Music binds souls, hearts and emotions and is probably the best method of relaxation. And this is exactly what Day 2 of ‘Tarannum’ (Indian Vocal Competition) at Crosswinds 2012 was all about. The day started off with Classical Music (Solo) category which saw participation from various colleges which included Gargi College and KMC amongst others. The judges of this event, and all the others for the day were Rishabh Prasanna from the renowned Benaras Gharana, Nadim Khan from the illustrious family of ‘khayal’ gayaki and Ananth Iyer, a well known Carnatic percussionist who also plays the mridangam.

This event was then followed up by the Light Music (Duet) category in which participants could also come up with light classical songs from films. Here, participants from SRCC and St. Stephens mesmerized the audience with popular compositions like Kailash Kher’s ‘Saiyyan’ and ‘Deewana Hua Badal’ by Asha Bhosle & Mohammed Rafi respectively. It was however Madhur Dhir and Digvijay Singh from KMC’s performance on ‘Arziyan’ from the movie Delhi-6 that was clearly appreciated the most by the listeners. On the other hand, Hansraj College presented a self composition for the same while participants from Miranda House performed a Bengali-Hindi composition.

 Nadim Khan, one of the judges for the day said, “It’s an amazing level of competition here. I’m really having a good time and in a way I’m myself getting motivated. The participants have presented some lovely pieces which just goes on to show how hard they have been training for this.” G.Sowmya from Kamla Nehru College won the first prize in Classical Solo, while Abhipsha from Miranda House and Risha from LSR took away the second and third prizes respectively.

In the Light Duet category, Ayesha and Abhipsha from Miranda House stood first while Madhur and Digvijay from KMC stood second. Risha and Abismrita took away the third prize.

The duet singing competition was followed by the Indian Choir competition. The music society of Sri Venkateswara College kicked off the event, following which the students of the music society of St. Stephens’ College presented an original composition. Musoc, the music society of KMC presented an original composition titled ’Adhana’ which received good response from the audiences. The event also saw participation by music societies of Lady Sri Ram College, Sri Aurobindo College, Hansraj College, Kamla Nehru College, SRCC, and Miranda House. There was a tie between Miranda House and Sri Venkateswara College for first position while Kamla Nehru College and LSR took away the second and third prizes respectively.

 The day 2 saw another interesting event called the Music quiz. The most interesting round of the quiz was the treasure hunt round in which the six clues were actually six people.

The Day 3 of Crosswinds saw the organization of the event ‘Acoustica’, the acoustic bands competition. Touted by the organizers as the first ever acoustic bands competition in campus, Acoustica is a little different from other acoustic bands competitions organized in the campus as cross-college bands are also allowed to compete. This year, the winner of Acoustica will get a chance to perform a gig in Blue Frog Delhi. This opportunity went to the band Soul’d Out which not only won the prize for the best band but got awarded in the Best Original composition category as well. The band Cobbled Street were the runners up at the competition.

The host society that is the Music Society of the St. Stephen’s College is a group of students who’re passionate about music and does not carry out any admissions through the ECA quota. Talking about the response and participation Crosswinds has got, Neha Abraham, the coordinator of the society said, “This is the biggest event of our society and we’ve got pretty good response. We wanted to end the year on a high note and Crosswinds 2012 has made that happen”.

Shweta Arora
Cheshtha Gupta