Ilaiyaraaja is not above everybody else: Madras High Court judge

Madras High Court judge debates composer Ilaiyaraaja's status in music industry during copyright appeal hearing.

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 on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.

Presiding over the second Division Bench along with Justice Mohammed Shaffiq, 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 composed by him 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 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.

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 1990s.

During the last hearing of the appeal, senior counsel Vijay Narayan, representing the appellant, had 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.

Claiming that Echo Recording had purchased the rights of all these songs from the respective movie producers long ago, the counsel 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.