Saturday September 5, 2009

Time to hum along to a Deepavali song

THE winning song of the Celcom Deepa Raaga Global Deepavali songwriting finals on Sept 10 will be used as a theme song by Celcom for the upcoming Deepavali celebrations this year.

Celcom CEO Datuk Seri Shazali Ramly, who made the announcement, said the winning song and other 14 songs would be made available to the public before the festival.

He said the tunes would be available for phone downloads such as ring tones and call-me tones through the Celcom WAP portal called Channel C.

Speaking at a press conference recently, Shazali said that as a young boy in his hometown, he was never short of all the murukku, cookies and other Deepavali delicacies.

“As Malaysians, we have all grown up sharing each other’s cultural celebrations. But I was always puzzled by the fact that there was never any official local Deepavali song like for the other festivals,” he said.

Event organiser M. Marren said they had received 150 entries from India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia before the list was shortlisted to 30 entries and then reduced to 15 through a three-day semifinal in August.

“During the first round and semi- final stages, the entries were judged by renowned musicians and composers, Samuel J Dass, Prakash Kandasamy and Babu Loganathan.

“We will bring in another judge from Singapore and India for the finals,” he said.

The 15 finalists, including two from Sri Lanka and one from India, will compete in the grand finals at PJ Civic Centre Auditorium on Sept 10.

He said the Best Song winner will receive RM25,000, the first and second runner-up will get RM15,000 and RM12,500 respectively while the other 12 finalists will get RM5,000 each.

All the 30 semi-finalists will receive RM500 each.

Celcom Deepa Raaga is organised and promoted by entertainment club, Chakravarthy.