Mafo and Gibo Lantos might not make sense to the
old school music lovers. In fact, at the risk of being in accurate, both Gibo
Lantos and Mafo’s parents might not even know these two boys going by these
names are actually their own children.
But believe you me; they have a huge influence on
their fellow youths. This makes it worrisome when they put too much effort to
turn both gospel music and other compositions from the hymn book into something
lyrically unrecognizable, save for the familiar tune or melody.
I don’t desire to go into details for the fear of
further directing the youth to such misguided music. Suffice it to say the
creativity juices are flowing into wrong places for these boys who so far have
changed few such gospel songs into covers that are promoting the very things
the gospel stands against.
I am not here to say whether or not these two
competing – not complementing – productions are done below or above par,
musically, but I am here to discuss the ethical characteristic of musicians and
the music they release in the manner that they do.
For Gibo Lantos, already, he has come into conflict
with gospel outfit Great Angels Choir for making a cover
of the tune and instrumentation of their hit Mundimangiranji.
What Gibo Lantos and
Mafo do is to put in lyrics that talk about how good it is for them to be smoking
cannabis as well as excessive beer drinking and womanising.
While there is an argument on whether a secular
song can be adapted into a gospel song, the fact that these young guys decide
to do the opposite by turning everything else to something else, then there is
a problem.
Imagine a track that all your church life – since
Sunday schools days – you have sang ‘God I can’t survive without you,’ then
these boys do a cover that interchange God for cannabis or alcohol and they
will now sing ‘cannabis I can’t survive without you,” just because on its own
the message can’t sell but it has to ride on the catchy gospel hook instead.
I don’t want to take the route
of trying to put out a sermon for the lads to repent but I would rather stick
to the issue of ethics as this borders on copyrights which are a tool that is
supposed to protect both songs thus melody and lyrics as well as recordings.
The owner of copyrights have exclusive rights to a
number of acts including making of derivative works which is exactly what the
boys are doing with songs that have their copyrights held by others and not
them.
Whether or not they get the
derivative rights to do remix of these previously done songs as well as the
parody lyric sets to these well-known songs clearly show few challenges:
There is little knowledge of how
these things work and this is the reason the right holders do not know how much
power they wield over their works; while those committing the offence do so in
ignorance, which of course, is not a defence in a court of law.
There
are a number of issues to consider especially when it comes to copyright
effectiveness of the hymn songs which have been with us for decades.
The
moment these hymns were made public domain and such other attendant issues relating
to the same coming into play, it became difficult to protect them from – not only
the abuse they are suffering now but also for them to enjoy intellectual
property rights protection which covers four Areas: Patents, Copyrights,
Trademarks and Trade Secrets.
Music cannot be protected as a
trade secret. Since 1886, when pharmacist John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola, the
formula for Coca-Cola has remained the longest running trade secret as the
Coca-Cola Corporation never applied for a patent.
When you consider the rigorous
legal processes, all I can ask from the boys – Gibo Lantos and Mafo is to
behave themselves and be creative enough to make names without ‘badmouthing’
anything and anyone through the songs they are churning out now.
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