Our fight wasn’t about money, it was about credit: Thaikkudam Bridge

Sometime in 2013, an ensemble of musicians from all over India came together in Kerala to jam a little and make a few songs. Today, the band Thaikkudam Bridge, named after a bridge in Kochi, Kerala, is playing gigs all over the country and abroad. “It all started as a demo with three or four people in an effort to showcase the singers in the band,” says Mithun Raju, the guitarist of the band. Ten years later, the band has nearly a dozen members representing it, and built itself a massive fanbase. “It all happened so fast. Though all of us were musicians, we were all doing our own thing in life. Some worked in the movies, a few played live concerts, and others taught music. We were stumped by the way the project took off, that we initially turned down shows,” says Mithun.
Fish Rock, one of their first originals uploaded almost nine years ago, has nearly 3.4 million views online. In 2017, they released their first album, Navarasam, and in 2019, they released Namah. While the former stood out for blending rock with south Indian elements, the latter saw the participation of international artists like Marco Minnemann and Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. However, it is the recent plagiarism case against the makers of Kannada film Kantara that put their album Navarasam into the limelight.
Our case against Kantara is still at courtIn November 2022, Thaikkudam Bridge put out a case against the team of Kantara, one among the highest grossing Kannada movies of all time, for plagiarising the song Navarasam from the album of the same name.
“Though the media has been reporting bits and pieces of the case, the bigger picture lacks clarity,” says Ashok Nelson, the band’s lead guitarist. “So many false narratives had come up — that we won the case and that there was compensation involved,” he says, adding that in actuality, the case is still in its preliminary stage. “The court had set up a panel to decide if the case was authentic or not. The case will also pave the way for more independent artistes to come out against such atrocities and exploitation. The cinema industry needs to understand that there are consequences to their actions,” he says.

Too thin a line between inspiration vs. plagiarism?Opinions about the similarities between Varaha Roopam and Navarasam have been divided. Mithun explains, “All the new music we listen to is inspired by artistes and songs that we have heard in the past. We listen, develop aspects that sound good to us, and express ourselves in our own way. But then, the trouble starts when too many components have been lined up similarly between two songs. With Varaha Roopam and Navarasam, the structure is exactly the same — the guitar lead, interlude, distorted guitars, drums — so many things sound the same. This is how people started noticing just how similar they were.”

'You want our song? Just give us credit'“People asked us if we were going behind Kantara because it was a hit movie that made money. A high-grossing movie and a high-grossing independent album earn on very different scales. It also means there is better music coming from a group of people who worked hard with fewer resources. So, it is up to us to point this out to the world. But the band was never keen on compensation. We always only wanted credit. You want our song? Just give us credit.”
– Ashok Nelson, the band’s lead guitarist