The first four paragraphs of the five-paragraph-long note put out on social media platform X by Team Pippa foregrounds and develops on the fact that it had all the necessary permissions in place when it ventured to set to new tune Kazi Nazrul’s song. Adaptation rights. Check. Respect for original composition. Check. Following the letter and spirit of the licence agreement for the lyrics. Check. Requisite signatures. Check. The last paragraph has been cleverly crafted with a long preface on audiences and their emotional attachment to the original, a but, an if and “sincere apologies". As if to say, sorry, but not sorry.
Licence to spin
But really, no one need apologise --- sincerely or otherwise --- for a creative spin on any work of art. Shakespeare would tell you what he endures if he could. You might have heard of Kurosawa’s 1985 film Ran based on King Lear, but do you know of Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-kuo’s stage adaptations of the same play? And those of you who will only rave about Laurence Harvey-Sena Walker or Daniel Day Lewis-Amanda Root as Romeo and Juliet, do you know there is a hilarious Singaporean version, a comic take, called Chicken Rice War? Jamie Lloyd’s West End production of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus has Kit Harrington of Game of Thrones playing the title role. In it, Faustus plays a “nerd in a hoodie, glued to his computer”, who post-pact with Mephistopheles becomes a “mixture of illusionist and rock god”. Closer home, in Kaushik Sen’s production, Hamlet’s dead father is a Communist leader.
Hum Dekhenge
Telugu Dalit poet Gurram Jashuva read Meghaduta and inverted it in his 1914 work Gabbilam. Jashuva chose the bat to tell the story of Dalit life to India. And as songs go, Coke Studio Pakistan did an innovative version of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge. The lineup has transgender artistes Lucky and Naghma, music band Lyari Underground and also Abida Parveen. Satyajit Ray got Kishore Yodel Kumar to sing Ami chini go chini in Charulata, and in the TV series from 2010, Gaaner Opare, Rituparno Ghosh experimented with Rabindrasangeet. More recently, British Bengali singer Sohini Alam flipped Amar Shonar Bangla, the Bangladeshi national anthem, beginning from the middle. Basically to say, Team Pippa’s crime is not that it dared to experiment with Nazrul’s song, but that in venturing to do so it put out such a poor version. A song of rebellion, of great resolve sung like a trippy folk piece. The words divested of their great power... If Team Pippa has to apologise, it should be to itself, and the film’s stakeholders. Not that it will rescue the score from its foregone fate --- absolute forgetability.
