Sahara One chose London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall for their very first Sangeet Awards, celebrating the best in Indian music. The venue seemed an ideal choice, although the event failed to attract a large audience, possibly due little hype (not many people even knew about the awards), high ticket prices, and a slightly non-happening list of performers. In fact a number of celebrity guests seemed slightly surprised at the Royal Albert Hall being half empty!
Anyway, regardless of this set-back, the show continued at full pace (albeit slightly late). The current sex symbol Yana Gupta sizzled in her performance, starting with the famous song ’All That Jazz’ from musical Chicago. She started confidently and successfully lured the audience…until she suffered from serious wig problems! The former model’s worst nightmare came true as her short wig became looser and looser…only her desperately subtle moves kept the thing roughly in place until the end. Oh dear! She also performed to her latest item number ‘Oh What A Babe’ (together with a change in costume and thankfully no wig!). Sameera Reddy tried to out-sizzle Yana with a song from Darna Mana Hai. She didn’t succeed, but a nice enough attempt. Sameera then pulled out choreographer Shiamak Davar from the audience, and together they performed to his track Mohabbat Karle Re. In attempt to liven the audience a little, the pair encouraged their dancers to venture into the audience area and get people dancing. They even approached fellow celebrities, such as Fardeen Khan (he wasn’t interested), director Gurinder Chadha (she seemed uncharacteristically shy and rejected) and finally Aishwarya Rai (who managed to remain polite whilst shooing them away). Luckily other guests, such as Farah Khan, Anu Malik, Shabana Azmi and David Dhawan were not close enough to be approached. Interesting, despite being a music awards ceremony, the first two performers weren’t musicians. This is something a number of celebrities noted whilst presenting awards. Adnan Sami was also billed as performer, but cancelled at the last minute, apparently due to ill health. Luckily the popular British act The Rishi Rich Project provided some genuine music entertainment, with Rishi, Jay Sean, Juggy D and Veronica doing a number of tracks. These guys make the British Asian community proud, and the audience were loving the performance, especially Gurinder Chadha, who didn’t hesitate to dance away in her seat this time! Juggy D was probably the best of the bunch and didn’t miss the opportunity to give Aishwarya Rai his compliments (she was sitting on the front row of the audience, very smooth!). In terms of performers, this left Hrithik Roshan… talk about saving the best until last! The actor was arguably the only major name performing and did a great job, starting with Main Aisa Kyun Hoon and moving onto a medley of other tracks. Its hardly surprising therefore that the audience gave him the warmest response! The night ended with a tribute to music director Anandji of Kalyanji-Anandji, who came on stage, joined by practically all the music stars from the event, who sung one of his songs to show their respect. This is probably the first time so many Indian music stars appeared together on stage.
Performances aside, The Sangeet Awards were primarily meant to celebrate music talent. So who won what? Javed Akhtar scored a hat-trick, winning Best Lyrics in the Pop Music category (for ‘O Sahiiba’), Best Lyrics for both critics choice (LoC) and public choice (Kal Ho Na Ho). A. R. Rahman won Best Music Director (for Yuva) and Best Music Arranger (critics choice for Meenakshi). Shankar Ehsaan Loy won Best Music Directors and Best Song for Kal Ho Na Ho. The surprise winner of the night was Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who won Best Film Song (Paap) and Best New Voice In Film, although he didn’t attend. Fellow Pakistanis Strings won Best Pop Group too.
Other award winners were Awadoot Gupte (Best New Voice in Pop Music), Aksar (Best Song), H Sridhar and S Shivkumar (Best sound recordist - critics award for the film Yuva), Ram Sampad (Best music Programmer - critics awards for the film Khakee), Sunidhi Chauhan (Best playback female singer in Chameli), Amir Jamal (Best male playback singer in Murder), Jatin Lalit (Most popular choice award for soundtrack in Hum Tum), Alka Yagnik (Best playback female singer in Tere Naam) and Udit Narayan (Best male playback singer in Koi Mil Gaya).