02 June, 2007

The Indian Idol piano rounds begin

As my Rave Out would have made apparent, I’m a fan of Indian Idol, especially from the piano round stage onwards. Today was the first piano round, involving 14 girls, and I was somewhat disappointed. Three reasons for this:

1] Though they called it a piano round, it no longer had just a piano as accompaniment, but a full orchestra. This is disappointing. Singing with just a piano as accompaniment is more challenging for the singers, and the combination of piano and human voice is one that I rather like.

2] Anu Malik was absent due to illness, and the other judges, all brought in for this season, did not balance criticism and praise. A few of the performances were quite underwhelming, but Javed Akhtar, Udit Narayan and Alisha China were uniform in their praise. It made their presence redundant. Halfway through the show, they began to make an effort to point out mistakes, as if they had been told as much by the producers.

Malik, who now calls himself Annu Malek, plays the Simon Cowell role, but even his fellow judges of the last two seasons, Sonu Nigam and Farah Khan, didn’t shy away from criticism. They paid attention to nuance, pointed out minor technical errors, set the bar quite high, and that made their praise all the more valuable. It wasn’t cheap.

Perhaps these new judges were swayed by the youngness of the girls who sang today. And that brings me to my next point:

3] Why were so many of the girls in the 16-19 age-group? A couple of them were excellent, but most of them had really good voices that seemed just a little immature, even kiddish. You could imagine them being terrific singers a couple of years down the line. They obviously had the talent, which is why they were picked, but I’d imagine that there would be just as talented people with more mature voices around. Did they not audition for the show? If so, why? It’s strange, but this group of girls seems considerably younger than the last two seasons.

Anyway, first impressions: I think Puja, one of the kids, was outstanding, good range, her voice had ‘throw’, as they call it, and ’thehraav‘, as Nigam would say, which many of the other kids lacked. Aisha was very good, she has a distinctive voice and good control. Shifa was impressive, though her voice seemed a tad immature. (She’s 16, I think. Sixteen!) Charu was also good, though at some point some judge will tell her to ”khul ke gaa.” Ankita’s got a great voice and performs well, but her tomboy look will go against her. Guys won’t vote for a chick who doesn’t look like a chick, which is a pity.

And I do wish they hadn’t changed the format of the piano round. Last time, it was four groups of seven or eight each, and then another group of rejects that the judges gave another chance. This year, they start with two groups of 14, eliminating two at a time till they have the number they need for the gala rounds. (A total of 12?) Fourteen performances in one show is, well, a bit much to take in. But I’m not coomplaining!