Who won The Stage? A Banaras ka chhora!

      I was witless when I heard him singing that song as his final performance at The Stage, and I think, it was the song that added a winning feather to his cap and helped him in clinching away the India’s First English Singing Talent Hunt trophy. The Colour infinity had started this hunt with 20 awesome singers from all over India and on Sunday it came to an end with last episode having three finalists, Kamakshi Rai from Pune,  Soundarya Jayachandran from Bangalore and Yatharth Ratnum from Varanasi. 

Hosted by Shibani Dandekar, “The Stage” featured musicians Vishal Dadlani, Monica Dogra, Ehsaan Noorani and Devraj Sanyal, managing director and CEO at Universal Music Group, South Asia, as the jury panel.

Yatharth’s selection of song certainly made it a bit easy for him, otherwise it was a very difficult take for judges and Soundarya seemed taking it away. The song, coincidentally one of my favourite songs, was ‘Say something I am giving up on you’, a song by A Great Big World and initially sung by Ian Axel. But it became worldwide hit after Christina Aguilera collaborated on it.

 

Yatharth Ratnum

A slow-tempo indie pop piano ballad, which talks about a breakup, moved every one. Long before Yatharth finished his song, the judges seemed sure he was going to win it. He was the youngest in three finalists and only boy that too from a small town, which has never been on the Indian or international map for western music, leave aside singing in English.

Soundarya Jayachandran

Yatharth’s has been an unbelievable journey.  But he had been very confident since beginning, Vishal sometimes called him daring and tharki because every time he came on the stage he sprung a surprise for them.

 

Kamakshi Rai

It has not been first platform for Yatharth. He is a trained musician, basically in classical music and has participated in Sa Re Ga Ma Li’l Champs in 2009, where he had to content with being a runner up. In an interview to The Asian Age, about his experience in previous reality show, Yatharth says, ‘it got me habituated to the pressure. Reality shows make you strong and nothing can shake you after that.”

It has certainly given hope to English listeners and singers as the number of English speaking people is on the rise in India. What is surprising that we have so many talented and brilliant English singers and at the same time it makes us uncomfortable that their talents have remained untapped.  Hope it is a beginning of a long journey.