Copyright bbc
Vishal Kalita's collection of music cassettes has turned his residence in India's Assam state into a private museum. For more than a decade, the 30-year-old has been travelling across the country buying obsolete tapes, which he has carefully stored at his home in Guwahati city. The collection, which was opened to the public last month, also includes hundreds of CDs and rare posters of musicians from around the world. But it's the discography of Zubeen Garg, a singer and composer from the state, that has been drawing the most number of visitors. A cultural icon in Assam, Garg died in Singapore last month, leaving his millions of fans heartbroken. Mr Kalita has some 38,000 songs of the singer in his collection, including songs that cannot be found anywhere else today, he says. On 16 September, just days before his death, Garg had even visited Mr Kalita's residence and said the collection reminded him of some of his "long-forgotten" creations. Mr Kalita is now part of a larger network of Garg's fans and friends who are trying to make his oeuvre more accessible through online streaming platforms and ensure royalties for his family. "Some of these cassettes are too old and can get damaged. I want to bring them back to public memory," he says. But can he do it? A beloved Indian singer drowned in Singapore. Now fans want answers Many of Garg's songs cannot be uploaded online without risking copyright violation owing to a lack of clarity over their ownership, which is scattered among a complicated network of producers, distributors and music labels. It's not just him - music ownership is a long-debated subject globally. For instance, 14-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift had to re-record her albums to own all her music, while several other musicians have started their own labels to retain full or partial control over their work. In India, too, music ownership has long been mired in tensions around contracts tilted in favour of producers and labels over creators. Garg's fans got a glimpse of this complicated universe soon after his death, when many of them went searching for one of his most popular songs, Mayabini Ratir Bukut, on a popular music streaming platform, but found it missing. The song was later uploaded by a user but removed within a week due to licensing issues. "There are hundreds of his songs whose ownership is either difficult to trace or remains contested," Manas Barua, filmmaker and Garg's friend, told the BBC. In India, the Copyright Act, 1957, governs music ownership, with separate copyright for lyrics, musical composition and sound recording, says Delhi-based intellectual property rights lawyer Neel Mason. The "first owners" of the lyrics and musical composition are the "authors" - the lyricists and composers, respectively. But when it comes to the sound recordings, "the producer is deemed to be the author", so they are the first owner, says Mr Mason. Owners can transfer ownership or choose to grant rights to third parties, exclusively or non-exclusively, through licensing, which can lead to a complex and often untraceable network unless paperwork is meticulously maintained.
