Is "Kurchini Madatha Petti" copyrightable?

In the recent times, one of the most hit audio albums in the Telugu film industry has been Guntur Kaaram. The movie starring Tollywood’s Superstar Mahesh babu was released in January 12^th of this year, the songs are still vividly used by Telugu meme makers on a regular basis. The music direction for this movie was by S.Thaman, a name well known in the industry as he has delivered a lot of hit songs in recent times.

The whole album of the movie is a huge hit but, one song stood out the most and that is “Kurchini madatha petti”. The song quickly gained popularity within the masses and became such a hit that even after almost 6 months of release, people still are dancing to its tune. However, the origin of the song is somewhat of a journey.

In the era where youth communicates through memes, the movie makers understood this and made “Kurchini madatha petti” song out of a Telugu meme. The dialogue originated from a street interview of Khala Pasha, an old man who is a beggar. The dialogue came from a YouTube channel who took his interview about his love story. The clip became viral due to his funny was of delivering the dialogue. Making memes out of this clip was understandable but, making a whole song for a top hero’s movie was something nobody expected as the dialogue includes a slur but, it was not a challenge for Thaman at all. He saw this opportunity and paid Pasha Rs. 1 lakh to lend his voice for the hit song, made a remix out of it and gave the industry the now superhit song “Kurchini Madatha petti”.

This usage of Pasha’s dialogue for this song is called as “Sampling” in the realm of Music and Copyright. It is when a piece of an exiting recording is taken and is placed into a new recording, making it a completely new recording is called as Sampling in music industry. Usually, artists claim the defence of “Fair use” while sampling but, in some cases, it becomes violation of Copyright and moral rights. In the case of Pasha however, he was paid Rs. 1 Lakh as remuneration as Thaman used his dialogue in the song ensuring his rights are not violated.