Mind blowing, fantastic, God bless…..what is the connection between these three words? It shouldn’t be of any issue for any regular viewer of television to answer this question. Or for that matter tell you the meaning of phrases like “Jai Mata Di, Lets Rock” or “Yalgaar Ho”. No matter how irrelevant or utterly meaningless these words sound, they are on everybody’s lips. Welcome to the world of musical talent hunts.
It all began with “Sa Re Ga Ma” on Zee TV in 1995. But things were very very different at that time. You had to record a song in your voice and send the audio cassette (I hope people still remember that double faced rectangular piece of plastic with two holes in between and riveted together by small silver coloured nails) to Zee TV, where a panel would listen to your songs and decide whether you were good enough to be called on the show. Then there was our very own desi DD version – “Meri Aawaz Suno”, which began a year later in 1996. Channels apart, the inherent sentiment behind the shows was same – they were there to find out people who could sing well. Nothing else mattered. It was totally, absolutely, completely based on how you sang. It had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with how you looked or what you could or couldn’t do on stage. But now the onus has shifted towards finding performers: people who can set the stage on fire, people who can bring in the crowds with their looks and hip shaking talents, people who can bring in the moolah for the television channels. The singing has been left far far behind. There is something called “necessary and sufficient condition”. Knowing how to sing is still necessary, but not the sufficient condition any more.
And the results speak for themselves. People who were associated with ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ and ‘Meri Aawaz Suno’ are ruling the roost in Bollywood today. Sonu Nigam and Shaan (both hosted SRGM) are the top male singers in the country today. Shreya Ghosal and Sunidhi Chauhan were the winners of SRGM and MAS respectively. Kunal Ganjawala was a participant of SRGM in the year 1997 and 1998. But what is happening today? Why is the new breed of singing talent not able to make a mark? Let me put forward a simple calculation. Zee has ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa – Challenge’. Sony has its ‘Indian Idol’ and Star has its own ‘Voice of India’. Then there are about 20 – 25 regional channels broadcasting the regional formats of the same shows. So, at any point of time, there are about 30 shows on air trying to find the ‘next big name’ in Indian music. Now, one season of each of these shows lasts for about 6 months after which the same cycle starts all over again. With due respect to the winner, the top three participants in all of these shows are of the same caliber. That means every 6 months, we are getting 30 X 3 = 90 supposedly talented singers. 180 singers / year. If you want to consider only the winner also, the number comes out to 60. Is there place for so many people? The answer is a simple NO. But equally true is the fact that quantity can never overshadow quality. If there is a singer of real talent, he is going to shine and survive. So why is not a single singer able to hit the bull’s eye? Primarily because of the format of the shows. It starts from the start and continues till the end. In the auditions, the judges go about selecting people who are more presentable than being better in vocals. When the foundation itself is so weak, how can you expect to get good results. Even then, some good talent does sieve through this illogical procedure. But the real mockery starts once the participants go on air. Each week, the participants get eliminated one by one, not on the basis of what they have sung, but on the basis of the number of SMSs that have come in their name (or more appropriately on the basis of the SMSs that have not come in their name). This issue was raised by Mini Mathur in Indian Idol this year, trying to defend this awful method. Her exact words were – “Iska matlab kya ye hai ki janta galat hai?”, meaning “Does this mean that the masses are wrong?”, to which Javed Akhtar replied that “Yes, the masses are wrong. Many a times, the masses make the wrong decision. They choose the wrong leader. They vote criminals who become part of the government. So you can never say that people always make the right decision”. This silenced Mini and nobody uttered a single more word on this topic. This actually is the main reason why the shows are not able to extract real talent from the haystack. I think somebody needs to sit down and put in some thought into this so that this mindless game can be stopped. People all over India vote for these participants based on regional sentiments more than anything else. And at the end of the way, the only real winners are the television channels and the mobile service providers, raking in huge amounts of money. There have been reports of many organizations going from home to home urging people to vote for the participants from their cities, distributing free SIM cards, even threatening people with dire consequences if they did not vote. This is democracy at its worst. Things went to the extent of taking the shape of a law and order situation this time when there were some comments from various sections that the winner of this year’s Indian Idol was not a deserving candidate. Where is the question of regional sentiments being there when all you have to decide is whether a person is singing well or not? A Shah Rukh Khan film is a Shah Rukh Khan film no matter in which part of the country it is being shown. People will throng to fill up the seats if a Sonu Nigam is performing irrecpective of the geographical location. Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar are icons of India’s rich vocal wealth. They have a myriad of songs to their names sung in all the major and minor languages of India. So how can something as beautiful as music become the source for regional conflict and communal friction? The answer again lies in the way the shows are being conducted.
