'Asmi' manages to stir but not shake

NAGPUR: This one was about Maharashtrian pride. So the young and old had come in good numbers to laud the launch of an assal Marathi band named ‘Asmi’, at the Vasantrao Deshpande Hall, on Thursday evening. The USP of this four-member band, a product of the city, is that the songs are in Marathi.
The group aspires to provide a different genre to Marathi music.But how difficult it can be to translate ideas into reality was on show at their maiden performance.
The programme began 45 minutes late as the group took time to fine-tune instruments.
Then the introduction of the band was almost hilarious as the announcer, not visible on the stage, was shrieking aloud about the band and its launch in Nagpur. The near-packed house, quite stupefied by this, failed to react with an appropriate applause.
But once the lead singer Subodh Sathe took the mike, things began to fall in order. Beginning with an emotional number dedicated to mothers, ‘Aai’ with its touching lyrics helped in bonding the singer with his audience.
The next one inexplicably began in English. ‘I’m in love, it’s a feeling so pure’ created a bit of confusion in the minds of the audience. The next one, ‘Mana madhye kuthe taari’ failed to qualify as rock music with its soft lyrics and low-key music. But the big let down was ‘Chal Chal Bidu’, which Sathe himself agreed, could have been better sung had he got the rhythm right. But what brought the entire concept of this rock genre in Marathi to naught was ‘Shaluchya Dolya Madhe vegala naasha’ as Sathe interspersed the song with the ever popular ‘Bar Bar Dekho Hazaar Bar Dekho’ to cries of once more.
‘Asmi’s maiden performance lacked the punch of a rock band mainly because Marathi lyrics are set better to melody as they are soft and sweet. This makes it difficult to adapt them to fast beats. The fact that all the numbers had lots of singing and less of music with portions of guitar or drums beats proved this.
But the group’s biggest strength is its lead singer Sathe. The young singer appeals with his soft demeanour, his humility to admit his blunders and his versatile voice which is a runaway winner. Asmi needs to pack its act with more punch and hard music to get their audiences on a real musical high.