MEGHAN KHARSYNRAP
Borrowing tunes
from Bollywood
When Indian Grammy Award winner A. R. Rahman tweeted
about his collaboration with William Adams (will.i.am) in
2014 for the song ‘It’s my birthday,’ it was reminiscent of a
greater musical dialogue. Although Adam’s sampling of A. R.
Rahman’s “Urvasi Urvasi” from the 1994 movie “Kadhalan”
was done legally, it brought to light the kind of music-
borrowing-culture that exists today and that has become
rampant because of the internet. But Adam’s definitely
didn’t start this music trend. This culture called ‘sampling’
originates from the 80’s. How it works is a musician would
essentially borrow snippets like a melody or beat from a
particular song and remodel it to make something else.
You could think of it as a collage of music snippets. Some
songs are so influential they’ve been sampled over a 1000
times like “Funky Drummer” by James Brown. But then
the question arises that if the remodeled song sounds
way different from the actual song that was sampled, can
we still think of it as original? Can we consider it theft
of intellectual property? And what about creativity?
It’s no surprise that several classics from Bollywood have
been sampled to make hits. In the past, musical cultures
borrowed from each other often, but we had no idea that a
song we listened to could have originated from somewhere
else. Consider how Pritam’s ‘Pehli Nazar Mein’ sung by
Atif Aslam was actually sampled from Korean song “Sarang
Hae Yo” by Kim Hyung Sup. Today, the web exposes us to
different music and exposes us to the borrowed tunes as well.
Some popular examples of sampled Bollywood songs
would be "What's Happenin" by Method Man feat.
Busta Rhymes that sampled "Dum Maro Dum" by
Asha Bhosle; "Toxic" by Britney Spears also contains
a sample from "Tere Mere Beech Mein" by Lata
Mangeshkar; Black Eyed Peas is famous for sampling
Bollywood with “Elephunk Theme”, “My Humps” and
“Don't Phunk with My Heart” and many others.
But there’s been a fair share of drama
when it comes to sampling.
RIGHT OR
WRONG?
song was Shari Watson’s (professionally known as
‘Truth Hurts’) debut single. The sample was not cleared
when it was used, resulting in Saregama’s $500 million
lawsuit against Universal Music Group, Interscope
Records and Aftermath Entertainment in 2002.
Today, sampling is mainstream culture because production
tools are easily accessible in digitized form. This means
anybody could potentially be a producer. But if famous
musicians fail to abide by the law when it comes to sample
clearances, it isn’t hard to imagine the extent of sampling
related crimes all over the world. The procedure of obtaining
clearance is also difficult. If you want to borrow music
and sample it legally you have to obtain a license from the
copyright holder. There are two licences you need to obtain:
you need to get a license from the record label for the
sound recording and also from the music publisher for
the melody or lyrics. The Indian Copyright Act 1957
protects expressions of ideas rather than the ideas
themselves. If interpreted in one way it really
broadens the horizon for what can be sampled.
Sampling can mean different things for
different people. Courts all over the
world consider nature (commerciality)
, sustainability, purpose and
marketability when determining
whether art has been
appropriated illegally. When
an artist is earning HUGE
figures from sampling
a part of your home
made piece without
credit, you’d
definitely want to
reconsider the
morality of
sampling.
One of the most notorious sampling related issues is
DJ Quik’s song “So Addictive” for Dr. Dre’s female
mentee Shari Watson featuring Rakim that
sampled Bappi Lahiri's "Thoda Resham
Lagta Hai". It even made the list
on COMPLEX’s ‘25 Most
Notorious Uncleared
Samples In Rap
History’.
The
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
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