Malayalam music reality shows on TV
You might have read my previous posts about the Malayalam reality show – Idea Star Singer (ISS) on Asianet. However I had missed out following or even being aware of another great reality show on Malayalam TV – Super Star Global (SSG) on Amrita TV.
I was introduced to SSG by Preethi (my wife; thanks, dear!) yesterday when she played the awesome rendition of the great Hindi movie song “Kuhu kuhu” [1957!] by the eventual winner Roopa Revathi on an episode from last year. It just blew me away, and so did her medley, not to mention her other efforts!
I am once again thankful to God for having made me someone who can naturally follow both Tamil and Malayalam, and with training — thanks to Kerala schools where you have to learn three languages and Dakshin Bharath Hindi Prachar Sabha — Hindi as well. Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi industries are lucky to have witnessed some of the highest quality film songs made in the last fifty years in India. I would rate the songs in Tamil and Malayalam of the last 30 years even higher than that of Hindi, thanks to men of such calibre like Ilayaraja, Ravindran, Johnson, Yesudas, SPB, Janaki, Chithra and Rahman.
Then I stumbled upon this wonderful wrap-up of these two reality shows by Balaji Srinivasan in this blog post. Nothing much is left for me to say. I hope you would get to enjoy a few hours of high quality music. A quick and dirty way to listen to Roopa’s songs are by visiting the audio page on her alternate site (strange a person having two sites whose address differ literally by a dot!).
The only problem I have now is to convince Airtel Digital TV to start transmitting Amrita TV. If that happens, it would be great to immerse myself in music between 8 and 10pm whenever time permits.
Oh, yes, thanks to Balaji, got to read this great piece on Roger Federer by the NYT as well. The happiness I derived from music and reading today was moving enough to inspire me to write something on this blog after a few extremely hectic weeks. I do hope I get to experience more such days, thanks to perhaps the most useful invention of the last century — internet. It would be great to hear your comments.
Update: A comprehensive dissection of Roopa’s SSG 2008 performance is available over at Subash’s blog.
Protos' Musings 
Thanks for linking to my post, Proto. The only sad thing about all these shows is what they are doing to these talented singers. Where are they now? Looks like they were used for our pleasure, taken on emotional roller-coasters and then forgotten after the competition when hardly heard-of singers are entering the film music industry without participation in any such competitions and also making it big.
Subash
July 12, 2009 at 08:36 hrs
Thanks, Subash for the insightful observation. However, I think the channels cannot be faulted if they insist that they retain the rights for the singers for say a period of an year or so. After all, not many would have known about Vivek, Najim, Gauri or Roopa, but for the channels. In India, everything is designed to favor the incumbent and their kids – be it cinema, politics, corporates or whatever. I would rather take it as an achievement that these people are at least well known to a big share of Mallo TV watching population. I do think that channels like Asianet can scale down the elimination drama a bit, and yes, make this program shorter by 6 months. That way we can have two IPLs — oops, sorry, Mega/Super/Awesome Singer competitions per year!
Proto
July 13, 2009 at 11:01 hrs
Subash & Suresh
needn’t fret about where are those singers now.
Asianet has started a new Serial “Idea Star Singers Evidey anu?” in weekends at night 10.30pm.
It explores where those competitors are in life today!
I didn’t watch it, but saw the promos
arunsark
July 13, 2009 at 15:13 hrs
SSG is really cool ! but I can’t stand the anchor and the introduction of each candidate on ISS … too much yaar …
dinu
March 9, 2010 at 09:05 hrs
Hi Dinu, thanks for stopping by and for the comment. This year I have completely stopped watching the flagship program ISS – thanks to the mediocre talents on display. I would gladly watch if next year they have someone like a Vivek, Durga, Najim or Roopa.
Proto
March 9, 2010 at 21:58 hrs