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The little guy from the corner (from The Hindu)
BY SEVANTI NINAN
In a national singing contest, ethnicity is big. So is aspiration.
BEING gifted with a ridiculously early deadline, I have no idea whether the Bengali lad from Assam finally won "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" or whether the Bengali girl from Kolkata made it to the next round of "Indian Idol 2". But I do know that the Assamese have convinced themselves that if Debojit Saha does not make it, it will be because of a huge conspiracy against the Northeast in the rest of India.
In a complicated country, you cannot have an uncomplicated approach to a singing contest. Ethnicity is big in India, so is aspiration. Every time Indian show biz copies an international format, it ends up weighing it down with things extraneous. With "American Idol", "Indian Idol" and "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" running concurrently, you discover how tiresome that can be. Indians are moving away with alacrity from watching bad soaps to watching bad singing, and as audiences they bring all sorts of baggage with them.
American wannabe singers are happy to go on stage and make a spectacle of themselves even when they know they will be insulted and laughed at. But that would not be so funny here. We don't want a bald, basic contest, nor do we relish unadulterated rudeness. We prefer to politic instead of about the voting outcome. And we want the chamak-dhamak of Bollywood, the cloying clutter of costumes and extras, and the weighing down of each episode with product promotions which insult the intelligence. In America, the market has been the prime mover for so long that it does not need to be in your face.
Guest stars
Last week on "Indian Idol 2", the professional patina of the contestants was intriguing because this is supposed to be an amateur contest. They were costumed and choreographed, and accompanied by extras. That is the way the Indian show is developing. The contestants were so good, and the judges so taken with their singing that there was little scope for criticism, only some intra judge bickering.
Then you had the dominating focus on the guest stars, who obediently maintained a focus on the product they were promoting to the extent of Kareena Kapoor wearing a coffee coloured costume to plug Pepsi's caf chino. Sony has this irritating habit of selling its episodes to the highest bidder. When it wasn't Kareena holding up a bottle of the coffee flavoured cola, it was host Aman Verma telling you which Nokia model you should dial your smses from. The relief came from an audience made up overwhelmingly of quintessentially middle class, middle aged men and women enjoying themselves hugely, some of the sitting arms akimbo.
On last week's re-run of "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", the finalists were far more forgettable than the politics that accompanied the voting on them. It is not new on this show: contestants have walked out protesting about the voting outcomes, so have judges. Now you had the Bollywood guest, Tabu, suggesting that regional biases in the voting should be countered by giving the deciding vote to the zone, which did not have a finalist in the contest. Despite all that, the East zone finalist whose heavy regional backing has drawn protest, still made it to the final two.
Little to do with singing?
In the peculiarly Indian progression of reality shows, the "little guy from a corner of the country" theme is the flavour of the season. Curly locked Qazi Touqeer from Kashmir surged ahead on "Fame Gurukul" despite his forgettable singing because people, inexplicably, kept voting for him. He ended up winning.
Now on "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", it is the turn of Debojit Saha from Assam to ride on a backing which has little to do with his singing. The votes he got were in the region of Rs. 40 lakhs. (Multiply Rs. 6 per call to the show numbers into Rs. 40 lakhs, and you get Rs. 2.4 crores, which explains why Reliance Mobile in Guwahati has plastered the city with billboards urging people to vote for Debojit.) An Assamese journalist Nava Thakuria, has written about the hype around this contestant in Assam. Last week, youth took out a rally in the city urging a vote for him! Newspapers carry boxed front page appeals, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) has appealed to the local people to vote for him, but the United Liberation Front for Assam (ULFA) has said he is promoting the cause of Hindi music, not Assamese music and therefore should not be voted for. Imagine, says, Thakuria, people are ignoring an ULFA edict! Though he hails from Silchar in the Barak Valley, the divisions between the Assamese and the Bengali dominated Barak valley have been buried in the combined frenzy to make Debojit win "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa". My goodness.
