Trajectory of Mahadevan’s Music
Shikha Jhingan
THE MUSICAL MAVERICK: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF SHANKAR MAHADEVAN by By Ashis Ghatak By Ashis Ghatak, 2024, 392 pp., INR 695.00
July 2024, volume 48, No 7

The year was 1994, when an ad film promoting Cadbury chocolates created a storm on Indian television, showing a woman dancing unabashedly on a cricket field, celebrating the crucial winning stroke in a match. The singer’s voice in ‘khuch khas hai zindagi mein’ particularly struck me, as it stretched the words with its highs and lows, immersing us in a specially calibrated mise en scéne until we reached the crescendo to ‘kuch swad hai zindagi mein’. This was the voice of Shankar Mahadevan, which literally became an aural symbol of India’s experience with liberalization and globalization, resonating on commercial television. A few years later, Mahadevan could be seen in front of the camera, singing, ‘Suno gaur se duniya walo, buri nazar na humpe dalo…

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