Month: March 2017

Intha Raja Kaiya Vecha,…,…!

Today was just another Sunday morning. As I turned on the ignition of my car for a Sunday morning drive, Ilayaraja’s (Raja) hits started playing. On top of the playlist was Raja Kaiya Vecha,…,… from the hit film Apoorva Sagotharargal.  There are 2 versions of this song – one sung by Kamal Haasan himself which eventually featured in the film and the other sung by S.P. Balasubramanyam (SPB) which just got retained in the music album. Its’ very rare that a song sung by SPB and composed by Raja gets consigned to just the album. As I was enjoying the interlude in that song which has some awesome feet tapping music, the CD started playing truant and was jumping few tracks and eventually it stopped. My Sunday morning tryst with Raja-SPB duo got aborted midway. At that point in time, I had no premonition of what was to follow later.

Reaching home, soon I could see SPB’s Facebook post going viral where he claimed that he has been served legal notice by Raja’s attorney for singing Raja’s compositions without prior permission in his recent World tour stage shows. And that in the rest of the shows, he may not be singing Raja’s songs. Difficult to believe, the first reaction was of course “Why would Raja take such an extreme step against SPB who was a close friend, associate and a fellow traveller in his music journey?” In a spat involving these 2 namely Raja and SPB for people like me who have grown up with the music of the 70’s and 80’s it is difficult to take a stand. On the one hand you have Raja, a genius and whose music transcends all superlatives. And on the other hand you have a singer who even today can give an Arijit Singh a run for his money with his mellifluous voice and versatile singing. While a lean and fit Raja is known to have a bloated ego, the physically fuller SPB comes across as a man of humility and feather lite ego. Even in this FB post he didn’t have one word of disrespect for Raja and admitted his own ignorance of legalities. He won the hearts and the sympathies of the fandom.

To be fair, it was important to hear out Raja’s side before getting judgemental on his action. And soon in the course of the day we did get to see the same through Raja’s legal consultant who was probably behind shooting this legal notice. As expected he talked of violation of IP rights, royalty payments,…,… The issue of copyrights and Intellectual property rights (IP) on music compositions have of late become a bone of contention between music composers, Lyricists and film producers. The fact of the matter is till about the first decade of this millennium, lyricist and music composers were blissfully unaware of their Intellectual copy rights with a result they were never paid royalty by producers for their creations. Only recently, with the exposure to Hollywood,.. the composers and lyricists became aware of their IP rights. A.R. Rahman now owns the IP for all the music he creates.

Looking up on the issue of Indian Copyright Act, I understood that in 2012 the amendments made to the act set right the historical anomaly of being not beneficial to the creators. Famed Hindi lyricist Javed Akhtar was instrumental in getting the amendments passed. Historically, Indian film producers just paid a one-time fee to song writers, composers and singers. And denied them revenues from other sources like cover versions, ringtones, digital downloads,.. which have become increasingly lucrative.

The amended bill now makes song writers and composers as owners of the copyright which cannot be assigned to the producers as per earlier version. More importantly, as a recurring source of revenue, it is now mandatory for broadcasters – Radio, TV and Digital to pay a royalty to the copyright owners each time the song is played.

It seems that it is now part of the standard operating procedure for singers to take formal permission from the music composers before performing their songs on stage. And as part of this process, the acceptance to pay the applicable royalty. So it comes as a surprise that event producers of SPB’s recent concerts missed this point of not informing or taking Raja’s permission for singing his songs. So from a purely legal standpoint, it is clear that Raja has not hit a wrong note on this matter. But then SPB is not just another singer. He has been a constant companion to Raja all through, with the duo churning out some thousands of hits. It is today hypothetical to argue if the duo’s songs were hits because of Raja’s music or SPB’s singing.  For a fan the Raja-SPB combination was magical and together they have given some evergreen, everlasting music which will continue to live forever in his/her heart.

From Raja’s side could it have been handled differently? Certainly one would feel so. Instead of a legal notice, a friendly call to remind the SPB camp of the IP issue would probably have settled the issue under wraps. Unless otherwise we are not privy to some larger conflict of interests between the two themselves or their minders. In which case after Vairamuthu and Bharathiraja SPB could be the latest to land on the other side of Raja’s symphony.

‘Intha Raja Kaiya Vecha,…. Wronga ponathilla,.. ‘goes the song.  The genius lyricist Vaali wrote this line probably keeping Ilayaraja in mind on his music. But on this issue, it appears Raja has hit a wrong note! He probably should lay his hand on the phone to call SPB and undo this wrong bit, unless Raja chose to use syncopation!!!

