Plagiarism or Creative Plagiarism or ‘Inspired’ Creation

Almost all music directors of ‘golden era’ of Hindi Film Music have been, to a varying degree, accused of plagiarizing! Whether, by design or by chance, their either ‘best’ or very popular compositions are being claimed to be [so called] ‘plagiarized’.

The factual truths have always been in the hotly debated grey zone of “Plagiarism or Creative Plagiarism or ‘Inspired’ Creation”.

Many articles have been written on the subject in the past, quite a few of them have been to enlighten the subject quite effectively, both in terms of the typical tendencies of the respective music director or exact classification of the specific composition into one of the three tags.

I will add to the great debate, after having listened to the posting ‘Songs_in_Raag_Bhairavi_with_Lata_ji_and_Shankar_Jaikishen’ on Youtube.

This video has assembled first the original tune – by legendary Arab chanteuse Aasmahan [1018-1944], which was so creatively adapted to ‘Ghar Aaya mera pardesi’ of Awara (1951), but set to our classic Bhairavi. The video clip then adds more Bhairavi gems of the duo – ‘Kisi ne apana – Patita (1953), ‘Main Piya Teri – Basant Bahar (1956), title song of ‘Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai’ (1960), Khushiyon Ke Chand muskarayere – Mayur Pankh (1954).

If this be Plagiarism or Creative Plagiarism or ‘Inspired’ Creation, who cares!

Author: ASHOK M VAISHNAV

In July 2011, I opted to retire from my active career as a practicing management professional. In the 38 years that I pursued this career, I had opportunity to work in diverse capacities, in small-to-medium-to-large engineering companies. Whether I was setting up Greenfield projects or Brownfield projects, nurturing the new start-ups or accelerating the stabilized unit to a next phase growth, I had many more occasions to take the paths uncharted. The life then was so challenging! One of the biggest casualty in that phase was my disregards towards my hobbies - Be with The Family, Enjoy Music form Films of 1940s to mid-1970s period, write on whatever I liked to read, pursue amateur photography and indulge in solving the chess problems. So I commenced my Second Innings to focus on this area of my life as the primary occupation. At the end of 12 years now, even as I have evolved a certain pattern for my blog, I need to plan to create certain definitive changes in that pattern over next year or two. Because, The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. View all posts by ASHOK M VAISHNAV

2 thoughts on “Plagiarism or Creative Plagiarism or ‘Inspired’ Creation”

Personal Concerns says:

May 6, 2012 at 12:46 pm

Who cares actually…when the results are ones of which a generation can be proud of!

ASHOK M VAISHNAV says:

May 9, 2012 at 7:49 pm

ELVIS PRESLEY ”Marguerita” meets MOHAMMED RAFI’S ”Kaun Hai Jo Sapno Mein Aaya”.

“Shanker Jaikishen made the western songs SWEETER AND BETTER. They got inspired by good tunes but never copied completely. After all the poetry is HINDI and INDIAN.”
In fact, music directors like Salil Chaudhary, S D Burman, O P Nayyar, C Ramchandra and even Anil Biswas have made the Golden Period of the Hindi Film Music richer by highly creative adaptations of western – and of course Indian Folk – tunes.