Ilaiyaraaja is not above everybody else: Judge
The musical trinity, Muthuswami Deekshitar, Tyagarajar, and Syama Sastri, can claim to be above everybody, but “you (music composer R. Ilaiyaraaja) cannot be heard to say so,” said Justice R. Mahadevan, the senior-most judge of the Madras High Court.
Presiding over the second Division Bench along with Justice Mohammed Shafiq, the senior judge recalled senior counsel Satish Parasaran, representing Mr. Ilaiyaraaja, to have retorted, during the April 10, 2024 hearing, that his client was below only to God and above everyone else.
In response, the music composer’s counsel-on-record A. Saravanan said, the senior counsel had made the statement only in the context of copyright and to assert Mr. Ilaiyaraaja’s right over songs he composed since Echo Recording Private Limited had questioned this right.
“The press took it in a different context. Your Lordship is aware that he (the composer) never proclaims to be so. It is in terms of his right that the senior counsel made that statement,” the counsel said and sought an adjournment due to the senior counsel’s unavailability.
Accepting his request, the judges adjourned to April 24 an appeal preferred by Echo Recording challenging a single judge’s 2019 order recognizing the composer’s special, moral right over 4,500 songs he composed for more than 1,000 movies between the 1970s and 1990s.
During the last hearing of the appeal, senior counsel Vijay Narayan, representing the appellant, insisted on staying the single judge’s order or, alternatively, directing Mr. Ilaiyaraaja to deposit in court the revenue he earned by playing these songs on the music streaming platform Spotify.
Claiming that Echo Recording had purchased the rights of all these songs from the respective movie producers long ago, the council said the composer should at least be directed to submit the accounts of the revenue earned by him through licensing of those songs to Spotify by taking advantage of the single judge’s order.
However, Mr. Parasaran vehemently resisted any such interim order against the composer.
When Mr. Narayan said, “He thinks he is above everybody,” Mr. Parasaran retorted, “Yes, I am above everybody. I may sound arrogant, but that is what it is. I am certainly not above God but below Him; I am above everybody.”