Why Toshi is better than other singers
If you are a commentator on my site, name ‘Zaki’ should sound very familiar. Zaki is a music lover, based in Dubai, and he is a BIG fan of Toshi and regular commentator on the site. Shweta asked him why he thinks Toshi is a good singer and here’s his response.
I have a logical and musical explanation for why he is better than any bollywood singer of anytime.
Now I am only restricting myself to singing ability, not the “abhinay ang” or ability to suit any actor. Like for instance.. Shaan’s voice suits Saif Khan to the T. Udit Narayan’s voice suited Aamir Khan to the T. Kishore Kumar’s voice suited Amitabh Bacchan more than his own voice!
I am not talking of that… I am talking pure singing ability.
Let us first take the understanding of taalkaari (beats in Anglo speak). In many of his songs Toshi has deliberatly missed a beat (or a complete cycle) and adjusted to come back and hit the “sum” (the first beat in the cycle.
Alka Yagnick, Adesh Srivastav acknowldge this when it happens, Parveen Sultana applauded it when he did it in the wild card round. So did Jagjit Singh when Toshi sang Teri Deewani.
However none of the judges took the trouble of explaining this to the audiences. Here I am disappointd with Abhijeet.
There are many singers who struggle to sing with the beat in sync. Toshi has such mastery over beats that he misses a beat deliberately! He literally plays with the TAAL. It takes years and years of HARDCORE TRAINING to do this.
I have not heard any Bollywood singer do this. Even Ustads and Pandits struggle with this. This is an ultimate tribute to understanding of Taal!
And Toshi is a past master at it.Coming to taans and alaaps and harkatein.
Listen to Silli Silli aundhi yeh hawa. And the harkat Toshi has taken with Hawaaa… aaa… aaa. This takes tremendous control and again years and years of training. He has done this better than Hans Raj Hans the original singer. Dont take my word for it.. listen to both versions.. they are on this site!
Now listen to Allahu.. Toshi’s version on this site.. The alaap.. the first musical notes he utters (aaaaaa….aaaa)… ask for a Hindustani music teacher’s opinion on this.. can u get such a clean, clear, precise alaap. Yes, but not from any Bollywood singer!
Sargam.. again the only one in my humble opinion of the “filmi singers” who could do this was Manna Dey. Dont get me wrong please, I have almost all of Manna Deys recordings including his private mehfil cassettes, I am a huge fan of Manna Dey. But in Sargam’s he does not even come close to Toshi.
Pain and passion are relative and subjective, so I wont go there.
But none of the “regular bollywood” singers can push their voice to the limit as Toshi does!
For these reasons Toshi is beter than the run of the mill bollywood singers.
And Abhijeet said it different words…
Toshi I cant judge you.. I am not equipped to judge you.. you are made for a far far bigger platform than SVOI.Abhijeet, Jagjit Singh, Khayyam, Parveen Sultana, Kalyanji Bhai, Ravindra Jain.. cant be all wrong can they?
Sorry for the long post.. but u asked for it!
Cheers matey,
Zaki
Now I am no music expert myself, but Zaki’s points make sense. If you are a music expert and disagree with Zaki’s point of view, I welcome you to post your own thoughts.
One thing I liked about Toshi’s Teri Deewani performance was his improvisation to the song. Go see that performance, at around 3.15 seconds, Toshi says ‘Ho Ri ha Ri’ (is it what you call a ‘harkat’, Zaki?) and Alka’s expression tells us that she liked that harkat (and I loved it!). Also, the alaap(?) at the end of the ‘Teri Deewani’ song was also well placed and well sung. I don’t think you can improvise a song if you don’t understand the intricate details of music. I have listened to ‘Teri Deewani’ by Toshi thousand of times and every time it sounds better and better. Only if I can get in touch with Kailash Kher, and ask him what he thought of Toshi’s rendition of the song!
Your Host - J.
Results for 2nd November episode of Star Voice Of India
Hi Fellas,
I received couple of emails from folks requesting I should not declare who is voted out in advance. And if I want to do it, do it in a way that they can avoid reading it. They want to see show live and find out the results. I say, ‘No Problem!’
We have confirmed report who is out on 2nd November episode and to find out who is the unlucky contestant, you will have to click on this article link and check my first comment.
Peace!
Your Host - J.
Videos of 27th October have been uploaded.
All videos of 27th October have been uploaded. Once again, excuse me as videos are not uploaded on time, I have a real struggle to spend time between
1. to catch my favorite show,
2. update my site for wonderful readers like you
3. process and upload the videos and
4. write commentary about the performances.
Today, number 3 task took a long time and there is no time for my commentary. Anyway, do visit the site and check out the comments section, there are some very passionate folks (A big shout out to Zaki, Rossi, AS, Anand, Shastri and many more..) who are discussing all the performances. To give you an example, check out AS’ comment about Toshi’s learnability [If you have worked with Infosys before, the word will sound familiar. ;)] .
Hi J,
I think its been a established fact now that Toshi has been outstanding in the show. But what is not talked about is that he is a good learner too..in life! This is what I mean by this:
He never seemed to have believed in ‘emotional card’ earlier. But when he realised that it works, to the extent that it gives you that slight but a much required push, it was already quite late…He was eleminated!!!
And he saw not only his other peers playing this card repeatedly, but also the judges…So he tried that once during the wild card round!
The VOI judges (except Abhijit… Congrats Abhijit… I think you are the only one and a true neutral judge of the show), more than Harshit are trying hard to strike the emotional chords among the audience by regularly referencing his dadi. Somehow I thing these judges sounded very phony when Inrfan’s elimination was announced and Harshit was saved! We are all sitting very far from the reality…Who know what happens behind the scenes. But Toshi has seen all this at a much closer distance! Hint…hint!
What I mean to say it that, he might have realized that being an accomplished singer is not good enough (unfortunately)…giving excellent performances may also not be suffice. Who knows there could be some tempering in the public votes! If these judges are so partial to Harshit and Abhas in front of the whole world, you can imagine how they would be behaving offline!)
Also, these judges (except Abhijit) don’t really support Toshi…but they pretend to be doing so becoz of
A. his excellent performances
B. Huge public support.In the light of all these facts, if Toshi gives a reference of his ailing bua, I think it is *required* to combat similar references by other contestants. Its being pragmatic. And he does not overplay emotional card. After all, everything is fair in love and war!
So why don’t you head over to the comments section?
Enjoy and yes do keep visiting!
Your Host - J.