Indian Idol 2 - My Take on this travesty of the Pop Idol

I dont know if it could be called a travesty of the "pop idol" (not intended), but Indian Idol season 2 is one filled with gimmicks and all set to play on the sentiments of the emotional indian audience just for TRPs. If you wade through the gimmicks in search of some real talent you will find a few very good aspiring singers. To name the ones that really caught my attention - Amey Date, N. C. Karunya, Meenal Jain and Monali Thakur. I thought these four were really good and should have been in the last four. Well in the last week of this season only Karunya remains with another ever smirking person called Sandeep Acharya. Karunya's singing and voice has been a saving grace for the last three weeks at Indian idol. Well I cannot make a sweeping statement like that as Sandeep has gradually improved his rendition of songs and voice quality. I hate it when he smirks for reasons beyond my comprehension. The judges panel is a joke with only one name - Sonu Nigam - worth any mention as a singer. I cannot imagine anu malik as a singer or composer. He steals songs and claims them as his own is all I will say. I have begun to like Farah Khan for her straight shooting comments and honest overtures. There are billions of blogs and websites discussing several aspects such as regionalism, favouratism, eash person. Each page with someone pitching for his or her own idol.

I am a ardent music lover and play the mirdangam, a carnatic music instrument. I beleive Karunya has a carnatic trained voice. Amey had several shades of hindustani in his voice. I think Amey was a better performer than Karunya. The clarity with which Karunya sings high pitched songs is mind blowing but I would like to see him render a soft song. Amey has a very sweet sounding voice with a pleasing personality. I wish him well.

I hope these talent shows bring out the real talent beyond regionalistic differences. I feel sad that the show has to be only in Hindi. Being a tamil I know there are specific tamil talent shows like raga mallika and TVS saregama but I wish the whole indian country can warm up to a non regionalistic search for real talent. I think that way we can reach people who are immensely talented and the real cream of the billion or so people in our country will come to the fore.