From the book Poor & Famous, By Clive ‘Mono’ Mukundu

What is Copyright?

THIS is a legal right given to an originator of a work. If you create a song, a poem, a painting, etc. you own it, meaning you own the copyright. That power you have as the originator of the work is what is called copyright. The term can be broken down into two words —‘copy’ and ‘right’, so its original meaning is “the right to copy”. You can assign someone to administer your copyright. That is what musicians do with publishers. All advertisers who would want to use your music do not have to come directly to you. They just approach your publisher and everything is done in a professional way.

Music in the Public Domain

Music that is in the public domain is music whose copyright has expired, so you do not need to seek anybody’s permission to re-record it. This includes folk songs (for example those old ancient Mbira songs whose composers are not known like Nhemamusasa and Chemutengure), church hymns and Jit songs, etc. All these are in the public domain. The late Chiwoniso Maraire did her own version of Nhemamusasa. This however does not mean it is allowed to give yourself credit for composing it when you and everybody really know that you did not. If the composer is unknown, you can write ‘public domain’ or ‘folk song’ or even ‘unknown’ rather than hurt your dignity by stealing the credit. It is unfortunate that as Africans we did not document a lot of our ancient material so no one knows who composed most of our very old Mbira and Jit songs. Copyright laws differ from country to country, but normally music enters the public domain 50 years after the death of the composer. This means you do not need to seek permission to record it. But that does not mean you do not give credit. Giving yourself credit for work that you did not do is plagiarism.

Re-arranging Is Not Composing

We also need to understand that re-arranging, modifying, or adding lyrics to an already composed song is not composing. A song cannot be composed twice. You just added a few ideas to something that was already in existence, so give yourself credit for re-arranging or for adding lyrics only. If a song is in the public domain and another artiste re-arranges it in a certain way to create his own version, it means you cannot re-record his version without his permission. You can only do that without permission if you took the original raw version to do your own version. So you cannot record Prince Mafukidze’s music arrangement on Ndofamba without his permission.

Riddims

In reggae and dancehall music, there is a ‘riddim’ culture where different artists can use the same instrumental, which is called riddim in patois. But you do not just take a riddim and use it without permission. You need to get permission from the creators of the riddim as well as sign a split sheet stating who owns what percentage. Usually, one who creates a riddim owns 50 percent of the song in terms of royalties. But it all depends on the agreement, some might agree to a once-off payment.

Live Performance Rights

Although this law is not enforced in many parts of Africa, in the western world performing someone else’s song live requires one to have permission from the performing rights organization representing the performance rights of the artiste whose music you want to cover. One dance group in Zimbabwe was shocked to be given a bill to pay on their maiden tour of the USA when they performed a popular artiste’s song on stage during their performance.

During their 2017 tour of the USA, another Zimbabwean band had to pay a sum of money to Sony to use a Michael Jackson arrangement from Thriller on their live performances in the USA that gave them permission to use the arrangement for a year. They were not aware of such a law because here in Zimbabwe musicians just cover other artists’ work during live shows without any problems. However, it is usually the responsibility of the venue or organization hosting the band. Owners of performance venues purchase license agreements from the performance rights organization.

Venue owners obtain blanket licenses from the performing rights organizations because it is not feasible for venue owners to research the ownership of each and every song and negotiate individual public performance licenses. But churches and educational facilities are exempted from these laws.

Plagiarism

There is indeed a difference between plagiarism and imitating someone. When an artiste is imitating another artiste, they will imitate how that artiste composes, how they perform their vocals or instrumental melodies, how they construct and decorate their melodies, arrange their instruments but without outright copying his work. It is the same as someone copying your handwriting but without copying the content. Lucky Dube imitated Peter Tosh’s singing style. He did not copy and twist any of Peter Tosh’s songs. He confined himself to the way the Jamaican star-shaped his words, raised and lowered his voice as well as his melodies and tone.

Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as follows: “Plagiarism [pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh- riz-] noun. An act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author.”

Chord Progressions

Sometimes there is a lot of confusion particularly amongst people who are not very well versed in music on the difference between stealing someone’s song and just copying his style, or simply using the same chord progression like the one he used. Lucky Dube’s Back to My Roots and Bob Marley’s Stir It Up have something in common. If you play Stir It Up’s instrumentation, you can sing Lucky Dube’s Back to My Roots without any problem. Both songs are reggae tracks almost at the same tempo. Can we, therefore, say Lucky Dube stole Bob Marley’s song? The answer is no. If two songs can be sung on the same instrumentation what it means is they use the same flow of chords, known as a chord progression. Chord progressions are what give a piece of music its harmonic movement and, together with song titles, chord progressions are not protected by copyright law.

Chord progressions provide the field we use to create melodies on, so it is the melodies that are copyrighted, not the chord progressions. There are thousands of songs that use the same chord progressions but most times you cannot notice it because the melodies would be very different.

