Jamaica Papa Curvin Recalls When German Producer Fraudulently Claimed Two Jamaican Songs

Iconic drummer and record producer Jamaica Papa Curvin has outlined the events that led to the late German producer Frank Farian fraudulently claiming authorship of two Jamaican songs: By the Rivers of Babylon, sung originally by The Melodians, and Brown Girl in The Ring, a children’s ring game jingle.

Farian, who also masterminded the disgraced German R&B duo Milli Vanilli, produced versions of both songs, which were sung by Boney M, the group he formed in 1978. Both versions went on to sell millions of copies. By the Rivers of Babylon went on to be certified platinum and among the top ten best-selling singles of all time in the UK, while Brown Girl in the Ring also became a hit.

However, Rivers of Babylon was written by Jamaicans Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton, in 1970. The men had adapted verses from Psalms 19 and 137 in the Holy Bible. The song gained international recognition after it appeared as a soundtrack in the film The Harder They Come in 1972. McNaughton and Dowe were later added as songwriters on the Boney M edition after they pursued the matter, one publication has noted.

According to Curvin, Brown Girl in the Ring was already recorded by the group Malcolm’s Locks, on which he himself served as a drummer. He also pointed out that Liz Mitchell and other Bony M members were already a part of the group long before Farian came into the picture.

Speaking on The Running African on Sunday morning, Curvin said that the actions of Farian, who died in January this year, had led to a copyright infringement court battle that lasted for more than 20 years.

“Yes, yes, and I was with Liz Mitchell, before Boney M. We had a group named Malcolm’s Locks in Hamburg. And Liz was a backup singer. So at the time when Boney M started, they (Frank Farian) were looking for singers. So things wasn’t going so good with us. So we said, Liz, go and check it out, and if things were good, you just pull us in,” Curvin explained.

“And she did. Yes, she did,” he added.

When the host Ka’Bu, pointed out that she could not fathom “how this man came to claim authorship” of Jamaican songs such as Rivers of Babylon (which was being sung at Nyahbinghi sessions and even in Jamaican churches) and Brown Girl in the Ring, Curvin had this to say: “A thief is a thief, you know… That case goes through a court in Germany. It goes from the low court up to the high court. Because we were telling him he cannot claim that song (Brown Girl in the Ring); he can’t claim authorship. It goes down back and it goes up to the high court. It goes on about 20 years of court trial, you know”.

“They gave it to him because how are you going to get your rights in the country of another man? And he had so much money, power. He came with lawyers, a whole room of lawyers. And all music, people who’s telling how the song arranged. And it only has to do with arrangement. But not composers…,” he added, referring to the Brown Girl in The Ring court case.

“I and Liz and Malcolm in the group before. We record those songs on an album. We had it pre-recorded before his time,” he explained further.

A 2012 Largeup article noted that whilst Farian was the brains behind Boney M, the group itself was 100 percent Caribbean, as its singers were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, Bobby Farrell from Aruba and Maizie Williams from Montserrat.

An October 2020 article titled Recognizing the issue of “looted music”, which was published by German news company Deutsche Welle, noted that “German composer Peter Herbolzheimer, (who had taken Farian to court), had rearranged Brown Girl in the Ring, for the Caribbean musician Malcolm Magaron from St. Lucia in 1974”.

According to the publication, “when Boney M producer Frank Farian rediscovered this song, he created his own version of it, and obtained the credit as ‘songwriter’.

“Herbolzheimer accused Farian of stealing his arrangement for the song, leading to a spectacular copyright dispute that dragged on for over 20 years,” the publication noted.

In detailing the court case against Farian, Deutsche Welle noted that “the legal case opposing two Germans who defined themselves as the writers of the work did not take into consideration that it was actually a cover of a Caribbean children’s song, to which European disco beats were simply added”.

“It used to be believed that you could just take something from the so-called Third World, and no one would care… The mindset was that “nobody would notice, and if ever they did, they wouldn’t stand a chance [in a legal dispute] anyway,” the publication quoted one expert as saying.