People in India are basically very tolerant. But at the same time, their minds are also very easily effected. One can easily motivate or demotivate the masses and channelise their positive energy to further some ulterior means. So that something like this doesn’t happen and deserving participants do end up winning these shows, something needs to be done. A judge in one of these shows had recommended a very novel way of doing this. He had suggested a very simple method – do not allow public voting in the initial stages of any show. The elimination should only be on the basis of the judges’ judgement. What this will do is that it will ensure that the best three or five participants do reach the final stages of the competition (we have to assume that atleast the judges collectively are going to make the right choice). And then when we are down to the last three or five, we can start the public voting. There is very little difference as far as singing talent goes between these remaining participants and no matter whom the public eventually chooses, we can be assured that it will be a deserving one. What this will also do is that it is going to lessen the association the people develop towards a certain participant. When you start voting for a participant from the initial stages of a show, you become more emotionally involved with the participant than being an admirer of his or her singing acumen. As a result, your voting becomes biased. But when the voting is allowed only in the final stages, you are more likely to use your grey cells and vote for the person who is singing well and not for the person who hails from a certain community or region. Another thing that needs to be done is to give the judges the freedom to express their views in the way they want to. Their opinions and observations should not be dictated by the TRP ratings or the interests of the channel that is airing the show. The judges have become so busy in promoting the show that they judge that they have even forgotten the real purpose of their being there. You can hear Himesh Reshammiya shouting atleast ten times in every episode how the blessings of the Almighty has always been with “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa” and how they bring out the best talents every year. Of course people like Aadesh Shrivastava, who till recently were part of Star “Voice of India” cut a very sorry figure sitting next to Himesh when he claims SRGMP being the best talent hunt in the whole world and so on and so forth.
All these notwithstanding, there are some positives to be taken away as well. These shows are providing the youth with a never-had-before opportunity to showcase their talents. When previously they had to come to Mumbai and then slog for years, running from pillar to post to even get near a composer, they are now directly being picked up from their home towns and launched on into the limelight. Cutting an album was like the most difficult thing you could have thought about. But now, you have to win a show and there you are with your own album. And it doesn’t end with one show. If you are not able to make a mark in one, there are many other shows waiting for you. So the initial pick-up you get is awesome. Your talent gets an opening that you couldn’t even dream of about five years ago. The only question that you need to answer is whether you really have the talent? But more than the participants, I think the biggest beneficiary of these talent hunts have been some of the judges. People like Aadesh Shrivastava, Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri, Ismail Darbar (its very hard to find these names even in the remotest corner of our memories) are getting a chance to play a second innings. And the funniest part of it all is when these people make tall claims that they are going to use this and that participant as a playback singer in their next movie. Where do these people have any movie? They have not scored a decent soundtrack for years and are not going to do so for years to come. There is even a slight hint of a sarcastic smile on the face of the participants when these announcements are made (and there are about two or three announcements like this every episode), but they know better than to make their thoughts become too evident. Whatever be the case, right now, these people, coming to the show all decked up in their ten kilogram jewellery, sunglasses (I can never understand why a sunglass is required at night), designer hair cuts, body hugging t-shirts, blaring out comments like “the antra was this, the mukhda was that”, “the high notes are not pitching well”, are having a grand time.
