‘Dabangg’,Munni,Sheila,top winners at GIMA

‘Pee Loon’ from ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ was named the best song,with its crooner Mohit Chauhan winning the best playback singer (male) award and writer Irshad Kamil taking home the best lyricist award.

Hosted by actors Ranveer Singh and Neha Dhupia,the awards gala last night,held for the second year,saw the best of the talents from film and non-film music being honoured.

M Balamuralikrishna was honoured for his outstanding contribution to classical music. “Indian music is global

music,artistes like us have proved it,” he said while accepting the honour.

Grammy award winning maestro Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt,who took home the best folk album award,said,”When I won the Grammy in 1994,I was thinking why don’t we have something like this in India? GIMA is our answer to that.”

Veteran music composer Pyarelal of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo was honoured for his outstanding contribution to film music,who shared the honour with his lyricists,singers,musicians and recordists. “Its all a team effort,” he said,adding,”Lataji has been a big contributor in our success.”

The NCR witnessed some tinsel town style glamour with stars including Shah Rukh Khan,Arbaaz Khan,actresses Jacqueline Fernandez,Aarti Chhabria. Musical stars like Sonu Nigam,composers Salim-Sulaiman,Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Shaan.

Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman was conferred the Global Indian Musician honour by GIMA. As the ‘Mozart of Madras’ was in New York to launch the band Superheavy,composer Ranjit Barot accepted the trophy on his behalf.

Ustad Rashid Khan took home two trophies,both for his album ‘Nirgun’ which bagged the best devotional album and the best semi-classical album awards.

Sandeep Shirodkar also bagged two awards – best background score for ‘Dabangg’ and best music arranger for the track ‘Pee Loon’.

Pt Rajan-Sajan Mishra took home the award for best Hindustani Classical Album – Vocal (Sadhana),while the Instrumental one went to Niladri Kumar’s ‘Aura’. Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s ‘Chandiran Oliyil’ was named the Best Carnatic classical album – vocal.

The evening opened with Shubha Mudgal,Papon and Kailash Kher performing with the band Midival Punditz,followed by Sunidhi Chauhan singing ‘Te Amo’ and ‘Sheila ki Jawani’.

The highlight of the evening was Pyarelal performing – with Sonu Nigam – a medley of some of the hit tracks of yesteryears he had composed with Laxmikant.

Shahrukh,who is the brand ambassador of the event’s venue Kingdom of Dreams,was at his entertaining best,dancing to his hit tracks ‘Chhaiya Chhaiya’ and ‘Chhammak Chhallo’ with host Ranveer.

Priyanka Chopra performed to a medley of songs by Kavita Krishnamurthy,Rekha Bhardwaj,Usha Uthup and Sunidhi Chauhan,with the singers themselves cheering her on from the audience.

Musical trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy also performed along with the Shillong Choir.