Three-year-old Sheryl Ruban is not someone you would normally expect at a rock music concert. But, she was busy tapping her feet among a crowd of people many times her age at the finals of The Hindu NxG ‘Rockstar', a music competition for college and high school students, held here on Friday.
Her father, D. Ruban, said “I want her to be a rock star one day. I didn't get to learn any instruments, but I listen to rock every day. She listens to music with me and likes it a lot.”
At the finals in which five college teams battled it out for the ‘Rockstar' title, the city renowned for its Carnatic music showed its head-banging side.
Kaushik Viswanath, lead singer of Pakoda, the team from IIT-Madras, said “It is fun to be on stage. We got together only a few months ago.”
Humour on stage
Teams such as Pakoda brought their quirky college humour on stage with their guitarists having names such as Fungus, Gelatin and Polar. “There are obscure stories behind the names. We are given names in our first year by our seniors and it sticks,” Kaushik said.
Aarabhy Surendran, a third year engineering student of Amrutha College of Engineering, Coimbatore, one of the few female participants, said that most engineering students enter the music scene as it is a “great stress buster”.
“Poor bunch of music lovers”
“Most college bands participate in competitions only to be able to buy better equipment. We are a poor bunch of music lovers,” she added.
Rock band ‘Frank's Got the Funk' from SRM University, comprising Timothy Madhukar, Sudhin Prabhakar, Arun Mamgain, Yuvan Shankar Raja, won the competition.
Indus Creed, a well known rock band, signed off the evening with some of its popular numbers.
SRM University was the title sponsor, Green Trends - Hair and Style Salon and Casio the associate sponsors. VGP Universal Kingdom, Viveks, Institute of Design, PVR Cinemas, Mochi, Witco, Bubbles - Family Salon and Spa, Fitness One, Renaissance Dance works, Saptaswara, Holy Smoke Restaurant, Marry Brown, Wired Gaming Zone, Mahavir Optics, VBJ, Fruitshop on Greams Road and Rain Tree the prize sponsors.
NDTV Hindu was the television partner, Chennai Live the Radio Partner, Unwind Centre the Music Partner, Derby the Fashion Partner,
McDonald's the Food Partner and Ambassador Pallava the hospitality partner. iAds and Events managed the event.
