Wah Ustaad Wah!

Jan 11, monday (around midnight): Dunno why, but I suddenly feel like going for a Zakir Hussain concert. I start checking the web for any links to a concert I could go to. The official website only talked about his tours in Oct(in the US of A); of which the last two concerts were canceled due to his mother's demise.

Jan 12, tuesday(around 530pm): I get a mail at my office which said there was a Zakir Hussain concert, in pune, on friday! What coincidence!

20 seconds and 900 amdocs club points later: I've registered for the concert, without any second thoughts.

Jan 15th, Friday: I left office at around 6, with Soumitra. He too, like me had joined amdocs last year. We hired an auto from Magarpatta city which cost us 90 bucks and 30 minutes to reach the venue: MES Abasaheb Garware College Ground. Hundreds of cars on both sides of the road outside the college, told us that the ground is gonna be crowded. We were lucky the concert hadnt yet started. They were just having a presentation about the Maharastra Education Society, which was conducting the concert; celebrating 150 years of its existence. Few minutes later the stage was handed over to Zakir Hussain and Sabir Khan. Sabir Khan had played sarangi in great musical hits like Jodha Akbar, Saawariya, and Chameli.

First Sabir Khan started off with his sarangi, and the Ustaad followed in later. They started off slow first, but within a few minutes their fingers started to move at such a fast pace that the crowd was totally mesmerized. You could hear so many "Ohhooo"s, "Wah"s and "Kya baat hai"s around. Zakir Hussain then started to create many situations using his tabla. He first showed with his tabla, shiva's 'dumroo' and his disciples blowing the conch shell (creating the sound of the conch shell using tabla was simply awesome and unbelievable). And then he took us into a train and its compartments. Few minutes later he produced the sound of rain, clouds and thunder, then a deer running in a forest. The crowd was clapping most of the time; if not they were stunned hearing the sounds. I never knew so many sounds could be created from that simple hollow percussion instrument. And Sabir Khan too is a great talent. He played the Sarangi really well. There were times when Zakir Hussain would go slow on his Tabla and Sabir Khan would start showcasing his endowment.

Zakir Hussain played the tabla so well and at times so fast that it would seem like two or more people were playing at the same time. You would even doubt a musician or a tape playing on the backstage.

It went on non-stop for more than an hour an a half. And during the time he forced out three words from almost everyone present there,
"Wah Ustaad!! Wah!!"

PS: This is my first post this year....so a very happy new year to all the readers!

KK concert on magarpatta city day

Every year on the 3rd of december, Magarpatta city celebrates 'Magarpatta City Day' and today marked the completion of a decade.[Magarpatta city is an IT park cum residential area, where my office too is located.] As part of the celebration, there was a live concert by playback singer KK.

The show was supposed to start at 7pm. I had initially decided not to go for the show, but Prashant, my group lead, had left an extra pass that he had with me. So at 10 to 7, I left for the concert with ratan. As we entered there were thousands of chairs in front. And our pass lead us to seats that were pretty far from the stage, so we had to depend on the huge screens next to the stage; but when you watch a concert for free, you don't have much of a say, do you? ;)

The show began in a few mins. He performed many hit songs like "Tu Aashiqui Hai" from Jhankaar Beats, "Pyaar ke Pal" from Pal, "Dus Bahaane", "Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai" from the movie Gangster, "Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar", "Alvida" from Life in a Metro, "Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai" from Woh Lamhe and "Yaaron" from Rockford and few more. He is a really good singer and a good performer too. I woudn't say it was better than the Shan or Shanker Mahadevan concerts we had at college; but it was definitely worth every penny i paid the time.

Here are a couple of videos I found on youtube...(the audio is not very clear here...but will never be if u shoot a live concert on an amateur cam :P)

"Alvida"-Life in a Metro.

"O Humdum Soniyo Re" - Saathiya

PS: During the break, Satish Magar, the brain behind the magarpatta city project, made a few announcements; mostly regarding few plans to be implemented here in the near future. The last one was what interested most people sitting there. The multiplex giants of Latin America, Cinepolis, had taken up a project to build a multiplex in magarpatta city... and it would sport 15 screens! And it is expected to be complete in around a year's time!

A R Rahman ROCKKKKEDDD!!!

What a show!! FANTABULOUS! Simply superbb!!!

Just back from an awesome concert by the musical maestro, A.R. Rahman. This concert 'Jai Ho', which is also the one after winning the oscars, marked the beginning of his world tour. The show was organized by an NGO 'Global Kerala Initiative', and the profit from the concert would be used for rehabilitation of HIV positive orphaned children. The show began at around 8pm and then I had 3 hours which i wont forget for a very long time!

We had originally booked tickets worth 1000Rs. But luckily Bharath's dad had got 5 complimentary tickets worth Rs10,000 each. So 5 of us - bharath, ramu, murali, anoop, and i - gave our tickets to some of our friends, who didnt have tickets to the show; and took our seats in the 'platinum circle', from where we had a much better and closer view of the stage.

This show would easily displace the recent concert by Shankar Mahadevan at Ragam as the best concert that I've been to. No concert by an Indian can be bigger than that of 'Mozart of Madras', A R Rahman; atleast for a decade. And I doubt if I could watch better concerts overseas too, coz this was just awesome!! The singers who performed included greats like Chitra, Hariharan and Sadhana Sargam. We also had performances by Blaaze, Rashid Ali, Benny Dayal, Javed Ali, Mohammed Aslam and many more artistes. The most striking thing was that even after so many performances and the fame, Rahman was so humble thoughout.

You cant find many better ways to end your college life! And as ramu suggested, we've got to laminate the tickets!

Quite tired now and really sleepy. So cya later.
Hf!

Links: some pics of the concert