In 2003, Kuwaiti musical trio, Guitara, released the zeitgeist-y club banger Ya Ghaly to mass success across the Arab World. Its unique, wildly infectious fusion of late 90’s trance, Carnatic sangeet and Khaliji made it the proverbial song of the year.
For Arabs living in Kuwait, like myself, it was also a source of immense pride because it was the first Kuwaiti song to ever gain popularity across the region, a region that by and large prefers North African, Lebanese and Turkish musical output.
Three years later, I was watching Emraan Hashmi’s new film at that time, Gangster and my jaw sank to the floor when a song that sounded remarkably similar to “Ya Ghaly” started playing. The aptly dubious name of the song in question was “Ya Ali” and, as you can guess from the lazy title change alone, is a shamelessly blatant rip-off of “Ya Ghaly” except that it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.
Where the original is raucous and fervently innovative, the latter is a Sufi-esque dud.
The song’s composer (and I’m using the term loosely of course) is Pritam whose name is now synonymous with plagiarism – he’s been accused of ripping off everyone from Paul Anka to Boney M to Papa Roach!
In his defense, many Bollywood filmmakers and composers felt at ease stealing other artists’ work with reckless abandon before the Age of Social Media i.e. before their theft was brought to light and made public.
They’ve all for the most part, stopped, knowing full well that if they tried to pull off the same kind of crap now, they’d be brought down a peg or two by every Indian with a Wi-Fi connection.
