Music composer Ilaiyaraaja is not above everybody else, says Madras High Court
“The musical trinity — Muthuswami Dikshitar, Tyagaraja and Syama Sastri — can claim to be above everybody but you (music composer R. Ilaiyaraaja) cannot be heard to say so,” Justice R. Mahadevan, the senior-most judge of the Madras High Court, said on Wednesday.
Presiding over the second Division Bench along with Justice Mohammed Shaq, the senior judge recalled senior counsel Satish Parasaran, representing Mr. Ilaiyaraaja, saying during a hearing on April 10 that his client was below only God and above everyone else.
In response, the music composer’s counsel-on-record, A. Saravanan, said that the senior counsel had made the statement only in the context of copyright and to assert Mr. Ilaiyaraaja’s right over the songs composed by him, since Echo Recording Private Limited had questioned that right.
“The press took it in a di¤erent context. Your Lordship is aware that he (the composer) never proclaims himself 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 unavailability of the senior counsel.
Right over songs
Accepting his request, the judges adjourned to April 24 an appeal preferred by Echo Recording challenging a single judge’s 2019 order recognising the composer’s special, moral right over 4,500 songs composed by him for more than 1,000 movies between the 1970s and the 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 being earned by him through the playing of these songs on music streaming platform Spotify.