And, as promised, I am back with my inside scoops from Day 1 of Musical-e-Azam, which featured Sajid-Wajid this morning, and what a start it was. But more on that later.
First, let me tell you about this wonderful guitarist we have. A quiet gentleman called Sarosh, who’s been on all our earlier M-e-As. He’s warm, quite and so humble, that it took a long conversation to get out of him Asha ji learnt guitaring from him! He extensively does live shows with Shaan and Shankar Mahadevan, and has done several with Asha ji too.
We also have a brilliant violinist, Chandan Singh, who has been playing the violin since 1983 and has had the good fortune to play with greats like R.D. Burman and Laxmikant-Pyarelal! And works with every music director in Bollywood, including our guests for today, Sajid-Wajid. Chandan informed us that Sajid-Wajid are the extremely rare music directors who have used live musicians to record songs!
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This had already set the mood for our opening with Sajid-Wajid, who had gone for a hi-fi wedding to Mauritius. They’d landed in Mumbai at 4am, barely caught an hour of sleep and made it to the Radio City Mumbai studios – only 35 minutes late.
Sajid-Wajid are one of a few artists who don’t garam paanee, coffee or tea to open their voices — they come on with a bannnnggg from syllable One! (that explains their Da-banngg connection?)
Their naach-gaaana style totally drove the Monday blues away! And what shocked me was Wajid’s voice, from Mast-mast to Hurh Hurh Dabangg to the title track of their first private album, Deewana (the music of Sonu Nigam also swears by) – he sings with such ease! Even Vishaal Dadlani said so well that Wajid hides his singing talent, like Shekhar. Also Vishal totally loves their unique personalities and loves Dabangg’s Mast Mast which, according to him, should win the Filmfare Award! Farah Khan too spoke about how their Dabangg album is the album of the year 2010.
Those were some of our happy moments. But off the mike, Sajid – whose childlike nature is pretty startling — was majorly mulling over his chopper being confiscated at the Mumbai Airport! (I remembered that Imran Khan went through something similar at Mumbai Airport) That’s when Sajid informed us that it could be a huge threat to Mumbai security, his remote control-driven helicopter, coz it runs on radio waves! Then he was very upset about how Bigg Boss is a bore, and said that if they send me to the house, main to Dolly Bindra se kapde dhulwaata!… Hehehe!
Also, Wajid shared with us off the mike that when u give a huge musical hit and a year passes by without any film director calling for work, one can run away from the business of music direction! But he was telling us how his patience has paid off, and if you’re equally calm with the bad as you are with the good, then Life always brings you what’s due to you. So, patience is the name of the game.
Well for the rest of the action, if you missed out the dhamaakedaar episode, log on to planetradiocity.com. And hey, remember to catch us tomorrow when we get the superstar singer who’s definitely the best mixture of power and melody – Sukhi ji. Array, Sukhwinder Singh! Jai Ho!
