Idea Star Singer 2008 draws to a close – Vivek the deserving winner
The Mega Finals of the best music reality show I have seen so far – Idea Star Singer on Asianet 2008 – was held at the Chandrashekaran Nair Stadium yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed the singing by the six contestants who made it to the finals. I thought, in the end, the two candidates who walked away the awesome winner’s price (for male and female categories) throughly deserved it — Vivek for his brilliance and Sonia for her consistency and awesome rendition of Paadi thodiyiletho (another gem by the late great Raveendran maashu).
I saw someone comparing Vivek with the maestro KJY, after the former sang the latter’s classic song – Harimuraleeravam from Aaram Thampuran, and cribbing that he didn’t sing it as well as KJY [comments section of this youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2duvfWk-7A]. I think that is grossly unfair to both of them. One was, and perhaps still is, at the pinnacle of his powers when he sung that and the other is just starting his journey as a singer of repute.
Vivek was my favorite contestant ever since I saw his performance during the audition round (way back in May 2008 :) and I am happy he emerged the deserving winner. My pick of the best by Vivek would include Parayaan maranna, Kattile paazhmulam, Sumuhoorthamaay, Oru kadalaay and Harimuraleeravam. My appreciation so far (though I haven’t wrote much for a couple of months now thanks to Twitter, but that is another story for another day) of Idea Star Singer here: http://www.google.com/search?q=”idea+star+singer”+Vivek+OR+Vivekanand+site:protoiyer.wordpress.com. The best source to watch all the Idea Star Singer videos would be: http://www.youtube.com/user/amidalastarsinger.
The only thing that struck me as odd was that the price given to the last three contestants was below par compared to what the winners made. Also, I thought Prasobh was better than Rahul. Looking forward to ISS 2009 that starts in a couple of weeks from now.
though its good that vivek won! i feel for rahul and prasobh. those two blokes consistently performed round the year and were above avg in each and every round compared to vivek who had some disasters in many rounds in that aspect i feel prasobh shud hav won it for his consistency and sheer dedication and effort.
but that is how life goes its just the final exam results which count not the model and mock exams, hopefully all of them make good in their realm.
Arun
April 27, 2009 at 11:10 hrs
Thanks for the comment, Arun. I think someone who knows/understands music (i.e. someone trained in music) would put Vivek a few cuts above both Prasobh and Rahul. In fact I thought Rahul was lucky to be selected as the runner up above Prasobh.
In fact I would go so far as to say Vivek is better than Najeem Arshad for the simple fact that Najeem cannot match Vivek as a complete singer. Vivek is an once in a lifetime talent, and whether he makes it big or not lies entirely in his hands. Rahul was the shrewdest of them all, as he mostly sung only those songs that didn’t had too many challenges or didn’t had high pitch, in short songs that suited him.
Prasobh is a work in progress. He clearly has to train harder on his high notes. I really loved his rendition of Sudhamantram and his classical round though.
Btw, I watched Vivek’s Classical Music round with my Chithi who is a trainer classical singer and was a music teacher for some years, and she told me that that was the toughest Kriti of Tyaagaraja, and that the new generation guys normally don’t even learn it, let alone sing it on stage.
Proto
April 27, 2009 at 23:56 hrs
Suresh,
A similar programme is aired in Vijay TV in Tamil. Like its counterpart in Kerala, this is a superhit and runs on Mon-Wed from 9PM -10PM IST. Prasanna and Ranjani are selected in the wild card round along with Ravi who got selected in the normal selection round. Prasanna by sheer hardwork has come to this stage unlike other contestants Ravi and Ranjani who have classical music trainings where better performance can be expected.
Ravi is doing well and I believe he will win hands down.
Ramadurai SK
May 1, 2009 at 13:33 hrs
Thanks, Ram for leaving the comments. I don’t know whether you have seen ISS yet, but I assure you that it is perhaps the best music shows on TV right now. I have seen Airtel SuperSinger (ASS), but believe me the quality of the performers in Idea Star Singer (ISS) is a few notches above that of Tamil channels, perhaps since Kerala has a more laid back style of life and people have more time to learn stuff properly. I am not sure whether I am prejudiced or not. I saw the rounds in which Mano and KSChithra were there with the contestants in ASS, and I must say that the quality on display was not too great, imho. Please read these two posts I wrote sometime back about the quality of ISS: http://protoiyer.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/the-idea-star-singer-on-asianet/ and http://protoiyer.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/raveendran-maashu-a-redux/. There are lots of links to great music videos on Youtube and I would request you to check them out and decide for yourself.
Proto
May 1, 2009 at 22:00 hrs
I fully agree with Proto when he says the quality of participants in tamil channels is not as good as Malayalam channels –In fact I would go as far to say the quality is far very much below acceptable standards in Tamil channels,. Proto is not at all biased in his comments on this –I am from Tamilnadu and I have seen for years now that even young children in Kerala have great music sense when they render not just malayalam songs –Participants in Kerala sing Tamil songs far better than Tamilian participants who render even well known songs with wrong Sangathis and poor renditions . The music sense and the total voice and singing quality of Malayalam participants is vastly superior to any other channels –with the only possible exception being –TVS Saregama which was aired way back in nineties at Zee TV and hosted by Sonu Nigam . Plus I also appreciate malayalam singers for rendering old Hindi songs brilliantly without having the lyrics in front of them –also for Tamil songs. Hats off to them all.
Raj Vaidya
May 24, 2009 at 17:05 hrs
yes you are right Suresh. The ASS was damp squib when it ended abruptly and gave away first prize to Ajeesh instead of Ravi . Most disgusting was Ranjani getting eliminated in the voting . It was just another drama in the tv screen.
RamaduraiSK
June 7, 2009 at 21:41 hrs
Сенкс. Интересно, и вообще полезный у Вас блог
Ferinannnd
May 25, 2009 at 11:21 hrs