Music Plagiarism
Indian and Arab Musicians
This is perhaps the first video I ever produced using the same simplistic editing method that I utilized in the editing of the phone interview with Shammi Kapoor, which I posted earlier on this blog. The above video was first posted on INEAS youtube channel on July 22, 2007.
I have an acutely sharp memory for voices and sounds, but not as strong with names and faces. The minute I heard the Indian Mohammed Rafi sings that tune in the video, I remembered Fareed's version of the same tune. In this case, the Indian composer had copied it from Fareed knowing it was produced few years after Fareed's
The singing part of both Rafi's and Fareed's songs have the same melody, except that the original melody by Fareed is slower. Mohammed Rafi is the legendary singer of India in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Rafi died in 1980. Fareed Al-Atrash was one of Egypt's renowned singers, composers and actors, who died in 1974.
In the video, I made an error in the last title page that included my question to viewers if they'd known in which movie was Fareed's melody used.
Two funny things happened when I posted the above modest video on youtube:
1. I asked the viewers to answer a simple question about Fareed's melody, but the two who posted comments not only failed to answer the question, but they over praised Fareed Al-Atrash. Here are both comments:
2. Despite that the Indian musician copied the melody of Fareed Al-Atrash, the company Saregama (on behalf of Saregama India Limited) made a copyright claim about the video's music on youtube.
