A. R. Rehman Wake Up concert - A complete Disappointment!
newme...@yahoo.com
I attended the Wake Up! A.R. Rehman concert at the Trent Arean at
Dayton OH. This was one of the most disappointing concerts that I have
witnessed in a long time.
The concert was promoted by posters at Indian Grocery stores with a
huge picture of A. R. Rehman and titled "A. R. Rehman with 150 All
Stars with Sekar, Kailash Kher and Vasundhara Das"
(http://www.viaindia.com/apps/calendar/details.aspx?ID=1072&MID=10&CAT...)
. Articles about the show claimed that the concert would also have
World Music. Tickets ranged from $50 to $205.
The arena was house-ful with people eager to see songs from A. R.
Rehman, Kailash Kher and Vasundara Das. Instead, what the audience got
were Hindi (and non-Hindi) songs rendered by 150 Miami University
students (mostly non-Indian) who had memorized Hindi and Tamil songs.
While it is commendable that they took the effort to sing Hindi and
Tamil songs,
the show promos were completely misleading.
A. R. Rehman hardly sang any numbers himself. He sang 3-4 songs with
little effort to make them sound good. He seemed completely
uninterested in what was going on. Kailash Kher did not make any
appearance in the show. The organizers did not even have the courtesy
to inform the audience why he was not present. Vasundhara Das sang 3
complete songs and she too seemed completely unprepared for any of
them. She brought in a
bottle of water with her in one. (I heard someone say that she would
have pretended to need a sip if she were to forget one of her lines).
The non-Indian singers sang 2-3 songs with good effort. But many of the
songs were completely off-tune. Further, the sound system was horrible
and one could not hear the vocals in many of the songs except for some
loud music. Moreover, I had seen a show a few years back and it
was almost the same show minus Rang De Basanti and maybe one or two
other songs. There was no mention of A. R. Rehman then and the ticket
prices were a small
fraction of prices of this show. What was promoted as an A. R. Rehman
show
turned out to be a rehash of old stuff. I think, basically A. R
Rehman's name was used to get people to buy tickets ranging from $50
to $205. Imagine the plight of people who had come from far off places,
spent a lot of money on tickets (many seats were bleachers) and got to
see 150 non-Indian singers sing Hindi and Tamil songs and claim that to
be WORLD MUSIC! I think the organizers don't understand the term
World Music.
What a joke and what a rip-off!
-A very disappointed audience member.
(on Behalf of many disappointed audience members).
newme...@yahoo.com
efforts of the 150 artists who have put into tremendous efforts in
bringing Hindi and non-Hindi songs to audiences. I can only try to
imagine the effort, confidence (and courage) required to present a song
to an audience of 3000 people especially when one does not fully
understand the language and meaning of the song. A few years back when
I saw this (kind of) concert by these very students and professionals I
knew beforehand what the show was about. I thoroughly enjoyed the show
then as it was promoted appropriately, acoustics were appropriate for
the show and the ticket prices were reasonable.
However, this does not apply for this particular show and hence I had
to express my (and some) opinion.
Abhay Jain
<newme...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1145814386....@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Hello All,
>
> I attended the Wake Up! A.R. Rehman concert at the Trent Arean at
> Dayton OH. This was one of the most disappointing concerts that I have
> witnessed in a long time.
>
>
> The concert was promoted by posters at Indian Grocery stores with a
> huge picture of A. R. Rehman and titled "A. R. Rehman with 150 All
> Stars with Sekar, Kailash Kher and Vasundhara Das"
> (http://www.viaindia.com/apps/calendar/details.aspx?ID=1072&MID=10&CAT...)
>
> . Articles about the show claimed that the concert would also have
> World Music. Tickets ranged from $50 to $205.
>
>
Hmmm !! People have $205 to throw around
for a widget maker.
On a similar note, recently people paid $450 per person
to have dinner with Shahrukh Khan in NJ. He would
come to each table for just a few minutes.
Well, suckers are born everywhere.
AJ