This is both disappointing and depressing.
Listen to:
‘Kaagadada Doniyalli’ from Kirik Party (music: Ajaneesh Loknath)
and,
The River, by The Bombay Royale
Now, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the Kannada song is ‘copied’, but there’s more to the thought than what hits the ear (meets the eye doesn’t seem appropriate). The core tune is different, but the sequence of instruments used is identical. What they play differs, almost as if there was a clinical attempt at deconstructing the sequence of instruments and giving them different notes to play. It is difficult to call this plagiarism in the conventional sense given the fact that the melody is fundamentally different.
Ajaneesh did exactly this in the same film’s ‘Hey Who Are You?’ too, where he and the makers openly called it out as a homage to Hamsalekha’s Shanti Kranti number, Madhya Raathrili. Kaagadada Doniyalli, in a similar vein, is a homage to the number by The Bombay Royale.
Listen to:
Hey Who Are You? (Kirik Party)
Madhya Raathrili (Shanti Kranti, Hamsalekha)
To a lesser extent, Ajaneesh did this in Sundaranga Jaana’s Fly Fly Fly too, but in that case, the similarity was a LOT more pronounced.
Listen to:
Fly fly fly (Sundaranga Jaana, Kannada)
Meghan Trainor’s Dear Future Husband
For an upcoming and very promising composer like Ajaneesh, these instances of plagiarism (at least the ones that are uncredited) are a serious blot.
