Chumma from Jumma or Tamma Tamma: I decide

Jumma Doge or Tamma Loge? The controversy rages on

The debate has been raging for more than fifteen years. Many able men - heroes, great thinkers, all - on both sides have fallen, without a solution in sight. Who would win in a fight between the songs, Jumma Chumma De De from Hum and Tamma Tamma Loge from Thanedaar?

Brief note if you were either a Mooninite up until last night, or just too young to know what I'm talking about:
In 1990-91, Indians were in possession of a record by Guinea native Mory Kante. The song in question was called Tamma Tamma, and it became the inspiration for two songs featured in two different Hindi films. Ignoring the fact that they had both ripped off the same song, the Laxmikant-Pyarelal camp and the Bhappi Lahiri camp began pointing fingers, each accusing the other of having stolen original music from them. Laximikant-Pyarelal's version was to go into the Amitabh movie Hum (1991), while the Bhappida song was meant for the Sanjay Dutt vehicle, Thanedaar (1990). Although the movies were released within months of each other, Thanedaar didn't actually see the light of day until much later because of problems with its release date. The makers of Hum assumed this resolved the controversy in their favour, but I beg to differ.

As proof, I analyze these two versions of the same song below, and even assess the videos that accompanied them, before I give my verdict:

Category	Jumma Chumma De De	Tamma Tamma Loge
Song:
Ripoff factor	2 points for covering Mory Kante, regardless of who "originally" copied it, 2 extra points for adding the chorus of Eddy Grant's Gimme Hope, Joanne. Compare: [Chumma de] de de chumma .... [chumma de] de de chumma de Gimme hope, Joanna gimme .... Gimme hope Joanna till the mornin come Score: 4 points	2 points for covering Mory Kante, and an extra 2 points to Bhappida for trying to justify the controversy thusly: "Lokhikant COPIED my version of the song, which was INSPIRED by Mory Kante." 2 more points to Bhappida for including a tiny sample of Yeke Yeke in his version. (This happens during Madhuri's keytar recital. Thanks, Subroto!) Score: 6 points
Lyrics	Gets 2 points for rhyming jumma (Friday) with chumma (kiss) Heroine named Jumma - sometimes spelled Zumma in the movie, resulting in confusing lyrics - is he referring to the heroine, or to the fact that it's a Friday? I could give the movie makers a point or two for thinking, "always build some redundancy into the system". But what eventuality would ever force the movie to forget the Urdu word for Friday, or the word for kiss? I'll give you Tiger, I'll even grant you Kaancha-Cheena, but you lose 1 point for the unnecessarily retarded Jumma. I'm making a point here - no pun intended - you could have saved some money and hired a retarded monkey with ass herpes to look the word up in an Urdu dictionary in the public library instead of paying some Allahabadi asshole who calls himself a lyricist to come up with this idea. Score: 1 point	1 point for using part of the original song title. 2 points for pretending tamma tamma refers somehow to making out, 2 points for the following lines of dialogue in the final scene: Jaya Prada (very seriously): Yeh Tamma Tamma kya hai? Jeetendra: Zara kone mein aao, batata hoon. Jaya Prada (innocently): Achcha, chalo. 3 points for the following lines in the song, and 1 extra point for having Bhappida sing them: Tu premi (aa hah!) main premi (aa hah!) Tu raazi (aa hah!) main raazi (aa hah!) Phir kya daddy kya amma Ek bas tuhi pyar ke kaabil saara jahaan hai nikamma! Tamma tamma loge... Score: 9 points
Vocals	Sudesh Bhosle copying Amitabh on vocals. Congratulations, you just furthered the career of another Bhosle. This one excels at IMITATION, even! What was wrong with having Amitabh sing? Score: 2 points	Bhappida on male BHocals. BHocals refers to Bhappi-specific Bong effects lent the song, such as pronouncing the word ek (one) "A. K." Score: 5 points
Music	Superior to Bhappida's version, sadly. Although, I think this might just be due to the fact that this camp got way more positive publicity for the song than Bhappida could, what with Sanjay Dutt on his side. Score: 5 points	Sorry for the harsh judgment, Bhappida. Frankly, I haven't this song as often as Jumma Chumma, and while in the process of writing this article, heard it more times than I ever have, and it grew on me. But, original points system says: Score: 1 point
Sound effects	Two doo, oooh hanh! Score: 3 points	Not enough octopad noises in this Bhappi tune. Score: 1 point
Backing vocals	Good job, works well with the rest of the song, especially during the Gimme Hope, Joanne (Chumma de! De de chumma!) part. Score: 3 points	I wouldn't miss the backing vocals if they were absent. They're doing nothing special. Score: 0 points
	SONG TOTAL: 18 points	SONG TOTAL: 22 points
Video:
