OMG! Yo Yo Honey Singh's 'Raw Star' reality show is actually great!

Of the million things us Facebook-reputation-conscious Indians never admit to, Yo Yo Honey Singh is perhaps liberal India’s darkest secret. According to social media convention, you are forever banned from favourite books/ poets/ painters/ feminist activist tags if anything about Honey Singh pops up in your status update (unless it’s you wishing him a black eye and a thousand years in Azkaban). So what do you do when you find out Singh is the man in front of and behind a part of a singing reality show called India’s Raw Star? If you’re inclined to make a withering comment about the absurdity of someone calling himself ‘Yo Yo’ and the inanity that characterises his music, think again. All that might be true of “YoYo”, but Singh’s new baby is actually good, despite Singh saying “yo yo” more times than Arnab Goswami has said “why” in his life. Yes, the songs seem to be pre-recorded and host Gauhar Khan says lines that would be cringe-inducing even at a high school fest, but those really are minor details. [caption id=“attachment_1686665” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Honey Singh in India’s Raw Star poster.[/caption] First, Singh is great fun to watch. If you have high tolerance levels for cockiness (like me), you’ll really probably like him. If you are a sucker for not-so-rich to riches stories, you’ll like him. If you have ever drummed in the air - because you can’t strike a single non-jarring beat on real drums - you will like him. And oh, if you love selfies, you will most definitely like him! In the first half of the show, Honey Singh does all Honey Singh-ish things: wears a sleeveless tee, takes a punk-faced selfie, drums in the air, pumps his fists in the air with no apparent reason, sings ‘ise kehte hai raw star, raw star’ repeatedly and roams around escorted by bouncers. Yet he is strangely endearing. It’s obvious that Singh looks as excited as the contestants and that’s a a welcome break from the usual singing show judges who seem ready to doze off at most times. He’s also got the good grace to admit when he gets things wrong and might be the only celebrity to give credit to a program’s creative team, rather than claiming all the praise and bouquets for himself. If you are a certified Honey Singh hater, then there’s something for you too because he does cheerfully make a fool of himself. For example, dressed neck to toe in maroon, Singh takes a selfie using what he calls the “Yo Yo Camera”. While talking to a contestant from America, every other word Singh says is “bro”. Singh also tries to sing a song by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and ends each line sounding like fizz going off a Pepsi bottle. And, wait for it, Honey Singh dances bhangra. So yes, there’s enough silliness for the haters, but you have to admit, Singh’s joie de vivre makes India’s Raw Star so much more fun to watch than the zillion other talent hunt shows on TV. The really impressive part of India’s Raw Star, however, is the group of contestants that Singh and the show’s creative team have put together. Don’t judge the show by the ‘cupcake’ song from the promos. These guys are good and some of them are very good. Take, for example, 19-year-old Darshan from Ahmedabad. If you closed your eyes and listen to him, he’s got the voice that you imagine should be singing one of the zillion Emraan Hashmi songs that have the strange gift of turning into earworms with one listen. Darshan opened India’s Raw Star with a fairly good rendition of a song called ‘Kabhi Jo Badal Barse’. Googling the original leads to  scarring results and proves that Darshan’s cover could easily be the best thing to have happened to the song. After Darshan’s performance, Singh explained he’d picked Darshan because the teenager has composed films for several Gujarati films and unlike Singh, was lucky enough to get a big break early in life. “I used to compose for Punjabi films,” said Singh. “It took me ages to get here, good that you got a chance so early in life,” he says. Now, come one, the man deserves an ‘aww’ already. There was genuine drama with Jeffrey, a 31-year-old from Newark, who came on stage with a man dressed like a black rapper; only to turn the tables on all of us by singing ‘Mast Mast Yeh Nain’ from Dabangg. He played the harmonium while his ‘rapper’ played the tabla (the latter is from Kerala and he isn’t a rapper). There’s something deeply satisfying about a white man singing Hindi lyrics without making the words sound like types of pasta. We suspect the recorded version was slightly auto-tuned since while exhorting the crowd, Jeffrey sounded off key at times, but thankfully you had to hear very little of that. Those who will not acknowledge Honey Singh because they’ve sworn an oath to uphold feminism, think again. Singh got 30-year-old Dipti Sharma from Ahmedabad to sing his song ‘Devil’ from Kick while tossing shirtless men around. Sure, that’s not precisely feminism in the purest sense, but Dipti does a good job with the song, if you ignore how she sounds like she’s yelling at an auto-wallah near the end. Plus, Singh is really appreciative of Dipti remixing his song, which is another reason to give him a gold star. There isn’t a single conventional, falsetto-struck female voice in India’s Raw Star, which is wonderful. Mansheel G, 24, for instance, has a raspy voice that’s almost androgynous. She sang the current Bollywood break-up favourite - ‘Main Tenu Samjhawan’ - and even managed the really high notes. Plus, the show didn’t edit her complaints about the sound system, which says good things about Mansheel’s knowledge of music and technology as well as the show’s honesty. Pardeep Singh Sran from Bathinda sang ‘Mundiya Tu Bachke’ and threw Singh into a happy reverie. Sran’s performance was also a reminder that there was at least one redeeming quality to that cinematic atrocity called Boom. There was a small road tripping adventure that Singh embarked upon to pluck Mohan R out of the Indian heartland. Singh promised there would be no “English tadka” added to Mohan and sure enough, the man belted out a Bhojpuri number that had everyone in the crowd doing thumkas, from the look of things. Suraj Biswas from Bangalore sang a song from Barfi, originally sung by Papon in the film. We were a little scared for the song when he started, but thank god, Biswas didn’t give us a song scare. It was all quite pleasant. The best thing about India’s Raw Star and its contestants is that even if these guys have sob stories, they are not subjecting you to listen to them. They’re on television to talk about their music and how much they enjoy it, and that’s all they’re sharing with you. You can go back to moping about your own boss, your depleting bank balance and so on without having to worry about theirs - something almost every show on Indian television otherwise asks you to do. And oh my holy god, Honey Singh, knows and can pronounce the word ‘genre’. How, pray, will you live with that knowledge and your pride intact? It’s almost as incredible as the fact that we’re really looking forward to seeing what happens next in the forthcoming episode of India’s Raw Star.  India’s Raw Star airs on Sunday, 7pm, on Star Plus.