After 40 years since his tragic death in Los Angeles, a cache of lost Marvin Gaye music resurfaced in a sleepy town in Belgium.
In an exclusive report, the BBC revealed that a collection of audio tapes and other material allegedly containing never-before heard music from the 70s Motown hitmaker was part of the estate of the late Belgian musician Charles Dumolin, who was a resident of the coastal city of Ostend.
What brought Gaye to Belgium was to leave behind a life of drinking and drug abuse.
It was revealed that when Gaye was living in London, he met Dumolin - then a Belgian concert promoter - and took his business card.
A week later, the singer called Dumolin and arranged to move to the promoter's home in Ostend, where he regained his life through a healthier lifestyle. Upon reaching this personal renewal, he recorded one of his greatest hits, "Sexual Healing."
The Dumolins' Gaye Collection
The British broadcaster revealed that Gaye supposedly recorded previously unheard music during his stay in Belgium, which has laid hidden for more than 40 years.
Belgian lawyer Alex Trappeniers - a business partner of the Dumolin family - was certain that the fate of a hugely valuable collection of stage costumes, notebooks, and never-before heard music was about to be decided.
"They belong to [the family] because they were left in Belgium 42 years ago," he told the BBC. "Marvin gave it to them and said, 'Do whatever you want with it' and he never came back. That's important."
Trappeniers explained that the Dumolins' rare Gaye collection consisted of 30 tapes containing 66 demos of new songs. Some of them, he added, were completed and a few of them were "as good as Sexual Healing, because it was made [at] the same time."
The lawyer projected that one of the tracks in the collection could be considered a global hit, similar to The Beatles' final song ever, "Now and Then," but he fell short of allowing the BBC to listen to it.
"There was one song that when I listened to it for ten seconds I found the music was in my head all day, the words were in my head all day, like a moment of planetary alignment," Trappeniers explained.
And yet, stories about intellectual property and music publishing rights are rarely straightforward.
Legal Loopholes, Complications
Gaye's apparent decision to give the material to Dumolin - who died in 2019 - does seem to mean that the collection would absolutely belong to the Dumolin family. In addition, Belgian law stipulated that any property, however it was acquired - including stealing - absolutely became the property of the person holding it after a period of 30 years.
However, the same could not be said about intellectual property.
This meant that Trappeniers and his partners could end up becoming the owners of the physical tapes on which the music was recorded, but do not have the right to publish the music contained on the tapes themselves.
On top of this, the estate of Marvin Gaye in the United States could find themselves with a theoretical right to exploit the music, but with no way of accessing the music since they do not own the tapes.
Trappeniers's legal opinion regarding this case should obviously result in some kind of compromise.
"I think we both benefit, the family of Marvin and the collection in the hands of [Dumolin's heirs]," he explained. "If we put our hands together and find the right people in the world, the Mark Ronsons or the Bruno Mars.... I'm not here to make suggestions but to say 'OK, let's listen to this and let's make the next album.'"
Trappeniers and his partners were also considering selling the collection, but only if the Gaye family were interested in buying it.
"Morally, I'd like to work with the family but this is the nightmare for them..." he said, "that someone comes from a country where there's a lot of money and we make an agreement and this collection leaves this country."
What was keeping him and his partners back was the possibility of a musician exploiting Gaye's music and passing it off as his own, similar to the dismissed copyright infringement case against Ed Sheeran in 2023.
A more important question would be how Gaye's children would receive the news of their father's Belgian archives.
Lawyers for two of the singer's three children told the BBC that their respective clients were already aware of the existence of the collection, with a possibility of a negotiation in the future, but did not provide any specific timeline. The broadcaster said it also requested the Gaye family for any comment.
The level of secrecy surrounding the disclosure of Gaye's Belgian archive would make it hard to judge what the global impact of the collection might be.
Whatever the outcome, it would change the global music industry forever.
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