Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Cross over artiste Rik­ki Jai has come out in sup­port of Bol­ly­wood melodies be­ing used in the Chut­ney/So­ca com­pe­ti­tion.

Jai (Sam­raj Jaimun­gal) said while he is not con­tra­dict­ing the right of oth­er artistes to ques­tion the use of this mu­sic in the com­pe­ti­tion, this is the di­rec­tion in which it is evolv­ing and the in­dus­try is go­ing.

Say­ing that this blend of mu­sic reach­es a wider au­di­ences Jai, a nine-time win­ner of the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch ti­tle, said this will en­sure the Chut­ney/So­ca genre does not die.

Last Thurs­day, a hand­ful of Chut­ney artistes protest­ed in front of the of­fices of CSM pro­duc­er, George Singh, call­ing for a ban of Chut­ney songs with Bol­ly­wood melodies from the com­pe­ti­tion.

"I don't want to get too in­volved in this con­tro­ver­sy but these artistes need to recog­nise that Bol­ly­wood melodies are what the peo­ple want," he said.

"Most peo­ple now pre­fer to lis­ten to Bol­ly­wood mu­sic and stay away from Chut­ney but when you have a mix of the two, you ap­peal to a wider cross sec­tion of peo­ple."

Not­ing that CSM is a pri­vate­ly run show, Jai said Singh has the right to de­sign it to suit his busi­ness.

"At the end of the day, he has a busi­ness to run and show­cas­ing orig­i­nal Chut­ney songs on­ly is not go­ing to at­tract pa­trons. What if in any giv­en year we don't have any pop­u­lar tra­di­tion­al Chut­ney songs, how is the com­pe­ti­tion go­ing to run?"

"Now if George Singh wants to say in 2017 the Bol­ly­wood melodies are al­lowed and in 2018 on­ly orig­i­nal songs are go­ing to be per­mit­ted, the artistes will be able to pre­pare them­selves prop­er­ly."

Jai said one of the main ag­i­ta­tors for orig­i­nal­i­ty, Ken­neth Su­per­sad was al­so guilty of us­ing the melodies in songs he writes for oth­er artistes.

"Omar­dath's song 'Balkissoon' was writ­ten by Ken­neth, if he is to win the CSM with that song Ken­neth is go­ing to col­lect roy­al­ties from that song, so he shouldn't be so quick to put it down."

"Peo­ple should al­so note that most mod­ern day Bol­ly­wood songs use the melodies from oth­er songs in the years gone by. So­ca artiste De­stra Gar­cia al­so did it with her song 'Car­ni­val' us­ing the melody of a Cyn­di Lau­per song."

Balkissoon singer Omar­dath Ma­haraj agreed, say­ing the new wave of Chut­ney mu­sic has brought it a big­ger au­di­ence.

"These songs are played in every­thing, for Christ­mas, Car­ni­val...all of the time," he said.

"Look at Ravi B's song 'Bud­get'-that song is big with every au­di­ence be­cause peo­ple can re­late to it."

"I don't dis­agree with them but to say that peo­ple don't want the mix of mu­sic is true."