I did not know that about songs..

One of the things that I constantly accept these days is that most of the Hindi film songs that I fall in love with are usually blatantly plagiarized from some unknown foreign country band. I mean, I can't believe that some of the Indian music composers are so dumb that they think the people wouldn't have listened to the original in these much much global internet times ;-). For example "Kya Mujhe pyar hai" from the film "Woh Lamhe" - I really loved the song when I first heard it, but felt a little bit letdown after finding out that its a copy of the song "Tak Bisakah" by an Indonesian band called Peterpan. I still love the song, but yeah it has lost its charm ;-). Another song is "Kaho na kaho" from the movie Murder which is the note-to-note copy of an Arabic song called "Tamally Maak" by Amr Diab. I prefer the Arabic one not only because of the voice, but because of the unmentionable actors in the Hindi version ;-) :-D.

Hence recent songs, unless by some exceptional music directors, can be written off as a copy from some corner of the world or another :-p. So its not a very big deal (more examples are "Dil mera churaya kyu" from "Akele Hum akele tum" which is a copy of "Last Christmas" by George Michael, "Nazare mili" from "Raja" which is a copy of "Come September" and so on). But now when it comes to olden melodies, we still respect many of the directors and composers as true masters and all of their songs are held to the utmost devotion. Yes, there were many songs there too "inspired" by western compositions, one major example (atleast for me its a major one because I love the song so much :-D), is "Itna na mujhse tu pyar bada" from the movie Chhaya which is very much inspired by Mozart's much admired "Symphony No. 40". Another inspired song I came to know about as I was writing this post was "Babuji Dheere chalna" from the movie Aar Paar, inspired by a spanish song "quizás, quizás, quizás", though it has only about 2 notes in common :-p. I'm sure there are many other olden goldies whose notes were influenced from the then famous music from around the world.

But what led me to this post was the song "Kaun hai jo sapno me aaya" from the movie "Jhuk gaya aasmaan" sung by Rafi.

As I have said a couple of times before, Rafi is my most favourite Hindi singer and this song has been one of my favourites for a long time. Well, you don't have to imagine my shock when I learnt the song was a copy of "Marguerita" by another of my all time favourite singers Elvis Presley!




I love Elvis's voice and I have a couple of songs by him I absolutely adore ("Love me tender", "Can't help falling in love with you", "Its now or never" etc :-D), but I hadn't heard of this one until I read about the plagiarism part :-p. The initial part is obviously a copy, but even the stanzas seem a lot similar :-p. Well the shock did wear off after a couple of days and now I have 2 similar songs that I love basically because of the singers - I cannot let go of either Rafi or Elvis ;-).

Do let me know if you know of more such "inspired songs" :-D.