One of Macedonia's most popular singers has said she will sue the makers of the 'Borat' film for its unauthorised use of one of her songs.
Esma Redzepova - who has been called the "Queen of Roma music in the Balkans" - is the creator of the mournful lament 'Chaje Shukarije', which appears at the beginning of the film, and during the fictional Kazakh journalist's homeland flashbacks.The singer has said she will sue to producers for 800,000 euro, telling Serbian newspaper 'Politika', "I am fed up with the fact that everyone is using my song without even informing me about it, not even mentioning that it is my song, the one I once wrote and was the first to sing."
'Chaje Shukarije' is also the lead track on the soundtrack to the film, where it is duly credited as having been performed and written by Redzepova.
The 800,000 euro amount, which equates to around $A1.3 million, isn't really that much in this, the age of recreational litigation. But Redzepova isn't necessarily concerned about the financial restitution, explaining that she was "furious" at the lack of respect shown to her and other Eastern European songwriters by the producers.
