At the end of December 2021, the song "Al-Ghazala Rayqa" was released as part of the promotion for the film "Min Ajal Ziko," which is set to premiere tomorrow, January 5. The song has achieved great success, garnering nearly 10 million views since its release on electronic platforms. However, as discussions about the song increased, some Facebook pages circulated a post claiming that the creators of the song had stolen its melody from a well-known Russian song called "Wild lioness/ Дикая львица" by the duo ALEX & RUS. This news spread among Facebook users, prompting the question: Is the melody indeed taken from another song?
The music critic Amgad Jamal was contacted by "Al-Shorouk" to clarify the matter. He stated, "There is indeed a similarity between the two songs, but the overlap only occurs in the first two lines at the beginning of the song - ‘Al-Ghazala Rayqa, Ma Al-Naas Al-Hilwa Sayqa’ - which is the part taken from the Russian melody. It is a single musical phrase that repeats with the entire melody of the Egyptian song. Therefore, we can say that there is inspiration from the Russian melody."
Amgad explained, "According to the laws of the French Association of Composers, for us to claim that a melody is stolen from another melody, four complete measures must be copied. A measure is a basic time unit associated with the tempo of the song and its rhythmic division, and determining this requires specialists." He pointed out that there are two schools of thought when dealing with this situation: the first suggests that the entire melodic phrase must be copied for it to be considered theft, while the second indicates that similarity in the characters of the two melodies or their proximity is sufficient to say it is stolen, meaning that the part responsible for the melody's success is borrowed. He further stated, "In my personal opinion, there is a clear influence from the beginning of the Russian melody, but the composer added his own touch in the rest of the melodic phrase, meaning he built upon something old, and there is creativity in what he did."
On the other hand, Ihab Abdel Wahid, the composer of "Al-Ghazala Rayqa," asserted that the circulating statements about the song's melody being stolen from a Russian song are incorrect. He said, "I listened to the Russian song that resembles ours from a distance, and the accusation of stealing the song is not true. My entire history attests that I am not one to steal; the matter does not deserve all this controversy." Ihab Abdel Wahid explained during a phone call on the "Cairo Talk" program with the media figures Khairy Ramadan and Karima Awad, on Cairo and the People channel, that coincidences can happen when composing songs, but there is no theft or even borrowing, expressing his frustration: "Are we just looking for the bad things to latch onto? The similarity between our song and the Russian song is very slight and naturally occurs."
Regarding his opinion on the child Mohamed Osama, he replied, "I did not discover the child Mohamed Osama; the poet Mana Adly Al-Qi'i did. The voice of Mohamed Osama needs management as he is at the age of puberty, and at a certain stage, he must be prevented from singing to preserve his voice and ensure that it remains a beneficial Egyptian voice; he is a true artist."
The promotional song for the film "Min Ajal Ziko," sung by the artists Karim Mahmoud Abdel Aziz and the child Mohamed Osama, is nearing 9 million views. The song "Al-Ghazala Rayqa" features lyrics by the poet Mana Al-Qi'i, music by Ihab Abdel Wahid, and musical arrangement by Ahmed Tarek Yehia. The film "Min Ajal Ziko" is scheduled to be released in theaters next Wednesday, portraying the story of a simple family whose young son, Ziko, wins the chance to participate in Egypt's Smartest Child competition, leading them on a journey filled with various events over two days.
