Jai Ho!

So it is that time of the year when all desi people in the NY/NJ area come together to celebrate music and culture. Yes, spring/summer is full of concerts and visiting singers both classical and Bollywood (and all other woods.. tollywood, kollywood etc etc...). 

The year began with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan's concert at Columbia University early spring. It was a wonderful performance and I must say he is truly gifted. Unfortunately, I do not have the knowledge of  music but I could feel it in the air, the room and within me. The music truly touches your soul and immerses you completely. His 2 sons Aman and Aayan were present and performed well but none like their dad yet!

This year's main attraction was the Jai Ho Concert by AR Rahman who was coming live for the first time after his Grammy and Oscar Awards.The Jai Ho troop include singers like Hariharan, Blaze, Neeti Mohan, Shweta Pandit, Javed Ali and Benny Dayal. The first concert was in Long Island NY and we did our homework and bought the tickets 2 months in advance. 

No doubt AR Rahman was fantastic. He sang all of his fantabulous numbers. There were a couple of surprizes for the evening. The first one being "Lukka Chuppi Bahut Hui" from Rang De Basanti with Lata Mangeshkar. She obviously was not present for the show but there was a projected image of her singing the song and the male portions was sung by AR Rahman. The concept was cool and it was brilliantly done and performed by both the singers. The second surprize for me was when Rahman sat on the piano and music was just flowing. Slowly he moved into one of the famous Tamil number "Hello Mr Ethirkachi" from Iruvar. This was mind blowing cause it was one of the least expected songs and the singer (I believe Neethi Mohan) did a great job! As always there were a lot of desh bhakti numbers from Roja, Swadesh and Rang De Basanti and all these were met with frantic flag swayings and huge crowd cheering :)

Of course there are always complaints that it ended to fast, so many songs were missing.. etc etc. My only complaint was that Hariharan was under used. He sang like 2-3 songs and vanished. Also, the most famous number of the Rahman-Hariharan combo was Tu Hi Re and it was missing :(

I am told and I also believe that all his musicians were local and were not shipped from India. The musicians did an awesome job with the tabla, guitar, violin and the drums. All the dancers did a fantastic job specially to see them jumping to the tune of Rang De Basanti.. something so Punjabi something so indian. A special applause went to the musicians and dancers for being able to carry out the performance. They seem to have put in a lot of effort.

Both the concerts were organized in New York but ofcourse the publicity and the audience for both were different. I was lucky to have attended both and I must say I'm proud of being a part of the show, the culture and the wonderful heritage. 

Jai Ho!