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The bitter truth about DEVA?

Topic started by Observer (@ spider-wc044.proxy.aol.com) on Mon Sep 28 20:54:53 EDT 1998.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

DEVA has been making quite some waves (as against VS making quiet waves!) in TFM today. I am just back from india where i found how DEVA pulls masses and holds them with his reluctantly acceptable melodies.
When i spoke to my brother-in-law , (who is not so much addicted to TFM) he said DEVA is known copier. Even a kid who services tea to the bench-sitters in a tea shop readily quipped ' Deva-VA, Avar nalla copy adipar sir '. But the same kid goes dancing for 'Kothaval savadi lady nee koyambedu vadi ' from the film ' kannethire thondrinal'. When saw this film in a theater in trichy, the whole auditorium was shaking with people's whistles and dances for the song. Whether the mass support(!) for DEVA exists or not, he certainly makes them enjoy his tunes.
And to add to this truth, me being an objective lover of TFM( or any Music for that matter!), happen to record songs from some recent Tamil Movies on a CD from a recording shop. Believe it or not, 4 out of 5 songs i liked were songs composed by DEVA! The songs were from the following films,
1. Piriyamudan( bharathikku kannamma , poojavaa poojavaa )
2. Natpukkaga(garuda garuda, meesakara nanba)
3. Dharma(iru kangal pothathu)
4. Poonthottam(vanathu tharagayo)
5. kannethire thondrinal( chinna chinna, kanave kalaiyathe, easwara)

I could not be subjective, by ignoring DEVA songs for his so called plagiarism, for that I liked the melodies (Oh NO! , NOT the song 'kothaval savadi..') in the collections. Bharathikku kannamma, garuda garuda, chinna chinna kuyile all may sound like recycled stuff, and poojavaa is a copy from Gupt. But my mind (i.e conscience) readily accepts the melodies and i can not desist from humming the tunes. kanave kalaiyathe(i am not sure if this a recyle or copy) is an excellent tune. Though one may say he lifts tunes , i want to ask him(her) does that fact makes the song less popular, less molodious? Or does it make one feel like listening to the same song over and over? what kind of negative impact does it have on TFM lovers who have a genuine objective taste of songs? What is your school of thought got to say?

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: balaji (@ schubert.crhc.uiuc.edu) on: Thu Oct 1 12:26:40 EDT 1998
  
  srikanth: u have found the perfect Y2k problem in TFM!!!!! what u say is right. later we will have songs like :
  input : vendum.
  # of lines : 6
  algorithm used : VM
  output :
  mannukku maram vendum
  pennukkum sugam vendum
  poovukku idhazh vendum
  punnagaikku vaai vendum
  bhoomikku vaan vendum
  enakku nee vendum
  EOF
  algorithm : palani bharathi
  output:
  jurathukku vicks vendum
  marathukku roots vendum
  tvkku colour vendum
  torchkku cell vendum
  playboykku pen vendum
  enakku nee vendum
  EOF
  
  
• From: Srinath (@ socks10d.raleigh.ibm.com) on: Thu Oct 1 12:40:35 EDT 1998
  
  Balaji:
  :-)))) The input for Deva's songs will read like a Who's Who of World Music :-))). After some time it will get caught in an indefinite loop as he keeps rehashing his numbers which are actually others' numbers. We witnessed one such effect after "Mukkala Mukkabula" when there were atleast 4 different version of the song running in all the Top 10 countdowns - Deva's Utopia (fortunately for us he didn't copy that song too !). This is soon going to be the norm in the Indian Film industry. Like Car Pooling we will soon have Song Pooling where 5-6 MD's will share the same tune in different languages. Once they exhaust that option, they will use time-sharing - where each movie gets to use the tune for say, 6 months. Finally the MDs will insist that the movie-goers stand up and sing whatever songs they like in the theater, when a 'silent song' sequence comes on screen - this will be the age of free choice ! Now no one can complain !
  
  
• From: balaji (@ schubert.crhc.uiuc.edu) on: Thu Oct 1 14:11:02 EDT 1998
  
  srinath: DON'T GIVE DEVA IDEAS!! i don't want to hear deva's version of mukkala muqabla ,converted to a gaana song , and sung by deva and having thalaivasal vijay dancing!!!!!!!!!
  
  
• From: suman (@ bbn-cache-1.cisco.com) on: Thu Oct 1 16:20:14 EDT 1998
  
  I don't know who writes the lyrics for his songs, but deva's songs always seem cheap. I don't know if its his music or the words. Baatsha songs looked cheap to me ,though they were a hit. No offence (Nothing to do with super star).
  
  
• From: Observer (@ spider-wg074.proxy.aol.com) on: Sat Oct 3 09:42:06 EDT 1998
  
  Hai,
  
  I donot see any resemblance of 'venkatesa subrabatham' or any other devotional song that i know of, with respect to the tune or melody. There may be a vague one. But that that does not discredit that song from being a melodious one. I can not accept this kind of songs into the copied songs list. May be i am still wrong saying so , because there are millions of TFM lovers who listen to millions or more number of songs every day and going by DEVA's negative popularity for his copying, they find some tune that played before. This could also be applied to ARR!. This is really sickening these days! But, as for as i am concerned , i do not care who does it, whether it is a melody , that is all i care. BTW, what about the other two songs in my list ?
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 2d51-kosanovich.che.sc.edu) on: Mon Oct 5 02:30:44 EDT 1998
  
  DEVA DOES IT AGAIN!
  
  guys , having read hyped up reviews of 'vaali' in indolink.com i listened eagerly to the songs in the site
  http://dinakaran.com/audio/valee/vaalee.htm.
  
  the very first song 'april maathathil' which was
  hyped up by the reviewers sivabalan and nagasubramanian has a flute interlude which is a straiiiiiiight lift from the group murray head's
  song 'one night in bangkok'. this is a famous song from the early 80's . i was stunned for a moment then realized that deva had already done like this before from phil collins and the likes.
  so this is nothing new! for those who have not heard the above english original i'll try to find the song on the net and give a link.
  
