The copyright conundrum in Carnatic music

Musician V. Sankarnarayanan performs on the Sri Parthasarthy Swamy Sabha in Chennai.
| Photograph Credit score: The Hindu

During the latest Margazhi season or music season in Chennai, rasikas (connoisseurs) hopped from live performance to live performance. Whereas tuning into the music, additionally they had to remember copyright regulation because the sabhas (efficiency venues) forbade them from unauthorised recording. Copyright regulation has seldom been on the forefront of debate within the Carnatic music sphere as there’s a basic perception that copyright regulation doesn’t apply to it. We have to revisit this view.

In Indian Performing Proper Society Ltd. v. Jap Indian Movement Photos Affiliation (1977), Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer requested whether or not music meant solely the composition of a chunk or prolonged to the soulful tune, voice, and rendering of the piece. This stays unanswered in Parliament. Aside from being a metaphysical query, what’s music can be a authorized query.

The thought of music

Copyright regulation the world over defines music as a melody, i.e., a composition which is diminished to print. The concept that music is just a composition stems from a western classical understanding of music. The lawmakers of the Indian Copyright Act, 1914, failed to grasp Indian music earlier than enacting the regulation. The identical colonial understanding adopted even within the laws enacted in 1957. This excludes a number of distinctive elements of Indian classical music from the realm of copyright regulation. It’s pertinent to ask: ought to regulation observe music or ought to music observe the regulation?

A tune is born after the synchronised efforts of a composer, lyricist, singers, and different performers. The composer and the lyricist get safety over their respective creations for his or her lifetime after which 60 extra years. When a tune is recorded onto a medium, there’s a separate proper over the recording. Referred to as ‘mechanical proper’, that is granted to the one who information the tune, for 60 years, to commercially exploit it.

Performers’ proper allows the singer and different musicians to forbid anybody from recording the tune. Additional, the regulation allows the performer to be eligible to assert royalty from the streaming of their performances or the sale of their music. Although this proper is out there to the singer and the accompanists theoretically, they don’t take pleasure in the identical in its true sense, in a live performance house. It is just in outstanding sabhas that video/audio recording of the efficiency is prohibited; this isn’t a norm in all places. A number of performances of notable singers are posted by third events on YouTube and Spotify, which is a violation of the Copyright Act and robs the musicians of the possibilities to monetise their rendering. Any recording that’s completed with out consent is a violation of the performers’ proper; it’s even a violation if the sabha does this with out the knowledgeable consent of the performers. The licence regime inside a Carnatic live performance is advanced even for music that’s within the copyright area.

Since many of the songs which might be carried out are within the public area, the type of music has additionally remained exterior the realm of copyright. The works of Tyagaraja Swami, Shyama Shastri, Muddusvami Dikshitar, Purandara Dasa, and Gopala Krishna Bharathiar, as an example, are within the public area for anybody to carry out as we speak, as they have been all created even earlier than the inception of the idea of copyright. Whether or not the additions and improvisations made by the musicians additionally turn into part of the general public area together with the tune and whether or not a musician who improvises a tune has any proper over such improvisations stay unanswered questions.

When any performer learns these songs from their guru, they inherit their guru’s creativeness packaged with the unique rendition. The learner additionally has the scope so as to add their very own contact to the tune. They’ve their very own interpretation and carry out the tune with improvisations which can not have been part of the unique composition. They could even sing the identical tune in a special raga from what was initially envisioned. As an illustration, a number of songs of Gopala Krishna Bharathi are as we speak not sung within the ragas that Bharathi had composed. Does the musical creativeness to interpret the tune in a special raga turn into “creativity” underneath copyright?

Altering the regulation

The improvisation made by a performer on a stage may very well be spontaneous and it may very well be a response to the curiosity displayed by the viewers. The selection of accompanying music might additionally lead to an altogether completely different model of the tune. In a number of instances, the performers themselves will not be able to duplicate it precisely in the identical approach for the second time. The improvisation made by the performer is uncared for and there’s no scope to grant safety for it underneath the Copyright Act.

Whereas the compositions of Purandara Dasa have been conventionally sung in ragas related to Carnatic music, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi took it upon himself to introduce the vast assortment of Purandara Dasa’s compositions to a myriad number of Hindustani ragas. The tune Eppo Varuvaro can’t be imagined with out the soulful contact of Madurai Mani Iyer; he has impressed generations of singers to carry out the tune in a selected approach. Does he not personal his distinctive additions? It stays unprotected underneath the copyright legal guidelines.

Musicians ought to have the appropriate to personal their soulful additions to a tune and likewise to commercially exploit their efficiency. The move of royalty from streaming ought to be strengthened. Presently, music follows the regulation. Ought to the regulation not be modified to guard the rights of Carnatic musicians in letter and spirit?

Sundar Athreya H., Assistant Professor of Regulation, KIIT College of Regulation; N.S. Amogh Simha, Advocate practising on the Madras Excessive Court docket