Singing Competitions
iView Author: Farhad Taimor (Vancouver, Canada)
Email: farhadtaimor(at)yahoo(dot)com
Singing Competitions‘
Aspiring singers are judged to be crowned as Star Voice of India or the Champion of Sa Re Ga Ma Challenge or Little Champs in our so called “Sangeet competitions”. However, it’s not right for the organizers to say it’s a “talent hunt” or even to state that they are presenting these shows as an outlet to showcase the vast pools of singing talent or as a way to give a stage for these singers to come out in front of the whole world and prove themselves.
We all know that is not what these shows are all about. Everything is not what it seems, the current and previous formats of these competitions have kicked out some of the most well deserving singers mostly based on the voting process and
not based on their singing ability.
At first we must understand the purpose of these shows.
“This is all business”
In one of the SA RE GA MA programs even the respected Khayam sahib said this is not fair. The Janta at large does not know sangeet as well as we do and we are letting them decide who is the better singer and who should be voted off the show? In many shows even some of the judges also voiced their concern due to the surprising and abrupt exit of some of the most hardworking and deserving singers just because of this popularity contest, that damned SMS money making machine I like to call the “black voting system”.
I have been a fanatic about these shows and have been watching them closely for long period of time, but for the last 3 years I have yet to see a fair judgement for the singers, the ones who bring in the audiences, the TV ratings, the millions of Rupees via SMS’s and supposedly the ones for whom the “manch” is meant for. It’s to the point now that I’m so sick of the hypocracy I have stopped watching these shows altogether, as I am no longer interested in seeing a singer leaving while he or she still deserves to be in the competition.
They are not promoting “Sangeet”, they are promoting themselves and their sponsors which have invested/partnered with them,
1) Singers are judged by judges who are there right from the beginning till the end. It is apparent that they have taken sides of the singers in the past or even now. By saying you are our favorite singer is shattering for other signers
2) They bring masala so called entertainment in the episode to keep it interesting , including fights, love angles or any kind of dispute.
3) They leave singers on viewers choice most of the time by saying now let Jaanta decide by voting. This is not fair because when you introduce singers by their origin than you are dividing people. Many times we have heard that the host saying you are not getting votes from your own are please urge your people to vote for you.
I can write up much more about it but lets just say “audience voting” is not the fairest way of deciding the best singer.
I think we should all understand this is a corporate chakkar and all they are doing is selling and exploiting the talents of these singers while their biggest worries are about their “TRP’s” and nothing more than that.
We do appreciate their time, hard work, the scripting and look out for talent but
if they want to do “Khidmat for Sangeet” than they should not say “Suron ka Takrao” etc etc
They should be brave enough to come out and say no more judging by the judges, only by the “JAANTA”. Let the Jaanta alone decide and then they should name it VIEWERS CHOICE completion rather than “Sa Re Ga Ma Challenge” or “Star Voice of India”
Or they can take the other, far more braver route and that would be a great Khidmat to all of us and for Sangeet also. They can take all the masala out and focus only on the Sangeet aspect, bringing in different judges in each program, get rid of VOTING, judge singers based on their vertsatality or either name the completion either its Classical singing only or Rock or Disco etc.
When selecting judges make sure to select unbiased judges and those who have a deep knowledge about music and singing. Since this is the singing completion than only singers should be the judges as they know “Bareekian” of music and able to guide singers in the right direction. If this is not agreeable than include a couple of musicians to have their say in the judgment but not more than 2.
Above are the recommendations and I strongly believe that we can come to consensus that this can be utilized to drastically improve the quality of programming on Sangeet. At last by taking care of above recommendations we should be able to truly find the real singing talent as long as all steps are taken care fully and above all with fairness
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
true to the core…..Indian idol 1 was the only show in which i didnt feel like this…but that could be bcoz it was the first grand scale singing competition…..also another important point is where does the winners go to….Abhijeet Sawant shows his face now and then…but what about fame gurukul’s Qazi and ruprekha, all the other idol winners and even sa re ga ma pa winners….the only ones benefited from singing competitions seem to be Shreya Ghoshal and Kunal Ganjawala…hope others get their break soon..
@ Farhad,
U missed the main point. Its a fight for only thing. The Mai Baap of TV- the TRPs. The money from SMS and all is a pittance. They know that increasing the Time Spent by the viewers is the best way to get higher ratings!
So if they involve the viewers through an inter atcive sessions/promos/contests….its bound to increase the Time spent levels of viewers.
As you have rightly pointed out; the fights.love angles and all other “MASALA” only are side dishes served on a platter to the viewers.
Even if we take all the winners of SaRe, Voice of India, Indian Idol- How many of them have sund more than 3 songs in a Bollywood Movie? NONE.
Thats the sad “Reality” of it.
No one, and i mean no one- nor the broadcasters, judges, hosts, sponsore- is really interested in promoting Talent.