Lucky Dube could have been inspired by Bob Marley’s song and used Stir it Up’s chord progression but he did not plagiarise the song because he did not use any of its melodies. Stealing someone’s melodies is the essence of plagiarism in music followed by stealing lyrics, but no one owns chord progressions.

Another example is, if you play the Zimbabwean ancient traditional song, Chemutengure, as an instrumental, you can easily sing Oliver Mtukudzi’s Ziwere, the Four Brothers’Tauraya Rudzi Rwedu, and Thomas Mapfumo’s Hondo and Kariba on the same instrumental. It means all these songs use the same chord progression and the same time signature with Chemutengure. As long as the artists create original melodies and lyrics, they have not plagiarised anything.

MELODY — THE ESSENCE OF COMPOSITION

 The melody is that musical succession of notes that you whistle, no one whistles the drums or the percussion, those are non-melodic rhythmic instruments, what we whistle is the melody, so the melody is generally the song. If you take someone’s song and change the words (Lyrics) and avoid changing the melody you would have stolen the most important part of the song. A song is defined as a melody with words, anybody can create words, remember at school how we used to change lyrics of popular songs and put our own, it means anybody can do that, BUT creating your own melody, a new melody that someone can whistle, is the essence of the composition. A lot of people these days are stealing other artists’ melodies and putting their own words and claiming to have composed a new song.

On the Zimbabwe national anthem the difference between the Shona line, “Simudzai mureza, wedu weZimbabwe” and the Ndebeleversion of the same line, “Phakamisan iflegi yethu yeZimbabwe,” is the language used only. The meaning and the melody are the same.

Types of Plagiarism

1. Verbatim plagiarism — the copying of someone’s song word for word.
2. Mosaic plagiarism—someone takes bits and pieces of another’s work, adds bits and pieces of their own and then create something “new”.

In music these days there is a lot of mosaic plagiarism and it is a shame because sometimes the listener can easily trace where the bits and pieces of melodies were stolen from. That is the reason why at times you listen to a song on the radio and think it is Charles Charamba but then the radio presenter tells you it is another artiste. There is a clear distinction between copying someone’s style and plagiarising his work.

Fair Use

An artiste can be allowed to use a part of copyrighted work for a limited purpose, like what comedians do when they parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner and are deemed legal.

Is there Benefit in Copying Someone’s Style?

Every now and then in the music industry around the world, we have cases of new artists who come on the scene sounding exactly like someone else and even sounding more of the artiste they are copying than themselves. I once read that one-time comedian, Charlie Chaplin, lost a Charlie Chaplin imitation competition to someone who portrayed him more than himself.

A few artists have gained some recognition due to copying someone although they all deny it claiming they just got inspired by the artiste, we know the difference between inspiration and copying. To an extent, this can help you propel your career. Stevie Ray Vaughn rose to prominence by sounding like Jimi Hendrix and there are dozens of local examples from Zimbabwe. I am yet to see any artiste who surpassed the level set by the one he is copying. You will always be in his shadow. Every time you sing and play you sound like artiste A. You will be glorifying artiste  A’s name, so everyone would be yearning to hear the real deal since you are but a copy, a counterfeit, only useful during the absence of the real artiste.

Substitute

I always discourage artists from copying other artists because they will become a substitute for the artiste that they will be copying. Everybody is happy with the substitute only till the original arrives, so you will always be a second option.

But has all music been played already, such that there can be no new melodies? Well, everybody has a very clever way of explaining themselves to cover up for their inabilities. I have heard such claims a number of times. They are always made by those who do not have the talent to compose, so to cover up their reason for plagiarising or copying other people’s work, they make that claim. If you decide to ignore all the new original melodies being created you can agree with that notion, but if you really take your time to listen to new artists, recorded and not yet recorded, you will come across many new original materials. Did you know that in music we only have the same 12 notes? Yes, only 12 notes in the chromatic scale are used to create music. But to create a melody, you need the notes and the rhythm. The good thing about rhythm is that, unlike music notes which are limited to twelve, it is infinite. There are endless styles of rhythm one can create. If the rhythm is changed, the melody changes completely. That is the reason why the same 12 notes that Mozart created his music with, are the same 12 notes that our ancestors created all the Mbira classics with. It is the same notes that all rock artists create music with, but look at how different the genres are, it shows the never-ending results of creativity.

One can be a great singer without the ability to compose. That is a very common thing in the music industry, so what clever singers who cannot compose music do are to ask those who can compose to do it for them rather than plagiarise other people’s work.

From the book Poor & Famous chapter 17.

Author: Clive”Mono” Mukundu, Edited by Philip Chidavaenzi & Bernadette Mari-Deve

Monolio publications, Harare, Zimbabwe 2018