MUMBAI: Musician and RJ Mihir Joshi has gone digital for his fresh new show ‘The MJ Show’ on video sharing site, YouTube. The new show, uploaded Tuesday 20 August has the man going around town -homes, studios- to meet up with fellow musicians and artists from the music industry.
The first few episodes of The MJ Show (http://goo.gl/8MqeeS) have captured the life of well known artists like Ehsaan Noorani, Kavita Seth and Shamali Kholgade sharing their views on music and life, in general, with Joshi. Kholgade is an effervescent bundle of joy and Seth is calm and melodic. With Noorani, Joshi is on familiar ground as they discuss the Blues.
The MJ Show, interestingly, had its genesis in the digital space itself.“I had started a blog a few years ago and had begun ‘The MJ Show’ on it. The concept was that of a radio show; what I spoke on radio used to be written down and the songs I played were put up as YouTube videos.”
“I had done almost 150 episodes of show (www.musicmanmihir.blogspot.in). Even there,every now and then, I’d have guests on the show and interact with them. Obviously the interaction was static because it was in text form but it was a lot of fun and the show was quite well received online. I met up with Prashanto Das, founder & CEO of Ping Networks, and we felt that right now the timing was perfect to take a fun talk show with some of the best musicians in the country, to YouTube. I think the content we’re getting together is something that people would love to see. They’ll get a chance to know their favourite musicians in a different light… and their own independent original music,” Joshi explained to Radioandmusic.com.
Joshi has little trouble in getting the nod from his musician peers and to maintain the candid and fun nature, the show doesn’t really follow a script. Instead Joshi grills, teases, sings along and exchanges notes with a whole bunch of artists who seem to be more than happy to share their thoughts and stories with the host.
“I have been fortunate enough to have met and worked with some of the best musicians/singers/bands in the country. The selection process is quite simple honestly. I just talk to artists who I love to begin with and then once the show becomes a regular feature, we’ll start taking artists who’ve got something new coming out. The idea is that when someone’s releasing something new, they should think of The MJ Show as one of the first places that they want to showcase their music,” he explains.
“The show isn’t scripted. There’s a lot of spontaneity and everything you see is as it happens. Anything goes! We talk about international and Indian music and when you see the shows, you’ll see that I give the viewers a chance to check out a lot of the songs that we’re talking about, too. This is something new and to the best of my knowledge, at least in India, this show is the first of its kind,” he exclaims.
Doing a new show on the digital platform does not mean Joshi has abandoned radio- a medium that has given him his claim to fame. He believes that radio will evolve to survive in the new digital age as it had done so in the television era.
“Radio and television will evolve ifdon’t want to fade away. I already see so much connectivity happening between radio, TV and the internet. And this inter-connectivity is only going to keep increasing. I don’t think either of the mediums will die. At least not until internet becomes available at great speeds everywhere and for everyone. Once that happens though, all bets are off. People will want to watch what they want to watch, whenever they want to watch it. And that freedom is only available on the net.”
There would have been a radical change in hosting a show from a room and doing it in front of a camera but, “The chatting part is not really different. It comes very naturally to me. What’s different and exciting is that now, people won’t just hear the show, but they’ll get to see it too.”