For those counting down to the launch of Coke Studio @ MTV, the channel has more in store for you on the 17th of June. At 8.30 pm tomorrow MTV shall kick off another show called MTV Roots, a 30 minute programme promoting Indie music from the subcontinent. Just to give you a general picture, the artistes being featured include Avial, Ankur Tewari, MIA, Mekal Hasan Band, Bombay Rockers and many others. And like Coke Studio this too shall be a weekly thing, with repeat shows on Saturday and Sunday at 12.30 pm. With Coke Studio and now Roots as well being launched tomorrow, one might as well christen June 17th as MTV Resurrection Day!

The 58th National Awards were announced some time back, and here is a quickie on the musical category.

Best Music Director, not very surprisingly, went to Vishal Bhardwaj for that classy score of Ishqiya taking his tally of Best Composer national awards to two. His wife Rekha Bhardwaj won her debut Best Female Playback Singer for Badi Dheere Jali from the same movie. Best Male Playback Singer was awarded to veteran playback singer Suresh Wadkar for the Marathi movie Mee Sindhutai Sapkal. Master lyricist Vairamuthu was presented the top honours in his category for his work in the Tamil movie Thenmerku Paruvakkaatru. The Best Background Score award for the third time too went to a Malayalam movie (1994 – Johnson – Sukritham, 2010 – Ilayaraja – Pazhassi Raja) as Issac Thomas Kottukapally bagged the award for his work in Adaminte Makan Abu, which also won the Best Picture and Best Actor honours. Issac, for the uninitiated, has been working in Malayalam film industry since 2002, giving background scores for some splendid movies including last year’s best movie Kutty Srank. You can see Issac’s Malayalam discography here.

Another music-related award came in the category of Best Art & Culture Film went to the bilingual film made on the cult band Indian Ocean, Leaving Home.

A very late find this, thanks to @nocturnalrand. Mumbai-based Ankur and the Ghalat Family a few days back released the video of their new song Bekhabar. For the uninitiated Ankur and the Ghalat Family is a four piece band headed by Ankur Tewari (who did music for movies like Raat Gayi Baat Gayi and lyrics for quite a few movies including the mega funny ones of Quick Gun Murugun, and has also made many cameos in movies, last of which was the musician whose song gets plagiarised by John Abraham in Saath Khoon Maaf) and comprised of Tough on Tobacco vocalist Sidd Coutto, Johan Pais and Gaurav Gupta. Coming back to the song, interesting Latino riffs and wonderful job on the vocals. A definite must watch. You can watch it below. (Source: NH7)

Bhekabar from viraj2singh on Vimeo.

Fusion artists Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale (or MPKK as they are called as an ensemble) have released the first track of their upcoming musical with Shekhar Kapur called Circus Of Life. The song, titled Today, is devoid of any electronic influence that the artists are primarily known for, instead consisting of a dulcet flute-piano-strings dominated arrangement that builds up to a brief orchestral surge in the middle. The song also has a short Hindi narrative at the start and finish (guessing it is Shekhar Kapur from the voice). A preview of what promises to be a wonderful musical. I only wish that many people listen to this. The last work that Kapur did for Swarovski called Passage, had some brilliant music by A R Rahman but I doubt many apart from the hardcore ARR fans heard that. Really hoping this one doesn’t face the same fate. You can listen to the MPKK track here. All you have to do is like the MPKK official page.

Folk fusion singer Sona Mohapatra, as an International Women’s Day special, has released on youtube two videos from her performance in Mehrangarh Fort Jodhpur. The songs, called Shaam Piya and Mharo Pranam, pays tribute to the mystical poet Mirabai, using the lyrics from one of her own poems. The first song, like all Mirabai’s poems, pertains to love, and composer Ram Sampath beautifully captures the essence of the song with a simple folksy tune ensconced in a soft bluesy arrangement. With such talent why this man never made it big in movie composition shall always remain a mystery to me! Sona has already proven folk to be among her core competencies (in case of Bollywood music followers who do not know Sona, she sang the folk portion of Bahara from IHLS) and delivers this one to perfection. The second song has a more classical touch to it (raag Kalyan I am guessing) both in tune and arrangement. Another absorbing track this one, but this time primarily owing to the vocals. Sona promised a treat for Women’s day, and she gives one. My playlist for the day nevertheless shall feature more of Shaam Piya than Mharo Pranam. Below are the two videos. Enjoy! And Happy Women’s Day to all ladies out there! Below are the two videos.