BY SEVANTI NINAN
In a national singing contest, ethnicity is big. So is aspiration.
BEING gifted with a ridiculously early deadline, I have no idea whether the Bengali lad from Assam finally won "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" or whether the Bengali girl from Kolkata made it to the next round of "Indian Idol 2". But I do know that the Assamese have convinced themselves that if Debojit Saha does not make it, it will be because of a huge conspiracy against the Northeast in the rest of India.
In a complicated country, you cannot have an uncomplicated approach to a singing contest. Ethnicity is big in India, so is aspiration. Every time Indian show biz copies an international format, it ends up weighing it down with things extraneous. With "American Idol", "Indian Idol" and "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa" running concurrently, you discover how tiresome that can be. Indians are moving away with alacrity from watching bad soaps to watching bad singing, and as audiences they bring all sorts of baggage with them.
American wannabe singers are happy to go on stage and make a spectacle of themselves even when they know they will be insulted and laughed at. But that would not be so funny here. We don't want a bald, basic contest, nor do we relish unadulterated rudeness. We prefer to politic instead of about the voting outcome. And we want the chamak-dhamak of Bollywood, the cloying clutter of costumes and extras, and the weighing down of each episode with product promotions which insult the intelligence. In America, the market has been the prime mover for so long that it does not need to be in your face.
Guest stars
Last week on "Indian Idol 2", the professional patina of the contestants was intriguing because this is supposed to be an amateur contest. They were costumed and choreographed, and accompanied by extras. That is the way the Indian show is developing. The contestants were so good, and the judges so taken with their singing that there was little scope for criticism, only some intra judge bickering.
Then you had the dominating focus on the guest stars, who obediently maintained a focus on the product they were promoting to the extent of Kareena Kapoor wearing a coffee coloured costume to plug Pepsi's caf chino. Sony has this irritating habit of selling its episodes to the highest bidder. When it wasn't Kareena holding up a bottle of the coffee flavoured cola, it was host Aman Verma telling you which Nokia model you should dial your smses from. The relief came from an audience made up overwhelmingly of quintessentially middle class, middle aged men and women enjoying themselves hugely, some of the sitting arms akimbo.
On last week's re-run of "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", the finalists were far more forgettable than the politics that accompanied the voting on them. It is not new on this show: contestants have walked out protesting about the voting outcomes, so have judges. Now you had the Bollywood guest, Tabu, suggesting that regional biases in the voting should be countered by giving the deciding vote to the zone, which did not have a finalist in the contest. Despite all that, the East zone finalist whose heavy regional backing has drawn protest, still made it to the final two.
Little to do with singing?
In the peculiarly Indian progression of reality shows, the "little guy from a corner of the country" theme is the flavour of the season. Curly locked Qazi Touqeer from Kashmir surged ahead on "Fame Gurukul" despite his forgettable singing because people, inexplicably, kept voting for him. He ended up winning.
Now on "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa", it is the turn of Debojit Saha from Assam to ride on a backing which has little to do with his singing. The votes he got were in the region of Rs. 40 lakhs. (Multiply Rs. 6 per call to the show numbers into Rs. 40 lakhs, and you get Rs. 2.4 crores, which explains why Reliance Mobile in Guwahati has plastered the city with billboards urging people to vote for Debojit.) An Assamese journalist Nava Thakuria, has written about the hype around this contestant in Assam. Last week, youth took out a rally in the city urging a vote for him! Newspapers carry boxed front page appeals, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) has appealed to the local people to vote for him, but the United Liberation Front for Assam (ULFA) has said he is promoting the cause of Hindi music, not Assamese music and therefore should not be voted for. Imagine, says, Thakuria, people are ignoring an ULFA edict! Though he hails from Silchar in the Barak Valley, the divisions between the Assamese and the Bengali dominated Barak valley have been buried in the combined frenzy to make Debojit win "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa". My goodness.
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