“Its all about Money,Honey”
Looking at television i can say only one thing,Half of our country is dancing and singing and other half is busy copulating.
SA RE GA MA PA marathi was an exception in this case…it was indeed a “singing” competition and not a place for judges to fight wid each other
Agree with all the points that you make. There’s another thing about these competitions that somehow doesn’t go well with me – the physically challenged contestants, especially in the kids’ versions. These contestants have always been given an unfair advantage over the others by bringing their handicaps into the limelight. I’ve always seen the “judges” shower mindboggling praise on them even for average performances. This adds up to sympathy votes for such contestants, which IMO, is not fair on the others. If the channels really want to promote the challenged kids, have a competition where all the participants have some handicap…thus making it a level playing field.
The singing competitions create mini-celebrities who then go on to appear in other reality competition shows, just like MTV in the U.S. It’s clear it’s about TV and not about creating a new crop of playback singers.
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I actually thought the 2007 SRGMP crop with Aneek, Amanat, Raja, Poonam, Mussarat and Sumedha were bursting with talent and as a bonus, they often sang on-key. A lot of the contestants this year often were flat. And I want to yell at the TV when SRGMP lets the public vote on India Day and deserving contestants from Pakistan suffer and are put into awkward spots where they have to say something conciliatory because of that.
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It was really sad when Sumedha appeared on SRGMP recently and sang better than all the remaining contestants, and then Sankar Mahadevan announced that visiting celebrities and judges who’d promised to hire her had gone back on their words.
I appreciate your truthful comments
on my first article on pfc.I tried to cover
the points which have been bothering me for
long period of time.In the article some suggestions were made to enhance the quality of these programs.May I ask you to write up some more
suggestions to see how to improve the quality of these programs and abstain from the stuff that janta
does not require.
Thanks and regards
Farhad
Please read my comments as , May I ask you to
write up some more suggestions to see how to get the improved and quality Sangeet Shows and organisers must abstain from the stuff that janta does not require.We all want quality and real singers to be promoted dont’we?I know the answer would be yes so please please come up and add to
my recommendations made in the article.
Nice write up Farhad bhai. And I agree that there isn’t a lot of transparency on the voting process nor is there any indication on most of there shows regarding what the criteria for success is, other than popularity.
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My suggestion would be to have a music company, maybe like a Tips or a Venus (yes, I’m quite outdated) use these competitions as a platform to launch new singing talent for one of their upcoming films. They can use the music directors for that film as the judges, and therefore the verdict would be according to very specific requirements for the music of that film. If they’re smart, they could include a variety of songs (pop song, romantic ballad, item song, sad song, even a qawaali) as part of the songs. Launch newcomers in the title role and you could have a film like Aashiqui on your hands.
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Just my thoughts…
@Farhad – very nice post…and now public is also aware of the fact that all the masala on the show are just the staged drama…and nothing else.
The first season of Sa Re Ga Ma was much more authentic thn the current one. And i believe the only show which was best so far was “Meri Aawaj Suno” on DD1. Which has given some good singers like sunidhi chauhan.
And there are only few winners whe were able to make it in the bollywood. Abhijeet Sawant, shreya Ghoshal, Kunal Ganjawala, sunidhi chauhan etc. We never know where are rest of the singers. Where are Amit sana, Sundeep, Ankita Rahul Vaidya??? any body knows??
Now how many of us know that the recent block buster song of Raaz II – Mahi, is sung by Toshi -one of the most promising contestent of Star Voice of India. Now where are Raja and Aunik??
Probably that is the only reason why people are running away from such reality shows. The everyday declining TRP of such shows are an evidence of the same.
~Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale
Each one of you agree and confirmed that we are
extremely fedup with current so called Sangeet
competitions.
Tony presented an unique idea to bring up the talent and to show case thier singing talent.
I hope that my other fellows will also come up with some ideas and also hope that these suggestions may knock on the doors of those who can bring the change .Lets hope for good
aur ” Umeed par duniya qaim hai”
I don’t watch TV at all. I was at a friend’s place and happened to catch the grand finale of Indian Idol.
What really got my goat was when former winners came up and sang songs which they’d sung in films following their Idol wins. Trouble is, they didn’t sing! They bloody LIP-SYNCED AND DANCED!!!!!! WHY WHY WHY WHY would the winners of a GODDAMN ****SINGING**** competition DANCE and lip-sync instead of singing!!!!!!!!!!! This wasn’t Boogie-Woogie! What’s up with that!
And if they intended them to sing and dance, why the hell fix those mikes on their faces!!!!! Whom did the channel folks think they’re fooling?
Never mind all that!!!!! My main point is, why the hell should singers DANCE in a singing competition?!!!!?
