Winning Voices

IMA presents its six hand-picked musical gems,including one from Chandigarh!

It was in September 2009 that the Indian Music Academy initiated the country’s first complete Indian music national talent hunt. Idea Jalsa’s aim was to discover deserving talents in the age group of 5 to 45 years across India purely on the basis of their musical expertise and provide them with a national platform as well as support them to become professional musicians. Not only this,the show included all forms of Indian music – Ghazal,Bhajan,Sufi,Folk,Qawwali,Hindustani and Carnatic; and did not involve public voting. It was purely on the basis of talent and jury selection. After an intensive three month nation-wide search across six centers: Chandigarh,Kolkata,Chennai,Bhopal,Mumbai,Nagpur with overwhelming responses and participation from over 2000 contestants,IMA discovered 18 Indian musical gems of gen next who participated in the national semi finals and the national mega finals held in December.

The results are out,and India’s six musical gems of Gen Next include Gurpreet Kaur from Chandigarh,Kakali Bhattacharya,S. Jananiy,S. Akash,Ramendra Singh Solanki,Prabhakar-Divakar Kashyap. All the six were felicitated by Sanjeev Aga,Managing Director,Idea Cellular. IMA will not only provide a one year free music scholarship to these national finalists,but will also groom them into professional musicians. Every six months the progress of the six national finalists will be reviewed on the basis of which their scholarship and training will be extended. In addition to this,IMA will also give them a platform to showcase their talent along with young rising stars,young maestros,popular stars and legends of Ghazal,Bhajan,Sufi,Folk,Qawwali,Hindustani and Carnatic music on Idea Jalsa – Music For The Soul,currently aired on DD National every Sunday. For more,log onto http://www.imaindia.in.