First Indian Singing Reality show held in America

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America’s first Indian Singing Reality show “Air India Meri Aawaz Suno America” was held on May 20 at North Brunswick High School in North Brunswick, New Jersey.

The show was organized and produced by Tarang Soni of Jhoom Events in association with EBC Radio.

The Semi Finals of the event were held on May 18 at Royal Albert’s Palace in New Jersey where over 50 singers across various parts of the U.S. and Canada performed including Bollywood and Punjabi Singer Parmjit Hans, Parthasarthy Mukherjee and Prashant Soni.

Judges chose 10 finalists in the each of the categories; adults and children, and after nine hours, judges chose 13 adults and nine children to progress to the finals.

The Grand Finale started with a dance performance by Archana Nrityalaya followed by Garima Bhatia and her troop from Marygold Dance Studio.

Judges included Bollywood composer Lalit Pandit of the Jatin-Lalit musical duo, Punjabi singer Pramjit Hans, British Violinist Daisy Jopling and Parthasarthy Mukherjee.

All the contestants sang “Yaha Ke Hum Sikandar” on stage and Pandit sang some of his hit Bollywood songs as did Hans and Jopling with her violin.

Miss India USA Sree Saini, Juhi Jain and Avish Jain were the emcees of the show.

Nikilesh Krishna Kumar from Columbus, Indiana won in the adult category while Deveshi Halder from Seattle, Washington was the first runner up and Shankar Hedge of New Jersey came in third.

Ishaan Tangirala from New Jersey won the title in the children’s category while Sanskriti Akhoury from Toronto, Canada was the first runner up and Surmai Agrawal of New Jersey came in third.

Tanisha Gupta won the “People’s Choice Award” based on online voting.

Among state award winners were Rahul Sharma of Pennsylvania, Prakash Parmar of New Jersey, Deveshi Halder of Washington, Sudharchith Sonty of California, Nikilesh Krishnakumar of Indiana, Sanan Ahmed of New York, Vinay Saini of Ontario and Atul Verma of Illinois.

“It’s really a momentous occasion and Its proud to see that Indian American community has come on its own now., and what Tarang is doing is a wonderful job by giving them a platform to this vibrant community to showcase their talent. This is really a great achievement,” said Vandana Sharma, Air India North America Head.

“It was a wonderful and amazing night and a great show, nothing like this has ever happened. We are always there with Jhoom Events in promoting the talent from the community and will be there for next year and many more years to support Meri Aawaz Suno America,” said EBC Radio Chairperson Alka Agrawal.

Padma Vibhushan Pandit Jasraj congratulated Tarang Soni and entire team of Jhoom Events for organizing such an event and Pandit said that he was amazed to see the singing talent and it was beyond he had imagined before coming to the U.S.