(I haven’t watched a lot of Indian TV since the last 10 years. My excitable family and friends have encouraged me to watch Indian Idol, Saregama but I don’t see what the big deal is. Some singers are good, but not exceptional. What I’m appalled by is if the judges have no say in the final verdict, why have them at all?!!! I’m not trained in music but I listen to a decently wide genre.)
I think the best singing competition was the original Saregama, hosted by Sonu Nigam (directed by the same Gajendra Singh). It didn’t have the audience voting system and they invited real musicians to judge it. More often than not, the best singers won.
About giving the winners opportunities in Bollywood or other mediums, I think it’s a little more complicated. Releasing a solo album will not do anything. They need more opportunities.
P.S. Someone should start a similar show for actors. Maybe the audience might realize that there is untapped talent and figure out the over-ratedness of contemporary actors, and especially, actresses. I hope the dirth of good actors is a myth.
@Pratik There was a show on Zee like that recently. Anupam Kher was a judge, and one of the two winners was one of his students.
Pratik, yeah, without “knowledgeable” public votes, the best singers would win.
Evelyn are you serious? Oh man, didn’t expect Anupam Kher to show that kind of biased or worse, corruption!
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Pratik, I think a talent hunt show for actors would be amazing. And they should break all known formats. Take these guys AWAY from the whole stage/studio audience set up and onto real sets and locations, and get them to enact scenes. Instead of an audience “voting” system, they could have forums online like this one where audience members could express their opinions on the performances, but the verdicts would remain with the judges (film directors, senior actors, acting instructors). It would be an interesting concept I think…
Ashu & Pratik, you’re right, the original SRGMP was great, it had everything a music competition including great singers. And the right singers won (surprising the amount of talent an actual talent hunt can produce) and look at them now!
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Then, someone decided to make more money out of the concept, integrity and spirit of competition be damned. And now its all so meaningless…
@Tony, yeah, I’m serious. It’s not the actress’s fault. She’s lovely and she might have had the looks and talent to win on her own anyway. But there was a LOT of promotion of Actor Prepares during and after she accepted her award.
Thanks for every one for thier valueable input.
Some of them raised a million dollar point which is ” what is the destiny for these singers who wins the competiton or the actors? is’nt money the only thing these singers or actors get and some fame but that fades away after few months as they become useless for these corporations.
I really liked Tony’s suggestion and I hope our discussions, recommendations will catch the attention of those who are able to do all that.
I wish , if am given a chance than I can prove it .
But tell you what , I sent out my idea of compettion (which is the same as I wrote about)
to some Tv stations and got no response.One of them said we are already working on this idea?
Hunh!yes they really are , they cannot come out
from thinking how to make more money and Trp.
I agree when Sonu bhai was the host we had quality singers coming out from that show and the judgement was fair as well.We cannot compare Khayam Sahib, Op Nayar Sahib, Naushad Sahib
Kalyan Jee Anand jee bhai and Laxmi Kant pyare Lal
with Anu Malik, Preetam, Himesh, Jatin lalit.
I have spent time with Ustaads’ and have little knowldge about singing and its very stressfull
to see these new composer making wrong judgements
on the show.
To be continued
I would like to add , its very stressfull to see judges making unfair judgements and fighting.
On one occasion Sa re ga ma pa brought Janaab
Gulam Ali Khan sahib and Janab Suresh Wadekar jee.
The organisers had them judge the Rock songs instead of classical or GhazalsIt did not make anyh sense to me atleast.Does it make any sense to you ? what they should do next is to bring
Atif Aslam ,Shaan and Himesh and have them judge
the Ghazals and Classical segment.
I would recommend them dropping the monikers of regional and national origins of the singers after the first one or two episodes. This tactic increases the number of public votes but it has nothing to do with good singing. And there should be some consequences for judges who baldly discuss their biases. It makes me cringe every time.
I agree with Evelyn that regionalism is an underhanded tactic design to evoke an emotional response from people towards the contestant for their region. Well, what if I’m from Punjab, should I be ashamed of being more impressed with the singer from say Orissa or Kerala? Absolutely think that this divide and conquer technique should be banned.
Farhad Bhai, it definitely makes NO sense and in fact its counter-productive. It makes much much more sense to bring in specific judges for specific kinds of music. Imagine watching a contestants ability to sing a ghazal tested in front of a Ghulam Ali? Wow.. now that would just be the ultimate.
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To be fair to the contestants though maybe Ghazal singing is not their strong-point and so that would give some singers and unfair advantage, at least in that category.
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I am by no means a singer and have very limited knowledge on music, so if anyone out there can answer this that would be great: Does being a very good singer mean that you have the range to sing everything from Ghazal’s to Filmi to Pop songs and all that? Or are some singers, like Jagjit Singh, just incredibly gifted at one special kind of singing but may not be as good in other areas?
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I guess we’re spoilt by listening so much to Mohd. Rafi Kishore Kumar, who were great singers regardless of the type of song. Or does it just seem like that to us laymens?