Sisters Antara and Ankita Nandy from Assam have paid their tribute to legendary singer SP Balasubrahmanyam in the 15th episode of their popular Balcony Concert series. SPB’s portrait is placed at the centre of a decorated frame with lots of greenery and flowers in it.
Antara is a singer who rose to fame in 2009 after having participated on Zee TV’s reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs.
Antara and Ankita begin the video with a short introduction about themselves in Tamil, adding a tribute to late singer SP Balasubrahmanyam. “We wanted to remember sir as the super jovial person that he was,” they say, explaining why they picked his 'Annathe Adurar' song from the film Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989). The film’s music has been composed by Ilaiyaraaja and starred Kamal Haasan in the lead.
In the video, the sisters hold their ukuleles, dressed in the traditional veti-sattai (dhothi-shirt) that’s mostly worn by men in the southern states. “We are aware that this is the traditional attire for men in Tamil Nadu but we decided to wear it anyway,” reads their caption.
They begin the song and twist it up with a bit of tap dancing in between. There’s no dearth of energy in the already explosive song. They also have perfect diction in Tamil, making the song sound all the more like the original.
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While Antara was born in Assam, she grew up in Kolkata. In 2013, she joined AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory in Chennai. The young singer has quite a few songs to her credit in Assamese and Bengali. In 2015, she won in the Music category (Jury Mention) at the Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival. Ankita, Antara’s younger sister, has been collaborating with the latter and the two have been putting out videos together. In 2016, their clap version of the 'Pinga' song went viral on the internet.