview he said that He listened to an Iranian tune (Maybe He heard during the shoots of Lawaris from the Iranian extra Neilla and some arguments with Rekha as well, but this just a calculated speculation on my end) and worked with Pancham to create the Song for Kaalia. One more trivia about this song, the song was added into the movie much later and was actually shot at the sets of movie Namak Halaal, so if you see Jawani Jaaneman from Namak Halal and Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai, they were actually shot at same sets. So Yes this was a heavily inspired song. Much Much Later in time, Sajid-Wajid took inspiration from this song and ended up putting a number in Varun Dhawan's 2014 movie Main Tera Hero as Palat sung by Arijit Singh
There was a time when BMW vehicles if purchased from Germany, would cost at least 5K to 6K cheaper than in the US and the vehicle could be shipped to the USA if used for a period of 2 weeks. (This used to case back in early 2000's, I don't know whether they entertain that anymore)So my then apartment mate Ashish was super interested in pursuing that option. He had to pre-order the car from here, pick it up in Germany, Keeps the car for the period of 2 weeks and gives it back to them to ship it to the USA. They would ship it to two ports in the USA; one in LA and another in NY. So it was decided in the Summer of 2003, we went to Germany for the period of 3 weeks to purchase his car, do the road trip and come back to the USA. The trip was effectively free to us, because of the savings he had from the cost of the car. So while on road trip, we were going into a lot of local German breweries. One of them which we visited was an old Brewery (Sorry Don't remember the name) and had old German music playing all along. In Germany, when you visit a restaurant or Bar, once you place the order it is really hard to find the waiter. I mean to say there were times when you have to literally beg them to bring the cheque. The only reason I am telling you is when sitting there, we heard the song which was very similar to another song from the movie Kaalia and We had to wait close to 45 mins to get attention from waiter to ask the question, and the song was long gone. We were the first timers in Germany and had no local friends and language was the problem as well. Ashish was getting fed up with my tantrums as we had planned to leave for Hamburg that evening and we were getting late. So I messed up the German etiquettes and straight away went to the owner ( I believe ? ) and started asking him questions about the song which they were playing like an hour ago. Well after a lot of back and forth, All I could get the name of the song as Zigeunerjunge. Much later when I started working for Bosch a German Company :), I was able to get more information on the song. So this song was from Doris Nefedov (Treitz) popularly known as Alexandra in 1967. Alexandra died too young (age 27), and there are conspiracy theories around her death as well. The song was her first Hit single.
It means Gypsy Boy and song was about a young girl who falls for this gypsy boy and could not express her love, but she would visit the gypsy group every day and gets deeply saddened when she does not find the group one day.
The Hindi Version which is a beautiful number sung by Kishore Kumar and penned by Majrooh was about a guy expressing his love for the girl and actually showing her the effects of his surroundings on her. It is considered to be one of the best all-time Proposal songs, and a lot of us has grown up listening to this number. Enough of build up, the song is Dilbar Mere
So that concludes my story for today, I will leave up to your wisdom whether you want to call it Plagiarism or Inspiration, I am very certain what I am calling it. All I can say the Hindi numbers which were created has surpassed their inspirations in every aspect.
Please provide me the feedback on today's story and if you like it, please share with friends or family who loves Indian music.
Till then...
Now that I read this “Palat” and “ Jahan Teri yeh Nazar hai” have same “meter”
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely :). Actually Palat came out really nice as well and it was very well composed of an inspiration.
DeleteAmazing! And since I have been a fan of ‘Dilbar mere’, fathoming its inspiration was phenomenal! Kudos 2 u for discovering & sharing :)
ReplyDeleteSo my personal journey on discovery of inspiration has been a roller coaster ride. There are times when I am deeply disappointed finding the song which I really love to be an inspiration but on the other hand when the songs came out to be better than inspiration I am ecstatic. Dilbar Mere is one of those and I am in love with this song since eternity.
DeleteSoni I'm glad you're sharing all your knowledge about Indian music, really interesting to read the posts. On one end, my heart breaks down to see that what I thought is the original composition is a pickup or copy of the song, depending on the amount of 'inspiration' it picked up. 'Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai' was my favorite song, now I see that as a copy (not inspiration) of the Hele Mali song.
ReplyDeleteOn the other, some of the inspirations are actually sounds like an inspiration rather than a copy. 'Palat' fits that bill, and while composer picked up a tune from 'Jahan .. ' (which has picked up from somewhere else ;) ) the song has a very different treatment and sets a very good example of inspiration.
I was always thinking that Indian music is much better than the other music, now you've made me think differently. Honestly, I would have preferred to die with that original notion rather than feeling bad about Indian music.