Happened to listen to this tribute song to Sachin Tendulkar titled Apna Tendulkar. Divine Raaga, a Bangalore-based fusion-rock outfit, are the people behind the song which they called the “official Sachin Tendulkar tribute song”. The band apparently gifted the DVD to Sachin day before yesterday. All the Sachin sentiments apart, I am interested to know how this became “official”. The song has got an amateurish touch all about it, whether it be the video or the mixing or the arrangement. The vocalist has done a decent job, and the music is generally feel-good, but apart from that there is nothing special about the track. For a band that is supposed to be fusion rock, the song surprisingly lacks any element of fusion; or I am missing their definition of fusion. In all, a pretty ordinary attempt from Divine Raaga, which will be helped to a great extent by the subject it deals with, and the World Cup season. I hope they have got some stuff up their sleeves to sustain the audience they gain from this. You can watch the song here.

Just hours after India snatched a tie from the jaws of victory at the World Cup match against England in Bangalore (and thereby wasting away for the umpteenth time another spectacular effort from the God aka Sachin Tendulkar), more disappointing news for Indian fans, this time from the music world, as A R Rahman missed both the Oscars he was nominated for at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, again with one-third English involvement. The Best Original Score award went to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Network, which had a few days back won the Golden Globes as well. In the Best Original Song ARR lost out to Randy Newman for his song We Belong Together from Toy Story 3. Ironic that ARR won the Oscars two years back for Slumdog Millionaire while he missed it for 127 Hours, by all means a worthier soundtrack for the Oscars than SM. But to be fair the competition was tougher this year, and Reznor & Ross’s was an outstanding effort. So, may be the deserving soundtrack won today. Nevertheless as a hardcore ARR fan I have the right to be disappointed, and shall find solace in the fact that Oscars could be wrong. And this year they did, big time. They did after all give best director and best film to The King’s Speech!

- A disgruntled ARR and SRT fan

Another late post. The Star Plus theme song has been doing the rounds on TV and radio for quite some time now. Nevertheless decided to post it for the sake of less fortunate people bereft of much mass media access (yours truly included) who might have still not heard of this song. Brainchild of Piyush Pandey and composed by the versatile Vishal Bhardwaj, Tu Hi Tu is an attempt to pay the tribute to a woman’s contribution to life. A sensible idea from the marketing perspective to woo the junta who form a major chunk of the channel’s target audience.

VB has got Master Saleem to deliver this track, and it is quite like the song they offered in 7 Khoon Maaf, classical-oriented (raga Subhapanthuvarali I thought) and dark, though a bit lean on the richness of arrangement. While a sinister raga is surprising choice for a song extolling womanhood, the song makes a wonderful listen – for Saleem’s trained rendition, for VB’s masterful orchestration, especially the violin and the percussion rising to a feverish crescendo towards the end.

You can watch the video below (a tad over-the-top and cliched, if I may say so). You can download the video of the song here and the mp3 audio here.

Quite surprised I missed this one. Folk rock band Agnee came out with the theme song for MTV Splitsvilla 4 a few days back, and have made it available for free download. While in Season 3 the band had gone for a dark, heavily rock-oriented semi-classical (in raag Sindhubhairavi) track, this time they have gone back to the tune they used for Season 2, with lyrics supplied by Khurram Nisar and Neeraj Sharma and have called it Aahatein. While the humming version in Season 2 itself was a beauty, the lyrics have accentuated the heart-tugging feel, Mohan’s raw vocals conveying the pain quite effectively. The band has also given out for download the Unplugged version of the song Mohan and Koco played at MTV Rock On, accompanied by Pritam and Rahul Ram. Which is even more awesome than the original, featuring some fantastic improvs by Koco, Mohan and Rahul. I can only repeat what I had told Mohan in our interview, Agnee is too good a band for a show like Splitsvilla. But yes, if that would mean their songs get more listeners, amen! You can download the songs here. Below are the videos of the unplugged version, and of Raanjhan Yaar Di, the Season 3 theme.

Today happens to be the 730th day of existence of Music Aloud. The second year has been really great for us, highlighted by the kicking off of two new categories. Klassical Korner, an attempt to cover various aspects of Indian classical music through Ajay Parasuraman, was well-received. Ajay shall be back soon with his next article. The second was an interview series, which got us in touch with a lot of immensely talented people, both within India and outside, some of the most memorable ones being Ehsaan Noorani, Amit Trivedi, Prem Joshua and Zeb & Haniya. We thank all our readers for your heartfelt support of our website, and hope that you will continue to do so in the coming days. This year too we have quite a few plans in store for the website, which we shall unroll as the year progresses. So just watch this space for updates. In the meantime, if there is something you would like to see on our site (related to music of course!), feel free to drop us a mail on response [at] musicaloud [dot] com.

Since it is a birthday, we leave you with three of our favorite birthday songs from Bollywood.. Cheerio!

Baar Baar Din Yeh Aaye (Farz – 1969)

Tum Jiyo Hazaaron Saal (Sujata – 1959)

Aati Rahengi Bahaarein (Kasme Vaade  – 1978)