Mumbai: Radio Mirchi hosted an award show – the Tata Indicom Mirchi Music Awards on 28 March, 2009 to honour excellence in Hindi film music and thereby felicitate deserving artists in our music industry. The event took place at Taj Lands End with personalities from the film and music fraternity attending.

While Jodhaa Akbar bagged seven awards including Best Song of the Year for ‘Jashn-e-Baharaa,’ Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na won four awards including Best Album of the Year. With 17 categories, trophies were awarded across popular and technical genre for the year 2008.

The categories were as follows :

Best Song of the year Jashn –e-Baharaa
Music Director – A R Rahman Jodha Akbar

Best Album of the year, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Music Director – A R Rahman-

Best Male Vocalist of the year, Javed Ali
Song – Jashn-e-Baharaa Jodha Akbar

Best Female Vocalist of the year, Bella Shende
Song – Manmohana Jodha Akbar

Best Music Director of the year, A R Rahman Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Lyricist of the year, Javed Akhtar
Song – Jashn-e-Baharaa Jodha Akbar

Upcoming Male Vocalist of the year, Benny Dayal
Song – Kaise Mujhe Ghajini

Upcoming Female Vocalist of the year, Dominique Cerejo
Song – Yeh tumhari meri baatein Rock On!

Upcoming Music Director of the year, Dhruv Ghanekar
Song – Bandagi Dhrona

Upcoming Lyricist of the year, Ashok Mishra
Song – Aadmi Aazad HaiWelcome to Sajjanpur

Technical Award for Song Mixing, Late H Shridhar
Song – Khwaja mere Khwaja Jodha Akbar

Technical Award for Programming and Arranging, T. R Krishna Chetan
Song – Jashn-E-Bahara Jodha Akbar

Technical Award for Film Background Score, A R Rahman Jodha Akbar

Tata Indicom Mirchi Listeners Choice Song of the Year, Kabhi Kabhi AditiJaane Tu Ya Jaane Na

Tata Indicom Mirchi Listeners Choice Album of the Year, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Music Director – A R Rahman-

Apart from the above 15 categories, the Jury’s salute for memorable contribution to Music was bestowed upon Saxophonist & music arranger Manohari Singh who worked extensively with music director R D Burman. The Tata Indicom Mirchi Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkar for her outstanding contribution to the music industry over the years.

The show was hosted by singer Shaan and actress Tulip Joshi. There were performances by actress Genelia D’souza, Bipasha Basu and Shahid Kapoor while singers Kunal Ganjawala, Neeraj Shridhar, Tulsi Kumar and Shreya Ghoshal rendered some of the best songs of the year.

The show stopper of the evening was actor Abhishek Bachchan who also gave away the two most important awards of the evening – Song of the Year and Album of the Year which were won by Jashn-e-Baharaa from the film Jodha Akbar and Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na respectively.

ENIL CEO Prashant Panday said, “Music is the lifeblood of radio and for Radio Mirchi to host this first edition of the Tata Indicom Mirchi Music Awards is but natural. We at Radio Mirchi are extremely happy and encouraged with the response we have received from the music fraternity for this initiative. We believe that the Tata Indicom Mirchi Music Awards will grow in stature with every passing year and become the platinum standard to honour and reward the best music of the year.”

As a build up to the awards, Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM and Tata Indicom ran the grand “Tata Indicom Talent Hunt” contest for aspiring singers across 23 key locations in India. Aimed at identifying a combination of ideal voice, spunk and X factor, the contest winner gets a chance to attend as well as perform at the Tata Indicom Mirchi Music Awards. Winner of the contest Prachi Shah from Ahmedabad sang a few lines.

Speaking about her experience, she said, “I can’t explain my excitement at the moment. It feels wonderful to be the only one to be given this golden opportunity to share the platform & perform in front of veterans like Javed Akhtar and the other jury members at such a mega event. I am looking forward to the televised event where all my family members and friends who couldn’t be part of this event can watch me sing at the music awards”

The jury members comprised of veterans from the music and film industry. Popular lyricist Javed Akhtar led the jury as the Chairman for the awards. Other jury members included Prasoon Joshi, Annu Malik, Shankar Mahadevan, Lalit Pandit, Louiz Banks, Kailash Kher, Sadhana Sargam, Suresh Wadkar, Sonu Nigam, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Kunal Kohli, Ramesh Sippy and Rakesh Omprakash Mehra.

Tata Indicom Mirchi Music Awards will be telecast on Sunday 12 April, 2009 at 9.30 PM on Star Plus.