  BTW iam listening to vaali and the first 2 songs are extremely mediocre. we need more critical reviews of albums not only at indolink but also in
  newtfmpage.com.
  
  so guys, pl. don't get excited, don't hype the songs in u'r reviews and create false expectations. this is a general request.
  
  vaazhga devavin 'kelvi gnyaanam'!!
  
  
• From: easwaran hariharan (@ bornfree.proxy.lucent.com) on: Mon Oct 5 13:16:12 EDT 1998
  
  Vijay,
  There is a similar song in arasiyal (by VS),
  sindupath something by sujatha. Guess the source
  is same.
  
  e.hari
  
  
• From: Anand Mahadevan (@ freedum.proxy.lucent.com) on: Mon Oct 5 14:55:47 EDT 1998
  
  valee has more lift by deva."sona sona" is taken from "suzaana suzaana" by Abba.
  
  
• From: Observer (@ spider-tr013.proxy.aol.com) on: Mon Oct 5 21:28:58 EDT 1998
  
  Good work vijay!, thanks for pointing out DEVA's copying saga which continues here again. I agree with you totally, (even though i have not heard the song myself, for the argument sake) he might have lifted tunes in those songs. But how many of our dear TFM fans have the chance to listen to songs(music) of other languages. It is a subjective matter that makes people to listen to songs of only TFM and ignore other languages So if he copies tunes from other languages, our TFM fans don't even know that it is a lifted tune. Secondly, even if they know how many do care if it is a lifted tune? And lastly, and more importantly what makes them like the tune or the song is their objective taste. So no matter who does it and how it originates, IMHO, melodies can not be ignored. This is the very reason for DEVA's success in TFM. At the same time, if i get an overdose of same type of song(same tune i can say) over and over, i certainly get boredom, i start to hate any song . I strongly condemn copying or lifting tunes in general for anybody! As i feel it is aginst ethics of art for not being creative. At the same time, i can not dislike any melodies. If somebody copies or adopts tunes from some folk music whether it is tamil or nepalese or sinhalese, I may like them if they are up to my taste. Somebody has to feed to the different tastes of TFM lovers from somewhere, for now it is DEVA who is doing it. IF you don't get idly and chatny of high quality, you have to still LIVE with bread and peanut butter! I bought 'manam virunbuthe unnai' cassette recently. I felt, i would rather take 'bread and muffins' in a place where the best of the indian restaurants would only serve me those synthetic idlis! vAila vakka viLangalai! so with MVU, IR has done only a mediocre job.
  
  I am CERTAINLY AGAINST COPYING !
  Whoever does it and in whatever form! But i think we should encourage
  1) IR to come up with songs like those of 80's . If he has any stuff left over !
  2) DEVA to stop copying and come up with his own , IF he has any stuff with him!
  
  I think in both cases , it may sound like 'Who will bell the cat?' . And so the SAGA CONTINUES!
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 129.252.22.246) on: Mon Oct 5 23:22:27 EDT 1998
  
  observer,
  
  in my case what stops me from listening to copied songs is
  
  1) the very fact that it is a copy upsets my mood
  and i feel iam being cheated. also i feel sad at the ignorance of TFM people who are being exploited. i also get irked.
  
  2). secondly i don't want to waste time listening to a song whose tune i have already listened to before! Simple, is'nt it?
  
  the above 2 are simple reasons as to why i dislike most of deva's songs. reason 1 may be a bit subjective but reason 2 should be applicable to all.
  
  'one night in bangkok' is a much more pleasant song and the flute interlude fits perfectly whereas deva has fitted it badly in this tamil song. a bad copy, i should say! so what is the reason for me to listen to this song?
  
  as for IR's MVU, why drag IR here in this thread first of all? MVU can be critically reviewed in IR's new albums thread. i have not listened to it yet.
  BTW, have u listened to IR's guru or yaathramozhi? these 2 are enough to show that
  his remaining stuff surpasses the sum total of the stuff of all other tamil MD's.
  its just that IR does not get to score music for good films in tamil which would inspire him. he no longer wants to give good songs for dabba movies like he used to do in the eighties. but unfortunately most of the films in tamil right now belong to the dabba category. u would have seen this in the top 10 movies programme in sun tv when u were in trichy. so let us wait for big
  movies like desiya geetham etc. and let us be patient.
  as srikanth said in another thread "IR never fails to impress!"
  regarding deva...... WHO CARES!
  
  
• From: Srikanth (@ proxy1.dpn.deere.com) on: Wed Oct 7 13:36:11 EDT 1998
  
  Guys,
  
  Guys we are wasting out time discussing on DD (Acronym for Dacoit Deva) - how's the new title).
  
  "DEVA enaathaiyo P$$$$I pudsa oru tune compose panalum - nobody will accpet him as a Musician."
  during 60's it was VEDA who flicked many tunes from various pats of the universer - now just re-assemble VEDA we get DEVA! who does the same.
  
  My Album is out on the Net,
  Frankly, I am afraid that DEVA would lift my tunes. I am keeping my ears open on DEVA's new Songs. "Mavane Sue than" I have copy rights obtained here in the US.
  
  The pleasure I get screaming at Deva is like eating Vatha Kuzambu and Sutta Applam -T.C...naughty.
  
  (Guys does anyone know the MD for Sivaji-Rajni new venture. Hope not DD.)
  
  Srikanth
  
  

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