Leading Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar is among those campaigning for a change, which involves a legal battle in the courts against big music labels.
“This move has just been initiated by all of us and we hope to get fair rights and money for our songs,” he said.
The average Bollywood “masala” film has at least six songs and a dramatic score which very often determines whether a movie will be a hit or a flop.
But the pay rates often have nothing to do with how a film fares at the box office. Composers and lyricists now want this to change and to retain the rights over their work.
A lyricist can be paid anything from 100 dollars to 10,000 dollars for one song, depending on how well known they are. Composers—also referred to as music directors—can be paid between 20,000 and 400,000 dollars per film.
Film producers set the rates of pay, then sell the songs to music companies which retain the sole copyright on sales and digital rights and earn lifetime royalties.
Legendary music director A.R. Rahman, who won two Oscars this year for his work on the hit film “Slumdog Millionaire,” was the first composer to challenge the system.
He insisted on a clause in his contract that he would retain the rights over his songs and refused to compose for producers if he was not allowed to perform them at live concerts without permission.
As a result, he refused to write for the Shahrukh Khan blockbuster “Om Shanti Om” in 2007, which became one of Bollywood’s top grossing films ever.
“I didn’t do the film because it is difficult for me to perform my own songs at stage shows because I don’t have the necessary permission to perform,” Rahman said at the time.
Top music director Sajid Ali said composers and lyricists are now taking Rahman’s lead, feeling they are not getting their dues and that their work is going unrecognised by the public in the star-driven industry.
“Rahman was smarter than all of us,” said Ali, who performs with his brother Wajid in the musical duo Sajid-Wajid. “He knew about these things much ahead of us as we were not educated enough but now we, too, have awoken.
“All over the world music directors and lyricists have rights over their songs but it is only in India that we don’t. The music companies cannot earn royalties all their lives on our hard work.”
Another top lyricist, Sameer, who goes by one name, said: “We sat with music companies and tried to explain our viewpoint but no one was willing to listen.”
He said that is why the musicians were going to court “to find a permanent solution to this problem.”
India’s music industry is worth an estimated 151 million dollars and is projected to grow to 216 million dollars by 2013, according to a KPMG report on the country’s entertainment industry.
Bollywood tunes are among the biggest sellers, topping music charts and available in a number of formats, including as ringtones in India’s burgeoning mobile phone sector.
Composers and lyricists have blamed industry bodies for not addressing the situation but they say their hands are tied.
Phonographic Performance Ltd, which represents the big music labels, says it is only looking after its members’ interests.
The Indian Performing Right Society, which represents songwriters and artistes, said it sympathised but was only collecting royalties on behalf of the film producers, who own the intellectual property rights.
“We cannot decide who the legal owners of the rights are as that’s not our job,” Rakesh Nigam, an official of the organisation, was recently quoted as saying by the DNA newspaper.
AFP
Cash fails to heal wounds for Bangladesh’s child jockeys
GAZIPUR - Munna Mia was just five when his family flew to the Middle East to escape the hardships of Bangladesh—but all that awaited him was a life of danger, pain and hunger as a child camel jockey.
His father, a bricklayer, had been offered a job in the United Arab Emirates by a recruitment agent who told him he could bring his wife and three children if he paid a 4,500-dollar fee.
Grinding poverty and a lack of jobs in Bangladesh drove Mia’s father to scrape together some of the money by selling the land he owned and getting loans from family and friends.
The rest he borrowed from the agent, with the promise it would be repaid with money he earned in Dubai.
But the dreams of Mia and his family were shattered when they arrived, and he and his two brothers—all aged between three and eight—were forced to ride in camel races for long hours under the desert sun.
“We didn’t get much to eat and every morning they would weigh us. If we were even a gram over 20 kilograms we would be beaten with a stick that gave us electric shocks,” Mia told AFP.
“My brothers and I were separated from our parents and lived in a hostel with other jockeys.
“For a year, they trained us by just throwing us on top of a camel and I often fell off. I still have lots of problems because of all the injuries.”
Mia and his brothers were among thousands of South Asian children used as camel jockeys in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states after being brought in by traffickers or under false pretences with their families.
“The hot sand would burn my feet. We’d come back at night and we were exhausted. Every day I’d wonder if I would die,” said Mia, who rode in races until he was nine.
He seldom wore a helmet and his uniform was a cotton pair of shorts and T-shirt.
The Emirates government this week gave Bangladeshi authorities nearly 1.5 million dollars to compensate almost 900 former child jockeys for the injuries and abuse they suffered.
Bangladesh’s deputy home affairs minister, Tanjim Ahmed, whose department is in charge of distributing the funds, said each child would get between 1,000 and 10,000 dollars depending on their circumstances.
The money would pay for their medical treatment and education, he said.
“Using children as camel jockeys was despicable. It stirred the world’s conscience,” Ahmed said, adding that the UAE government told him that robots were now being used in place of children.
The UAE officially banned child jockeys in 1993 although abuses remained widespread until 2005.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), thousands of boys from Bangladesh, Pakistan and also Sudan were forced to become jockeys in the Middle East, where their small size was valued in the competitive camel racing scene.
They frequently fell off, sustaining injuries that could be fatal if they were trampled on.
For Mia’s father, Abul Kashem Mia, 45, watching his sons being used in such a dangerous sport was heart-wrenching.
“I was naive. All I could think about was getting us out of poverty. It all sounded too good to be true and it was. I frantically tried to save to pay back my debt so we could leave but it took a long time.”
Four years after arriving, Mia’s family fled after paying their dues and saving for five air tickets back to Bangladesh.
Mia, now 17, works behind the counter at a small fabric shop in his home town of Gazipur in northern Bangladesh, earning 45 dollars a month, his hand permanently damaged after a fall in Dubai.
He said he was delighted to be among those who will be compensated but that he still suffers emotional and physical scars from his time as a camel jockey.
“I haven’t seen a camel since leaving and I don’t want to ever see one again,” he said.
“We are poor. This money is like winning the lottery for us. We don’t know how much we will get but it won’t erase the pain and suffering my brothers and I went through.”