Lakshmi Iyer
India Post News Service
Festival of Globe (FOG) Idol 2022 kicked off to a great start on Sunday July 10 in Saraswathi Hall at Fremont Hindu Temple. Sakshi TV is the exclusive media partner for the event.
This time, the judging panel comprised singers and musical experts who have significant experience performing on stage: Alka Bhatnagar, a well-known and respected figure in classical music and Bollywood, who runs a music school, “Sur Bahar”; DhawalMajmudar, Director FOG Music and Sanjay Saxena, who have several years of musical learning and performing experience.
Sanjay’s wife, Niharika Srivastav, is part of the organizing committee headed by Ritu Maheshwari, along with this correspondent, Lakshmi Iyer.
Dr. Romesh Japra, the Founder and Convener of FOG, formally inaugurated the event along with other senior FOG members including Kamal Nair, by symbolically cutting a ribbon. Dr. Japra welcomed everyone and gave a brief overview of the history of the grand ‘mela’ and Parade.
“The fair, which we started in 1993, this is our 30th year. For the past 30 years, many of you have been there, many others have come and gone, we’ve had from Asha Parekh to Dharmender to Sushmita Sen to Amitabh Bachchanji, Shatrughan Sinha, Vyjayanthimala, Manoj Bajpai, so many of these people have come, encouraged us, inspired us, got the messages from back home, our matrubhoomiand what we try to do here is our values, which we are so, so, proud of, the proud Indians, we are proud of our heritage, our philosophy, our traditions, and this is what we try to imbibe, the born here who never had the opportunity to go back home like some of us did, also the mainstream Americans, we want to share some of our ideologies and some of our philosophies with them, too, so they can benefit from the same.”
He continued, touching upon the cultural and economic contributions of such events to the community. “Big festivals… not only empower them socially, culturally, even economically, many of them get together, many of them start their businesses through the networks itself, I know that even the TiE* was born out of this so now they are doing big things.
We have the professional doctors’ association, the automotive associations, many other organizations have come out of this and have been able to establish themselves economically also.” (*TiE, short for The Indus Entrepreneurs, is the Bay Area’s premium technology and entrepreneur organizationwith international chapters – https://www.tie.org.)
He added that they were now trying to empower the community politically as well.
The event had an auspicious beginning with a Ganesh bhajan by DhawalMajmudar.
The competition got off to a great start with a spirited performance of “Nani terimorni ko…” by Smit Shimpi in the 5-9 years age group. When asked to sing a few lines of a second song, he belted out the Imagine Dragons hit, “Believer” to cheers and foot tapping from the audience.
The 10-17 years age group was the next.
Akanksha Pandagave an impressive performance of a classical song on Goddess Durga and a Hindi song, “Raina bitaayi…”.
Alekhya Tadikonda had the audience tapping to her rendition of a peppy Telugu number. On the judges’ request, she followed with a few lines of Hindi song, “Kaun kehtaahaibhagwanaatenahin…”
SvaraShimpi, the first contestant’s older sister, had everyone enthralled with “Dilhai Chhota sa…” from the film, “Roja”, one of Indian cinema’s most beloved works of the 90s.
Sangeet Barkataki, who had won the second prize in his age group in the past, simply blew everyone away with his rendition of a classical song. When requested for a few lines of a second song, Sangeet, whose parents are Assamese, chose to go with a traditional Bihu song, drawing huge applause from the audience.
The last contestant in the age group gave a fitting finale with her confident and soulful rendition of the Olivia Rodrigo hit, “Driver’s License” to a rousing applause and cheers from the audience.
The adults (18+ years) category had fierce competition. Amrita Panda skillfully blended two famous Hindi film songs on Lord Krishna – the old en golden “Na bole na bole Radha na bole re…” with “Madhubanmein jo Kanhaiyya …” from the 2001 blockbuster, “Lagaan”.
Dhruv Sharma wowed everyone with both his vocal and instrumental skills as he strummed the guitar to the song, “Yeh jo halkahalkasuroorhai…”
Aman Bhatti sang the iconic melody, “Baahonmeinchale aa…” while Tanisha Bhatti sang a Punjabi number.
Shayanti Ghoshal, FOG Idol 2019 runner-up, performed the heartwrenching“Main jahaanrahoon…”from the film, “NamasteyLondon” in her mesmerizing voice that effortlessly scaled the high notes.
Divyendu Sen picked the classic, “Woh sham kuchhajeebthi…” for his audition and did justice to it.
Jolly Mishra performed the modern classic, “Mohmohkedhaage…” beautifully, no small feat for a difficult number as it has a strong Hindustani classical base with sharp tune changes.
The last person to audition was Haroon Nasrat, who had won a trophy for International Singer at FOG Idol 2019. He hails from Afghanistan and has a passion for music, especially Hindi film songs. He rendered “Tujhsenaraaznahinzindagi…” to loud applause, and closed out the first round of auditions in a fitting manner.
The second audition was to be held Sunday, July 17th, at the same venue.
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