Being an ardent of fan of both Raja and SPB, to me what has happened is sad and disappointing. In terms of taking sides on this spat, the head wants to go with Raja and the heart with SPB. But then the ears are always with the duo!!!  Let the Andhi Mazhai continue to pour!!!

From “Casteing” votes to Casting them!!!

In the last 2 months, India has been gripped by the UP (Uttar Pradesh) election fever. Or so the channels made us to believe. The huge size of the state notwithstanding it was certainly an overdose of analysis and punditry. And today was the Judgement day! And as I hammer away these words on the keyboard the people of UP have spoken and spoken decisively in favour of Narendra Modi and BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) strictly in that order. The build up to this day has been quite noisy. A diarrhea of analyses post each of the seven phases of polls in UP and then the pontifications in the last couple of days based on the Exit poll results. It was indeed intriguing to see commentators waxing eloquent on the emerging trends,.. just based on Exit poll results.

However it is important to note that none of the ground reports of even seasoned journalists or the Exit poll results captured the final end result which has panned out today. That of a massive groundswell in favour of Modi and BJP (again strictly in that order) in UP. To be fair a few like Rajdeep Sardesai and Dr. Prannoy Roy predicted a possible BJP win but not of this scale. We were again and again told by experts that there is no visible wave this time. And they were all right. Because in the lookout for a wave they completely missed a Tsunami of sorts brewing in the Ganges. In 2014 as well there was no wave prior to the elections. The overwhelming sweep of UP by BJP was then explained as a Modi wave post facto.

In election after election since Nov 8th (the day Modi let the so called Demonetisation Demon on Indians) whether they were municipal body elections or State/Parliamentary by elections voters did not punish Modi or the BJP for the wounds inflicted by the “Demon”. But even then, the narrative before these state polls was that Demonetisation is going to cost BJP dear in these elections and in particular in UP. UP elections were a clear referendum on Namo’s Demo as per media. But it turned out that Demo was a non-issue.

In channel after channel the experts who were dissecting the prospects in the run up to the polls were discussing caste arithmetic and how voters ultimately show loyalty to their castes. Particularly in the so called backward state like Uttar Pradesh.  Analyst and researcher Dr. Surjit Bhalla has been consistently calling out since about 2014 that India has moved beyond the castes. But what we were routinely fed was how the Jats were pissed off with BJP or how the Yadavs will stick to SP and how the Dalits and Most Backwards will ride only the Elephant,…,… And how the upper castes and now backward will favour the BJP. And how the Yadavs, the Kushwahas, the Prajapatis, the Majhis,…,… will influence the voting pattern and hence the result. And in addition to the caste axis, we were told that there is a “Class Axis” which is building up.

However even a quick back of the envelope analysis of today’s results through any prism makes it clear that the caste loyalty of voters is history. And that probably UP must have put the communal divide behind as well. With 40%+ share of the vote and still counting, it is most likely that Muslims have indeed voted for BJP though not en masse. This can be borne out by the fact that Mayawati came out bewildered about the results and was posing conspiracy theories about possible EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) fraud. And today’s trends are also beyond the realm of Class divide.

My personal favourite line on India considering the complexity and diversity has been Shashi Tharoor’s “anything you say about India, the opposite is also true!!!” So it is extremely hazardous to come to a concrete conclusion that India has shed its Caste baggage based on just today’s result. But I guess it is safe to conclude that there is a churn which is happening particularly with the youth coming of their own. They don’t give a damn to the prejudiced thought lines of their parents/ancestors and are willing to look at things with a more balanced view.  In the past 3 decades many regional parties which thrived on challenging Congress like the BSP, SP, RJD, TMC, JDU,… turned “Social Justice to Casteism” and “Secularism to Pro Minorityism”. After getting an opportunity to make a difference in UP, Bihar,.. where they failed now they are facing the brunt of the Nextgen voters. And BJP (and Modi) being the principal party now is happy to lap up and take advantage of this angst.  Even in Bihar I am of the view the so called come back of Lalu is more because voters wanted Nitish back as CM and not due to some caste equations. And voters wanted Nitish back not because of his caste but due to his track record in changing Bihar.

Beyond the caste arithmetic of the Yadavs, Kurmis, Lingayats and the Vanniyars,…,…there is a wind of change blowing in India. It looks like only Modi and BJP again in that order have got a wind of this. Or may be even they haven’t got a complete grip on this. It is clear based on today’s early reactions that the other parties have not yet understood what hit them. Unless these parties and the commentariat (in that order) realise that an important churn is happening, we will continue to see parties getting caught off guard and expert analyses going awfully wrong. And that important churn is “In elections India no longer “Castes” it votes but casts its votes!!!

May be I’m jumping the gun. But would be happy if time proves me wrong.