Production/Design	Unlike the late 70s or early- and mid-80s, the fact that Amitabh was in it wasn't enough of a selling point for Hum. They had to make sure to plug and overhype this one song so people would come see this film. Blowing your budget on that one song, therefore, makes fiscal sense. I'm sure they probably did, too. Sadly, I don't see where the money went, other than maybe renting a prison along with its inmates and cups and plates, and the most powerful fire hose they could find. For this pathetic attempt, I give this song 1 point. Kimi Katkar's costume gets -2 points. Kimi Katkar's makeup gets -1 points. While trying to make Kimi Katkar more appealing by spraying water on her gets them 1 more point, casting Kimi Katkar as the heroine renders the above attempt futile, so I'll take away the point I just gave them. (-1 point) Thankfully, they didn't go overboard when choosing costumes for Amitabh and his posse. For the aesthetic choice of WHITE, I'll give you people 2 points. Unfortunately, using soap instead of beer to overemphasize the foam in everyone's prison mugs loses them street cred, so -1 point for their trouble - I'm sure that Surf and Hindustan Lever, Ltd. appreciate their business nevertheless. I haven't made up my mind about whether the swing in the middle of the prison was a good thing or bad, so we'll leave it at that. Please don't send me email and tell me that it wasn't supposed to be a prison scene, I know they all live by the docks, which include a random bar[n]. The cups definitely MAKE it a prison. Score: -1 points	What is it with Hindi movie song sequences that involve the hero and heroine performing onstage with a band in front of a teenage crowd? (said crowd having been hand-picked from outside the nearest college where they happened to be loitering - it's called a Home Depot, jackass. If you aren't going to study, at least get a job doing real work) The backing band often consists of fat girls in ponytails and tight shorts that show off their ample thighs, and self-proclaimed sessions musicians (quite often with their faces blackened to make them African, especially if it is a tribal-themed song) who do a terrible job of syncing their drums/trumpets/guitars to the background music. Worst of all, the fucking fog machine that renders things next to invisible. If you're going to spend a bunch of money on shitty stages and shitty lighting, don't you want the audience to at least be able to see these shitty effects? Please fire your overzealous fog machine operator Cheeniya, and accept -5 points for this mess. What were you smoking? You knew you were going up against Amitabh, right? Madhuri Dixit's costume is not too different from Katkar's (the BLACK theme is evident in both videos), but the wearer also matters. 1980s Madhuri can look innocent in the whore-iest of clothes. 3 points. Sanjay Dutt in a mullet and a moustache. 4 points right there. What's with the awkward stop to the song in the middle, complete with "Ey, khatam ho gaya kya?" followed by a weird out-of-focus close-up of the hero and heroine's eyes? -2 points! Whatever you were going for there didn't work. I wish you had followed it up with a Javed Jaffrey-esque, "Ey, khatam nahin hua, chootiye!" Score: 0 points
Choreography	The main theme of this song, the chumma, is the driving force for the entire song, and you don't really have to put a lot of thought into choreographing it. 5 points for choice of theme that results in ease of flow of song picturization. 2 extra points for the water hose, even though it was used on Kimi Katkar and didn't really do anything to her all-covering black Wild West Whore outfit. The decision to concentrate on gimmicks instead of choreography (Amitabh flipping a coin to pass the time while the intro music plays, doing stupid stuff with it. What the fuck, did I just travel back in time to when I was seven and forced to go to Apollo Circus? I wasn't entertained by those prestidigitating midgets back then, and it sure as hell won't amuse me if a seven-foot tall midget tries the same shit without having the decency to wear clown makeup)? -3 points. Score: 4 points	Madhuri Dixit (backed by Saroj Khan, I'm sure) is amazing. Look at the dance moves with her pointy heels. Her face expressionless when it needs to be (gives it the extra I'm-in-Riverdance-but-I-don't-give-a-shit- because-I'm-so-cool feel) 5 points to my dream girl. Sanjay Dutt doing what looks like the Empire Strikes Back camel robot walk: 2 extra points. Shitty backup dancers not walking in line (either that, or they're forming some Illuminati symbols, when viewed from above, that I don't know about): -2 points. Score: 5 points
Star Power	Definitely one of the best Bachchan movies of the 90s. It was downhill from there on, for most of the 90s. AB's appearance in this song gives it a total of 12 points, 5 for his attendance and 7 for his cooliyat. Kimi Katkar happened to be available, I guess. 2 points. Ho hum. Score: 14 points	Madhuri Dixit instantly gets 8 points for her cute self. Sanjay Dutt gets 2 points. For the special appearance of a keytar in Madhuri's hands, this video gets 1 extra points. Score: 11 points

