When Mungaru Male was copied into Telugu

Mano Murthy protests `plagiarisation` of his music

Bangalore, (IANS) Popular Kannada music director Mano Murthy is contemplating legal action against the producer and the music director of "Vaana" for "unabashed plagiarisation of original tunes" and denial of credit to him as the original composer. Murthy alleges that four of his original tunes for blockbuster "Mungaru Male" have been used for Telugu film "Vaana", produced and directed by M.S. Raju. The Kannada composer is sore because the makers didn't bother to give him credit for the tunes. The audio and CD albums of the songs, released recently, do not have his name on the cover. The credit is given instead to Telugu music director Karunakar. Murthy says he felt humiliated about the omission of his name in the audio publicity material. "I don't want money from the producers who have used my musical compositions. But I think they should have given me credit for all the efforts I had made to create the original tunes," an upset Murthy told IANS. "I am told all these tunes have become popular in Telugu also," he added. The four tunes are those for "Anisuthide yaako eno", "Ondhe ondhu saari", "Mungaru male", and "Nanna geleyanalla". This is not the first time that a filmmaker has been accused of using tunes without giving credit to the creator. Some time ago, music director S.A. Raj Kumar also expressed his unhappiness over alleged denial of credit for many of his tunes used in Kannada films by many other composers. Recently, composer Guru Kiran had voiced anger at similar use of his tunes for "Jogi" allegedly by producers of Tamil film "Parattai Engira Azhagu Sundaram", which has Dhanush in the lead.