BIG IMA Awards 2010 to honour local talent and Indian music

Reliance Broadcast Network Limited (RBNL) has announced the launch of its national music awards property- The "BIG IMA Awards 2010', which will be in collaboration with the Indian Music Academy (IMA). Together the two organisations will create India's largest celebration of all genres of music, through an annual event - "BIG IMA Awards 2010'.

The core USP of this award is aimed at recognizing musical talent from across the country and from across genres of Indian music ranging from Hindustani, Carnatic Classical music to main stream Bollywood, Pop & Jazz music to traditional Indian music like Folk, Ghazal, Sufi, Qawali as well.

To find out more about the very Indian and enthusiastic initiative, Adgully spoke to Arjun Singgh Baran, Business Head, Intellectual Properties, BIG LIVE.

Talking about the initiative, Baran says, "As a company we believe that all the different kind of genres of music are important. This ideology is the base for BIG FM too in every city and across all the stations. We believe in being well connected with the music industry and our audiences at the same time. Hence we are also the one who believe in localized programming and the regional music. We believe that this initiative will enable us to further recognize various kinds of music genres across the country and honour the locally talented artists."

He further adds that the initial response to the initiative has been excellent. The procedure to be a part of the awards is very simple. One can nominate themselves by sending a CD of their commercially released album. The CDs can be dropped anywhere in the drop boxes situated in the 45 offices of BIG FM across the country. "In just a week we received over 100 entries from across the country," Baran adds.

The Awards follow the great success of BIG's regional awards. The regional awards were initiated across the country and included BIG Bangla Music Awards, BIG Kannada Music Awards, BIG Marathi Music Awards, and Ugadi Music Awards for the Bangla, Kannada, Marathi and Telgu industry respectively.

Talking about the success of the regional awards, Baran says, "When we were organising the BIG Punjabi Music Awards the place could accommodate around 2000 odd people but post-evaluation we realised that there were around 5000 audiences for the awards. Moreover we needed 8 artists to perform for the event but around 20 artists volunteered to perform, due to time constraints we had to refuse some of them. The response has been such across all our regional awards. Moreover our media partners also continued with their association with us more or less across all the regional awards."

He also further explains that the radio industry in totality is looking forward to recognise the talent across the Indian music industry and do their bit for the industry. "Radio City was our radio partner for the BIG Marathi Music Awards and it was not BIG FM. Therefore it is not about competition or ill-will but the industry believes in music and wants to see it flourish," Baran adds.

The BIG IMA Awards 2010 is in association with the IMA. The IMA has a lot of patrons as its members which includes leading names of the music industry like - Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Dr. Balamurli Krishna, Dr. Lalgudi Jayaraman, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Javed Akhtar, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pyarelal, Louis Banks, Jagjit Singh and others. The IMA is founded by Pandit Jasraj.

To promote and create the initial buzz around the awards, all the BIG FM stations across the country will announce the "Musical December". The initiative will have a month long activity dedicated to the BIG IMA Awards 2010. "We will have various talents representing different genres of music coming and talking on-air which will be known as the Speaker Circuit. The voting channels will also get activated in the month of December for our Popular Choice Award. Besides we also plan to have four concerts in Kanpur, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chandigarh," Baran adds.

The concerts will have some of the nominees performing and will showcase the local flavours of the cities where the concerts will happen. The initiative also has bagged upon TV partners like UTV Bloomberg, Star News and BIG Entertainment's OOH unit BIG Street has already planned to have hoardings across two Delhi Metro Lines and promotional hoardings on bus shelters.

To engage the audiences better our digital unit BIG Digital will indulge in promotional activities across social media and YouTube. We are also going to come out with an official website for the BIG IMA Awards 2010," Baran says.

Music in India, like our country has diverse forms, each unique and reflecting the de-rooted role of music in our cultural heritage. All these forms of music continue to co-exist and thrive, with each having its own set of brilliant performers and artists..

Supporting the "BIG IMA Awards 2010' are patrons from the music academy that include Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Dr. Balamurli Krishna, Dr. Lalgudi Jayaraman, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Javed Akhtar, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pyarelal, Louis Banks, Jagjit Singh and others. The IMA is founded by Pandit Jasraj. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]

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