The Predicate

I’ve been following two malayalam reality shows, “Idea Star Singer” on Asianet and “Super Star Global” on Amrita TV for the past couple of weeks.
Both these shows are American Idol kind of singer search programmes, where several singers compete for the top prize and contestants are eliminated one by one through SMS voting. They get very high ratings and are quite popular prime-time offerings.

Idea Star Singer has M.G.Sreekumar, Sharath and Usha Uthup as the permanent judges. The first two are technically very savvy and are hard to please. Usha Uthup is the desi version of Paula Abdul and has nothing much to say. The guest judges included a frail looking M.S.Viswanathan and an out of place Gangai Amaran.

Star Singer Global has Unni Menon and Jayachandran (the music director, not the singer) as the judges. Good looking Chitra Iyer was around for a few shows. I saw Vani Jayaram, S.Janaki, Unnikrishnan as guest judges as well.

What attracted me to these two shows was the talent level of the singers taking part. In particular, two contestants stand out. Najim Arshad in ISS and Roopa Revathi in SSG. These two bring down the house whenever they sing. Najim sang a Ghulam Ali ghazal and aced it. His rendition of “ulagin mudhal isai” was also very good.

Roopa may be the best singer in any such singer search competition these days. She handled several difficult songs: “kuhu kuhu bole koyaliya” , “yEzhu swarangaLukkuL” , “singaara vElanE” and “gangaik karai mannadi”. I think she has the best aspects of Sujatha and Chitra rolled into one.

I was able to follow the two competitions thanks to a few dedicated folks who upload videos to youtube almost immediately after the programmes are aired. One guy has uploaded more than 2000 videos! I think he wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth and starts uploading videos.

A few quick snippets:

1. When it was all but settled that Najim will win ISS, another contestant, Tushar, sang a flawless Shankarabharanam in the Classical round in the final. So who will win is now up in the air.

2. MGS/Sharath judging duo is probably the best among the judges in these types of reality shows.

3. Roopa’s competitor, Teena is also an excellent singer. Check her videos out as well.

4. ISS weeds out any singer who is not sound in his classical music. So, it was interesting for me to note that two of the top six contestants are muslims. We don’t see many muslims singing Carnatic here.

5. It looks like both the TV channels are milking the popularity of the shows to the hilt. ISS is apparently going on since June 2007! The money made out of SMS voting doesn’t hurt either.

6. I’ve not seen a single brash singer so far. The ones that remain all seem to be extremely humble.

To see ISS videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=amidalaneboo

To see SSG videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=kmsuren , http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=karthikaforu

Performances that should not be missed:

Kuhu Kuhu by Roopa

Gangaik karai mannanadi by Roopa

yEzhu swarangaLukkuL by Roopa (watch Vani Jayaram’s comments in a related video as well).

Medley with ThaayE yashOdha from Morning Raga by Roopa

Najim’s songs

Raavil Veena Naadham pOlE by Najim

ulagin mudhal isai by Najim (Don’t miss MSV’s comments)

Najim singing a Ghulam Ali Ghazal

Thushar’s Classical Round (Check out all three parts and the comments).