The inaugural function of the 44th Chess Olympiad took place in Chennai recently and one of the performances included singers Dhee and Kidakuzhi Mariyammal. The duo sung the sensational Enjoy Enjaami on stage. Arivu who sang the original version was neither included nor credited at the event.

In a long Instagram post with a picture from the music video of the song, Arivu wrote that he spent over six months to compose, to write and then to perform the track. “No doubt it (the song) calls everyone together. But it doesn’t mean that’s not the history of Valliammal or the landless Tea plantation slave ancestors of mine. Every song of mine will be having the scar mark of this generational oppression. Like this Just One..There are 10000 songs of folk in this land. The songs that carry the breath of ancestors ,their pain ,their life, love, their resistance and all about their existence. It’s all speaking to you in beautiful songs. Because we are a generation of blood and sweat turned into melodies of liberating arts. We carry the legacy through songs,” Arivu wrote in his Instagram post on Monday. “Anyone can snatch away your treasure when You’re alseep. Never when you are awake. Jaibhim. Truth will always win in the end.#enjoyenjaami #appropriationart,” Arivu wrote.

Music composer Santhosh Narayanan put out a two-page statement on Monday, August 1, via his Twitter account, seemingly responding to the post made earlier today by Arivu regarding the credits for the hit song Enjoy Enjaami. “In December 2020, Dhee came up with an idea of a song that glorified our roots and celebrated nature. I then composed, arranged, programmed, recorded and co-sang Enjoy Enjaami,” he says in the statement.

Enjoy Enjaami has been at the centre of credit controversy, ever since Dhee, the voice behind the viral hit was featured solo on Spotify banner ads at Times Square, New York and Rolling Stone magazine cover. Arivu who appears alongside Dhee in the music video had voiced back then that even though the number was completely his work [that he had written as a homage to his grandmother, a landless labourer with a turbulent past], he was completely sidelined by music producer Santhosh Narayanan and his step-daughter Dhee.