All said and done, music talent hunts are here to stay and if everyone concerned does his job to the best of his ability and in a more “common sense” manner, we can certainly hope to see some real churning of the great musical depth and genius that is omni prevalent in this country and the subsequent emergence of singers who will enthrall and mesmerize us for decades to come.
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr
It all began with “Sa Re Ga Ma” on Zee TV in 1995. But things were very very different at that time. You had to record a song in your voice and send the audio cassette (I hope people still remember that double faced rectangular piece of plastic with two holes in between and riveted together by small silver coloured nails) to Zee TV, where a panel would listen to your songs and decide whether you were good enough to be called on the show. Then there was our very own desi DD version – “Meri Aawaz Suno”, which began a year later in 1996. Channels apart, the inherent sentiment behind the shows was same – they were there to find out people who could sing well. Nothing else mattered. It was totally, absolutely, completely based on how you sang. It had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with how you looked or what you could or couldn’t do on stage. But now the onus has shifted towards finding performers: people who can set the stage on fire, people who can bring in the crowds with their looks and hip shaking talents, people who can bring in the moolah for the television channels. The singing has been left far far behind. There is something called “necessary and sufficient condition”. Knowing how to sing is still necessary, but not the sufficient condition any more.
And the results speak for themselves. People who were associated with ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ and ‘Meri Aawaz Suno’ are ruling the roost in Bollywood today. Sonu Nigam and Shaan (both hosted SRGM) are the top male singers in the country today. Shreya Ghosal and Sunidhi Chauhan were the winners of SRGM and MAS respectively. Kunal Ganjawala was a participant of SRGM in the year 1997 and 1998. But what is happening today? Why is the new breed of singing talent not able to make a mark? Let me put forward a simple calculation. Zee has ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa – Challenge’. Sony has its ‘Indian Idol’ and Star has its own ‘Voice of India’. Then there are about 20 – 25 regional channels broadcasting the regional formats of the same shows. So, at any point of time, there are about 30 shows on air trying to find the ‘next big name’ in Indian music. Now, one season of each of these shows lasts for about 6 months after which the same cycle starts all over again. With due respect to the winner, the top three participants in all of these shows are of the same caliber. That means every 6 months, we are getting 30 X 3 = 90 supposedly talented singers. 180 singers / year. If you want to consider only the winner also, the number comes out to 60. Is there place for so many people? The answer is a simple NO. But equally true is the fact that quantity can never overshadow quality. If there is a singer of real talent, he is going to shine and survive. So why is not a single singer able to hit the bull’s eye? Primarily because of the format of the shows. It starts from the start and continues till the end. In the auditions, the judges go about selecting people who are more presentable than being better in vocals. When the foundation itself is so weak, how can you expect to get good results. Even then, some good talent does sieve through this illogical procedure. But the real mockery starts once the participants go on air. Each week, the participants get eliminated one by one, not on the basis of what they have sung, but on the basis of the number of SMSs that have come in their name (or more appropriately on the basis of the SMSs that have not come in their name). This issue was raised by Mini Mathur in Indian Idol this year, trying to defend this awful method. Her exact words were – “Iska matlab kya ye hai ki janta galat hai?”, meaning “Does this mean that the masses are wrong?”, to which Javed Akhtar replied that “Yes, the masses are wrong. Many a times, the masses make the wrong decision. They choose the wrong leader. They vote criminals who become part of the government. So you can never say that people always make the right decision”. This silenced Mini and nobody uttered a single more word on this topic. This actually is the main reason why the shows are not able to extract real talent from the haystack. I think somebody needs to sit down and put in some thought into this so that this mindless game can be stopped. People all over India vote for these participants based on regional sentiments more than anything else. And at the end of the way, the only real winners are the television channels and the mobile service providers, raking in huge amounts of money. There have been reports of many organizations going from home to home urging people to vote for the participants from their cities, distributing free SIM cards, even threatening people with dire consequences if they did not vote. This is democracy at its worst. Things went to the extent of taking the shape of a law and order situation this time when there were some comments from various sections that the winner of this year’s Indian Idol was not a deserving candidate. Where is the question of regional sentiments being there when all you have to decide is whether a person is singing well or not? A Shah Rukh Khan film is a Shah Rukh Khan film no matter in which part of the country it is being shown. People will throng to fill up the seats if a Sonu Nigam is performing irrecpective of the geographical location. Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar are icons of India’s rich vocal wealth. They have a myriad of songs to their names sung in all the major and minor languages of India. So how can something as beautiful as music become the source for regional conflict and communal friction? The answer again lies in the way the shows are being conducted.