YouTube clip:		Extra credit to this clip, because the end of the song segues perfectly into the Sanjay-Madhuri embrace during a thunderstorm. This is followed by the appearance of some magaaaaaaaaan personalities including Goga Kapoor and Kiran Kumar. The latter is the film's main villain, and is gifted with snake venom in his fingernails, so that anyone he scratches dies foaming at the mouth. 2 stars for refreshing my memories.
	VIDEO TOTAL: 10 points	VIDEO TOTAL: 16** points
	TOTAL (SONG+VIDEO): 28 points	TOTAL (SONG+VIDEO): 38** points

Judges summary: Even it Jumma Chumma and Tamma Tamma were neck-to-neck as far as the songs go (which they aren't), when you take the videos into account, Tamma Tamma blows Jumma Chumma away. It wins in the song category solely because of Bhappida, while Madhuri carries the video through to a clean win. Now that I've finally solved the debate, we can move on to other matters. If you need any similar debates moderated and judged by me, feel free to bring it up: sundar_at_pha.jhu.edu

But seriously: a technical discussion of the controversy

If you still have time to kill, here's a discussion Subroto and I got into about which song came first. According to Subroto, Agneepath was released before Hum, and it features the unadulterated version of Yeke Yeke (played in the background during Amitabh's visit to Mauritius), the song that made Mory Kante world famous. He also points out that the intro to Yeke Yeke is sampled in Tamma Tamma Loge during Madhuri Dixit's keytar solo. Subroto concludes that since Agneepath involved the Laxmikant-Pyarelal team, it would mean that they knew about the existence of the Mory Kante album before Bhappida. I could be wrong, but at this time, Amitabh signed on to do multiple films simultaneously, and it could have happened that while they finished filming Hum before Agneepath, the latter got an early release (maybe they were waiting for a Diwali or Holi release for Hum? Probably Holi*.) which would still give Bhappida some wiggle room as far as being the first one to be "inspired". Subroto goes on to say:

I also remember reading in a film magazine that it was thanks to Mukul Anand himself that
Bappida became aware of the Mory Kante song and the fact that LP were in the process of
nicking it. Anand and Bappida were apparently reasonably friendly up to that point and
had even collaborated on Aitbaar (the movie that was a rip-off of Hitchcock's Dial M for
Murder and had Suresh Oberoi singing Kisi Nazar Ko Tera) . One day Anand apparently got
drunk at a party that Bappida was also attending and bragged about this new tune that he
and LP had heard and were thinking of using in a movie. To Raging Bull Bappi, that was
like waving a red gaan** ready to be maaroed.

In the hopes of getting an answer from one of the people at least peripherally involved in this dispute, Subroto found this YouTube clip featuring an interview with Amitabh Bachchan:

Contrary to the one user comment posted by someone named MaulaJat930***, Amitabh is being such a diplomatic choot about it, and the first 3 minutes and 20 seconds provide us with no new information. In fact, Subroto goes on to say that AB's response during the interview was inspired by Om Shiv Puri's response to a question AB's character asks him in Namak Haraam: Dekho bete, yeh jahaaz. In the last 25 seconds, AB hurries through muddled logic to postulate that Bhappida may be the culprit, but his argument is a weak attempt to use the old adage, "He (Laxmikant-Pyarelal) who smelt it (made the accusation first), dealt it (was first inspired by Mory Kante)", and I don't think we should take it seriously. Therefore, it is still an unsolved mystery.

Footnotes:
* I just thought of something funny: (Not ha-ha funny, you idiot) In Jan/Feb 1991, all my friends ditched our school's sports day celebrations to go watch Hum in the theater while I stood at attention like a dweeb, wondering where everyone I knew was. Exactly one year later, in spring 1992, I joined these friends in ditching our sports day celebrations to go watch THANEDAAR. A one-year release date difference, even though there definitely WAS a controversy about songs being simultaneously released - the songs were being talked about even before I left Bombay. (late 1989, early 1990)
** Subroto is alluding here to an infamous interview during which Bhappida, in an attempt to explain his method of arranging music for songs (gaan in Bengali), is supposed to have said: "Public bolti hai, Bhappida, gaan mein guitar dalo, gaan mein sitar dalo, gaan mein piano dalo...", probably without realizing that gaan sounds very much like the Hindi slang word for butt, gaand.
*** I only bring up the user's name because Maula Jat is a Punjabi or Pashto (?) movie about a Jat who goes around hacking people into pieces with an axe, sort of like a modern Parashuram. I've seen clips from this fine piece of cinema on what used to be BubonicFilms.com, and the special effects are to die for. Die laughing, that is.

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