Monday, December 22, 2008

Airtel supersinger

I have been watching Airtel Super singer for a month now. It has become the one TV show I look forward to. Not the office, the hills or desperate housewives who by the way did a retelecast last Sunday. I mean can you believe it, the whole summer they go on vacation show some poochandi shows after that and then start repeating the episodes again, the nerve I tell you. Anyhow back to the Airtel super singer.

I like the show, something to look forward to. The quality of singing is quite good which is what made me sit up and notice the show in the first place I suppose. I have also learnt couple of pointers on singing.(I am not a singer, for that matter, please note, am not a writer, I am not a cooker(!), cleaner in short I am somebody who should not be credited with anything). For example, why I never comprehend shruti easily(it is inherently not there), why I have to sing 10 times before going to the next class and all that good stuff.

The compering is usually done by chinmayee. This week 's comperers were Yogendran, Malaysia Vasudevan's son and his wife making me realize that Chinmayee does a decent job.

Now Chinmayee, her fashion sense reminds you why chennai is never going to host the annual fashion week ever but she is usually in the background and is just a conductor of the show. Yogendran, on the other hand, ventures in with a mike every few minutes. I do not mean this as a rude remark but his singing wouldn't have gotten him through the first round of Airtel super singer.

He probably knows that which is why he grabs this opportunity to sing.

The show has had varied Judges from Mahati, Mathangi(who a famous blogger has a crush onand there by fell some 100 points below in my estimate) to Sriram Parthasarathy, who hugged two contestants, guys ..hugged them for singing well atleast that's what he claimed. I quite like Sriram's singing so I shall not talk about this further.

And then there was Deepan Chakravarthy, who my mom referred to as the stage show singer. During Illayaraja's period of reign, SPB and Chitra ruled the roost, I bet you guys know that. Illayaraja for whatever reason liked him but know he wasn't worth singing movie songs, so this guy got delegated to stage shows. Atleast that's what mom said. He was also a judge during the same hugging session and when Sriram Parthasarathy said that these guys had done a fab job and should definitely sing for movies, he was like, yeah only after correcting themselves and with lot more practice.. you know sour grapes sort of..

Now it is predominantly Srinivas, Sujata and Unnikrishnan. They should be given decent rating, though I refrain from giving Unnikrishnan any sort of rating after last year's Kutcheri debacle for me.

Srinivas, that is a singer who I love, so I will go easy on him. I like the way he says too much.

Sujata, god knows how she ends up singing up and that too does a good job of it because she seems quite out of breadth even while talking in the show. She also suffers from this I will talk Malayalam and since in my head it sounds like tamil, it is tamil. It is quite surprising since she has stayed for quite a fong time in tamil nadu.

Unnikrishnan starts of by commenting on the dress. In one of the episodes, he said I like the color(the contestant was wearing) and the contestant got stunned for a moment. This is his way of lightening up the contestant before passing the judgement, I suppose. It stumps the contestant(females have been the only recepients of this honour so far) more than the judgement itself.

None of the judges have had any startling moment so far. By far, Singer Shylaja,one of the judges last week, has been the only impressive onre. Proper feedbacks provided without much a frill, I liked her style.

On the design of the show itself, except the last week's unplugged round, there hasn't been much of variety but as I said the quality of the singing is quite good which glues you in.

The other aspect is I find old gems which either I had forgotten(ullathil nalla ullam from Karna) or wasn't even aware of (Pon ondru kanden). I didn't quite like the 70's or songs before that era much as a kid. But now I quite like them for their musical depth(? ... whatever that means).

And then there are viewers and then there are their thoughts, reminding you of the word democracy. Does democracy means detoriation of quality, of intelligence, intellectualism? why does a good term like democracy result in such massive detoriation of quality.

They have all been yelling in different forums about how the some of the singers should have never been eliminated. Sometimes, Indian female film songing, I feel is like some sort of olympics for pitch. There is some sort of high jump competition in terms of pitch that is going on. I am bored of this single tonal voices. People who have been eliminated will well fit into this category. I am glad Airtel super singer is not olympics for pitches and I am also glad it doesn't believe in democracy.

Yeah, there are other things one has to be thankful for. The camarderie between the contestants, the lack of drama like calling judges and other contestants names when one gets eliminated, overall, the show kind of tells me the ugly disease called reality drama involving bitching hasn't yet hit the shores of our Madras. So, all's well till then:)

11 comments:

  1. Same here. I got hooked on to the show, after reading about it from the blogger who liked Mathangi :) I hunted around youtube videos to catch the previous shows and watch the show regularly now. After reading some of the comments / forum, I have my own doubts on whether these shows are stage-managed / pre-planned or not...

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  2. Long time no c and all:)
    I got hooked a month before that, so its quite amazing how it has caught the attention for couple of months.

    Regarding the forums, I feel quite a few comments in the forums are unwarranted and the way they were expressed is better left undiscussed:) At the end of the day, the judges know what playback singing is all about. ella? I am not denying there could be some staging to maintain the TRP.
    ... except for unni others do point out the relevant fundas.

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  3. I have never watched this show, and I doubt if I ever will. But I feel like I know the nut and bolts of the show through your post :-)

    Happy Holidays Sachita.

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  4. Suman,

    Happy holidays to you too.
    I do tend to watch a lot of stuff(read crap) and I fully intend to keep others abreast of the same."Yen petra thuyirm peruga evaigam."

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  5. sachita:

    fyi, in case you were unaware ... chinmayi blogs. (no, i do not watch indian tv - we don't get reception in our condo; and i would watch kannada not tamil anyways!!)

    - s.b.

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  6. Hi SB,
    I just thought you had one since you had given elaborate instructions on blogger to terri's mom.Your comments at terristurf are funny and would love to read your blog:)

    I do know chinmayee blogs and you don't need dish to watch Indian T.V, I am sure somebodu is uploading all the good programs in kanada on you tube as well:)

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  7. After reading this post, the following lines in it definitely hit home:

    "And then there are viewers and then there are their thoughts, reminding you of the word democracy. Does democracy means detoriation of quality, of intelligence, intellectualism? why does a good term like democracy result in such massive detoriation of quality."

    -kajan

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  8. I have compiled the entire collection of videos of Airtel Super Singer 2008. My little research has shown that none of the sites have complete collection from day 1 and it was really exacting to collect the first few episodes.

    All the videos (except for a couple of them which will be updated very soon) can be found in an organized manner at:

    http://airtel-supersinger.blogspot.com

    So, all those who have missed some episodes and couldn't watch them again - you got your chance again...

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  9. sachita:

    you are right - if i search hard enough, i will probably find the kannada programs on youtube.

    btw, i do have a blog, but i don't post too often on it. please feel free to visit! but because i cannot handle the pressure, i don't log in when i comment on other blogs.

    - s.b.

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  10. THIS SHOW NOT ONLY HELPS TO FIND A SUPER SINGER ACROSS THIS TAMIL NADU.
    BUT ALSO IT ENCOURAGES THE YOUTH TO IMPROVE THEIR CO.CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES.AND THEIR SPIRIT TO WIN.
    THIS PROGRAMME IS A GOOD SHOW.IT HELPS TO GAIN MORE KNOWLEDGE IN SINGING.BUT THERE MAY BE SOME PARTIALITY INSIDE WHICH IS NOT SHOWN OUTSIDE.
    CHILDREN CAN BE ENCOURAGED TO WATCH THIS SHOW.

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  11. sachita:

    wonder where my blog link went last time (and i noticed only now it was missing, based on your response to my other comment).

    - s.b.

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