In conjunction with the 3rd anniversary of the hit Tamil song Enjoy Enjaami, Santosh Narayanan posted a video on Twitter where he shockingly alleges that all three artists, Arivu, Dhee, and himself, did not receive any form of financial compensation for their work on the song. This had been a shock to many as the song had garnered more than a billion streams across many platforms. The song, which resonated with many across the world, was rooted in the struggles and resilience of Arivu’s grandmother, Valiammal, who, along with her landless Dalit ancestors, were exploited for their labour in Sri Lanka’s tea plantations. The song as a whole speaks of not just the brutal and revolutionary history of the Malayaga Tamils (descendants of the Tamil plantation labourers in Sri Lanka) but also the valiant struggles of working-class people along with their political and cultural connections to land.
#EnjoyEnjaami 🥁🥁 pic.twitter.com/rxRaPcPsUR
— Santhosh Narayanan (@Music_Santhosh) March 5, 2024
A. R. Rahman’s “Mentoring”
Following Santhosh Narayanan’s post, A.R. Rahman clarified his role in Maajja and YAALL, stating his involvement was limited to only mentorship for which he had not received any financial gain. Although previously it had been marketed that A.R. Rahman had indeed been one of the co-founders of the record label along with Noel Kirthiraj, Sen Sachi, and Prasana Balachandran, according to their feature on Rolling Stones.
The Academy Award-winning musician states that he had accepted the mentoring role to promote Tamil music globally and emphasised his disconnection from YAALL after promotional activities and song production. He had also stated that he was unaware of the agreements that the record label had signed with the artists. Rahman asserted that he was only a mentor and held no form of shareholding in the company, reiterating that his involvement was driven out of goodwill, and that his mentoring videos have been removed long ago.
Appropriation of Arivu’s Labour
On August 1, 2022, Arivu, who had been the backbone of the entire Enjoy Enjaami project, posted on his Instagram how he had been the composer, writer, singer, and performer of the hit song. He shared how, although the teamwork was there in order to execute the project, it was ultimately his own idea that had been used as a crucial foundation for the fruition of Enjoy Enjaami. This news came nearly a year after the first Enjoy Enjaami/Maajja controversy, where Arivu was deliberately left out of the cover of Rolling Stones, published on August 20, 2021, which had featured both Dhee and Shan Vincent De Paul.
The obscuring of Arivu’s labour from the project had caused Tamil Ambedkarite director Pa. Ranjith to voice out this injustice and appropriation on witter. There are a significant number of people who have expressed that this theft and appropriation of Arivu’s talent and labour cannot just be reduced to the exploitation of an artist but also must be seen through an anti-caste lens of how artists like Arivu who come from marginalised backgrounds have had their labour, intellect, and culture appropriated since the genesis of the caste-feudal and now, capitalist, society.
@TherukuralArivu, the lyricist of #Neeyaoli and singer as well as lyricist of #enjoyenjami has once again been invisiblised. @RollingStoneIN and @joinmaajja is it so difficult to understand that the lyrics of both songs challenges this erasure of public acknowledgement? https://t.co/jqLjfS9nwY
— pa.ranjith (@beemji) August 22, 2021
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