i got this from another pakistani site, very interesting read.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_5-9-2005_pg7_16
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Copyrights for copycats
By Shaiba Rizwan
For the past few months, Pakistan’s recording companies and labels have been embroiled in a legal battle over serious issues such as piracy and copyright infringement. For recording companies, this has translated into a ban on releasing any new albums in the market; for the fans, it means no new songs of their favourite bands to listen to, and for the artists, it is nothing short of a disaster.
Bands such as Noori, The Call and Rungg are done and dusted with recording their albums, yet due to the ban their albums are perhaps Pakistani pop’s best new-found secrets.
Ironically, the whole issue is about protecting artists and their music from being pirated and sold illegally. Incurring heavy financial losses due to counterfeited cassettes in the market, Pakistani pop artists have always maintained they want some sort of protection against their albums being pirated.
Now there is a paradox here. The law is actually trying to protect singers and wants them to earn their lawful share on songs they produce. All very proper, but the question is, are the singers whose rights and interests being protected, making original music? And the answer is not always. Yes the irony is that copyrights and the fight against piracy are being fought for Pakistani artists who record not-so-original songs!
Pakistani bands and singers, like their counterparts in India, have a long history of plagiarising and copying tunes from singers all over the globe. So rampant is the practice that Junoon got a lot of flak from Amir Zaki when the former was trying to make a union of Pakistani artists lobbying for control over piracy. Amir Zaki thought that it was absolutely preposterous that Salman Ahmed was fighting against piracy when he himself was openly plagiarising western tunes. Amir Zaki went as far as saying that if he were the president of Pakistan he would pass the death sentence on Salman Ahmed!!!
Well Junoon are not the only ones. It is sad to note that the first Vital Sign’s album (anyone who knows a little about Pakistani pop’s brief history will tell you that this was the album that started the pop revolution in the country) had unoriginal songs in it. For example the song “Anjana” was a complete rip off of British eighties reggae band UB40’s super hit “Red Red Wine”.
Since then every band and solo artist in the country has resorted to stealing tunes to earn money. Noori, who are the darlings of the urban youth in Pakistan, are especially adept at plagiarising. Their song “Suno Kay Main Hun Jawan”, which helped kick start the band’s career and get them lucrative deals with multinationals, is a copy of a song by western band Jarvis, the song being “I am only happy when it rains”.
The list is almost endless: Karavan’s “Gardish” is a copy of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”, Junoon’s “Rooh Ki Hai Pyass” lifted from Pink Floyd’s “Cigar” and Sajjad Ali’s “Baybya” was copied from Khaled’s “Didi”, and these are just to name a few. In a bizarre case of blatant plagiarising, Jawad Ahmed made a song called “Baqi Sub Theek Hai” which was a copy of an Elvis Presley number. Jawad audaciously wrote on the album cover “Composed by Jawad Ahmed and Elvis Presley”!!!
Surprisingly, the plagiarising isn’t just confined to music because Pakistani artists also make music videos that are copied from the West. A good example was the video of Shehazad Roy’s song “Teri Soorat”. The video was a frame-to-frame copy of Hollywood’s 1997 version of Romeo and Juliet, which starred Leonardo di Caprio. The video of Jon Bon Jovi’s song “Its my life” was plagiarised by Abrarul Haq in the video of his song “Nach Punjaban”.
The video of Hadiqua Kayani’s song “Dupatta Mera Maal Maal Ka” was a shameless copy of Keanu Reeves’ box office smash “The Matrix”. New singer Shaz’s debut video has been lifted from the film “Fight Club”!!! Really, copying Hollywood films to make music videos is absolutely pathetic. The dearth of originality in our music industry is at times not just shocking, but astounding.
With the youth of Pakistan already slaves to foreign entertainment and tunes from across the border dominating every wedding and joyous event, Pakistani bands and singers resorting to such unfair means of making music does not bode well for society. Furthermore, plagiarising negatively affects musicians, as it spoils their reputation and credibility. Not lacking in talent, one really hopes that our musicians make purely original music. For it is through original creative work that a nation’s culture and heritage develop and grow stronger.