Digi's Blog

MTV Unplugged is a mixed bag of sorts. It always has been like that. While some episodes and artists stand out among the rest, some are plain mediocre, largely owing to the extra modifications made in the songs. Song selection is the most important aspect here – one should know which songs will sound good on a live platform. Secondly, one should know how much to modify and where to stop. I agree it is a platform where musicians have full freedom to experiment, but one has to be sure of the fact that the vocal and visual output of their experiments should go well with the audience. I usually don’t review episodes. I have reviewed an episode of “Unplugged” only once, and that was when A.R Rahman performed the first time. However, I simply couldn’t resist doing a detailed review of this outstanding episode. I am a devoted fan of Sachin and Jigar. For me, it is more of a trio rather than a duo, with Priya Saraiya forming the essential 3 rd member. As far as I re...

Rahman begins the episode with “YE JO DES HAI TERA”. That was a smart move to ensure the audience get goosebumps right from the moment the shehnais start. the way ranjit barot changes the song (Deconstructs and reconstructs it, in Rahman’s words) is awesome. The “mitti ki hai jo khushboo” chorus is out of this world. Rahman’s rendition is near perfect. He sings the song with aplomb. The chorus before the second antara again gives you goosebumps. And Rahman escalates the song with his PERFECT tamil rendition. Although I didn’t understand a word of it, it is obvious that Rahman is much more at ease singing tamil lyrics compared to hindi ones. Overall, this was 5 minutes and 14 seconds of pure hair – raising stuff. Special credit to the shehnai players – Omkar dhumal, Raju dhumal, Sunil dhumal, Sanjeev shankar and Ashwani shankar. “REHNA TU” starts off with an addictive piano loop, the one which was heard even in the behind the scenes video released prior to the episode....