People in India are basically very tolerant. But at the same time, their minds are also very easily effected. One can easily motivate or demotivate the masses and channelise their positive energy to further some ulterior means. So that something like this doesn’t happen and deserving participants do end up winning these shows, something needs to be done. A judge in one of these shows had recommended a very novel way of doing this. He had suggested a very simple method – do not allow public voting in the initial stages of any show. The elimination should only be on the basis of the judges’ judgement. What this will do is that it will ensure that the best three or five participants do reach the final stages of the competition (we have to assume that atleast the judges collectively are going to make the right choice). And then when we are down to the last three or five, we can start the public voting. There is very little difference as far as singing talent goes between these remaining participants and no matter whom the public eventually chooses, we can be assured that it will be a deserving one. What this will also do is that it is going to lessen the association the people develop towards a certain participant. When you start voting for a participant from the initial stages of a show, you become more emotionally involved with the participant than being an admirer of his or her singing acumen. As a result, your voting becomes biased. But when the voting is allowed only in the final stages, you are more likely to use your grey cells and vote for the person who is singing well and not for the person who hails from a certain community or region. Another thing that needs to be done is to give the judges the freedom to express their views in the way they want to. Their opinions and observations should not be dictated by the TRP ratings or the interests of the channel that is airing the show. The judges have become so busy in promoting the show that they judge that they have even forgotten the real purpose of their being there. You can hear Himesh Reshammiya shouting atleast ten times in every episode how the blessings of the Almighty has always been with “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa” and how they bring out the best talents every year. Of course people like Aadesh Shrivastava, who till recently were part of Star “Voice of India” cut a very sorry figure sitting next to Himesh when he claims SRGMP being the best talent hunt in the whole world and so on and so forth.
All these notwithstanding, there are some positives to be taken away as well. These shows are providing the youth with a never-had-before opportunity to showcase their talents. When previously they had to come to Mumbai and then slog for years, running from pillar to post to even get near a composer, they are now directly being picked up from their home towns and launched on into the limelight. Cutting an album was like the most difficult thing you could have thought about. But now, you have to win a show and there you are with your own album. And it doesn’t end with one show. If you are not able to make a mark in one, there are many other shows waiting for you. So the initial pick-up you get is awesome. Your talent gets an opening that you couldn’t even dream of about five years ago. The only question that you need to answer is whether you really have the talent? But more than the participants, I think the biggest beneficiary of these talent hunts have been some of the judges. People like Aadesh Shrivastava, Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri, Ismail Darbar (its very hard to find these names even in the remotest corner of our memories) are getting a chance to play a second innings. And the funniest part of it all is when these people make tall claims that they are going to use this and that participant as a playback singer in their next movie. Where do these people have any movie? They have not scored a decent soundtrack for years and are not going to do so for years to come. There is even a slight hint of a sarcastic smile on the face of the participants when these announcements are made (and there are about two or three announcements like this every episode), but they know better than to make their thoughts become too evident. Whatever be the case, right now, these people, coming to the show all decked up in their ten kilogram jewellery, sunglasses (I can never understand why a sunglass is required at night), designer hair cuts, body hugging t-shirts, blaring out comments like “the antra was this, the mukhda was that”, “the high notes are not pitching well”, are having a grand time.
All said and done, music talent hunts are here to stay and if everyone concerned does his job to the best of his ability and in a more “common sense” manner, we can certainly hope to see some real churning of the great musical depth and genius that is omni prevalent in this country and the subsequent emergence of singers who will enthrall and mesmerize us for decades to come.
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr
