Singing Balamurali kritis may lead to copyright wrangles

This July 25 marked the 110th birth anniversary of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer who had spent a defining period of his long career in Kerala, but the buzz in the state’s Carnatic music circles during the past week was more around another iconic vocalist: M Balamuralikrishna. That was owing to a curious copyright issue which came as a rude shock to the practitioners and buffs of the south Indian classical art. Within days, though, the episode lost a fair degree of its bitterness, and even acquired notes of sweetness that tended to make every character in it apparently happy.

The row, however, has significant ramifications for the future of Carnatic music. It is something the art never encountered down the five centuries of its history. For, starting from the father figure Purandara Dasa (1484-1564), no composer-musician in Carnatic has claimed to own copyrights on one’s artistic contributions to the form that is widely hailed as ‘divine’ in origin and ‘spiritual’ in existence.

To be fair, Balamuralikrishna had no direct role in last week’s controversy that a section of Kerala media tended to play up in an exercise that turned out to be anti-climactic. After all, the maverick vocalist-instrumentalist breathed his last a good 20 months ago. Yet his name suddenly began doing the rounds in Carnatic circles recently when the public got to learn that an organisation founded in Balamurali’s name had clamped a “ban” on singing his compositions at music programmes.

How come? Well, the Dr M. BMK Memorial Trust in Chennai where the legend had settled and died in end-2016 told a cultural organisation based in Thiruvananthapuram a fortnight ago that none was authorised to use Balamurali’s name for publicity at public functions without getting prior permission. Why? “The trust holds the rights on using the name, photos, music etc of Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna for any public functions or publicity or similar, especially if used for monetary gain,” wrote the late musician’s grandson Vibhu Balamurali in his capacity as a trustee with the BMK Memorial founded a year ago. The letter was addressed to Bharat Bhavan, which is located in the Kerala capital, where the cultural exchange centre of the state government was to hold a July 21 function in memory of Balamurali and celebrated playwright-scholar Kavalam Narayana Panicker.

It was in the run-up to that event the BMK Memorial gave Bharat Bhavan a surprise reminder through a July 14 email: “All of Balamurali’s “musical creations are under the copyright law and assigned through IPRS towards the Trust”. IPRS refers to the half-century-old Indian Performing Right Society, whose business is to issue licences to users of music and collect royalties while functioning as a representative body of the country’s music “owners”: composers, lyricists and publishers (companies holding the rights to musical works). With its corporate office in Mumbai and branches in the three other Indian metros, the 1969-founded IPRS is a “strong believer in the policy of education in the field of copyright”, as per the society’s website.

So how did Bharat Bhavan seem to violate IPRS rules? Its July 21 ‘Nattuvazhakkam Pattuvazhakkam’ programme, in association with the Kavalam School of Music (which is affiliated to Kerala’s Sangeetha Nataka Akademi), had originally included a 30-minute music recital by around two dozen youngsters who would sing Balamurali kritis. Pramod Payyannur, who is member secretary of the 1984-instituted Bharat Bhavan that works for a symbiosis between communities and cultures, replied to BMK Memorial that the Thiruvananthapuram programme at its Semmangudi hall was un-ticketed (thus with no eye on monetary gains) and that “we can collaborate with your trust in the near future...”

The reply didn’t cut much ice with the BMK Memorial, founded on July 4 last year, which was the first birth anniversary of Balamurali after his death on November 22, 2016 at the age of 86. “...you have not substantiated or clarified on our query about how Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna is connected to the organisation and the event you are organising,” Vibhu’s mail this July 20 said, adding that the trust found none of the participants having a “direct relationship” with the celebrated musician “when he was active in limelight”. It went on to say that the BMK trust did “not authorise you to proceed with the event which in any case does not match any important dates or facts related to him”. Also, “We don’t want any figures or facts which are not true to be discussed by people who had not known Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna personally.”

Bharat Bhavan’s Balamurali memorial talk was to be delivered by senior Carnatic vocalist and light-music composer Perumbavoor G. Raveendranath, known as a thorough scholar. On the eve of the function, the organisers informed BMK Memorial that they had now chosen to remove the Balamurali songs segment. The July 21 letter, undersigned by Pramod along with Kavalam School’s director Kavalam Sajeev, ended on a still warmer note, reiterating, “We can organise similar programmes as a joint venture with your trust in the near future with mutual understanding...”

The Bharat Bhavan function, presided over by Leftist politician and cultural activist M.A. Baby, went off the same evening as planned — of course, without the Balamurali songs. A Malayalam daily broke the whole news and said it’s for the first time that singing Carnatic compositions invited copyright violation — a legal issue common usually in popular music, primarily film songs.

Soon, BMK Trust got into a reconciliatory mode. Its July 25 mail to Bharat Bhavan said the trust “only wanted to make sure that the name and works of the music legend are protected in every possible manner and never misused.” Saying that the BMK Memorial did not seek to stop Bharat Bhavan or the Kerala government from doing such a programme, it added that “we haven’t taken any legal action or any other steps”, which “we don’t intend to do” either.

On a more technical note, the trust pointed out that Balamurali had himself got registered with IPRS all of his works as an author and composer “to hold the copyright on his own poetical and musical creations”. What’s more, “He himself had discussion with IPRS whenever he rendered his own compositions in his live concerts which were ticketed/commercial.”

The BMK Trust subsequently issued a press release. On July 27, the Memorial said it had no issues with government or allied agencies organising Balamurali memorial functions that featured compositions by the Padma Vihushan awardee and Madras Music Academy’s prestigious Sangita Kalanidhi title-holder, who hailed from erstwhile Madras Presidency’s Sankaraguptam which is in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh today.

A Chennai-based vocalist, soon after the episode, noted that Carnatic can face this kind of an issue only with someone unique like Balamurali. “For, he invented a raga, composed a kriti in it and brought it out as an audio record through a music company,” points out the Malayali artiste, not wishing to be named. “Naturally, it violates copyright. Maybe the matter will become increasingly relevant in the days to come when videos of musicians delivering my guru’s kritis get uploaded on to YouTube and Facebook.”

In Kochi, musician-composer Sreevalsan J. Menon is amused. “As such, Carnatic is not very popular. Added to it, you tend to restrict someone rendering a legend’s composition — all the same claiming that the idea is to propagate Balamurali’s music!” He shrugs. “A new raga or kriti can enrich Carnatic in more ways than one. A revolutionary like Balamurali would have been the first to oppose ideas that would make his compositions the property of a select few, whosoever. Good if the issue has been put to rest.”