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Kingdom of Dreams: The battleground for Band of the Year Contest

Revving Up to Kingdom of Dreams’ Band of the Year

What to look forward to at the Band of the Year contest, where over 100 college bands compete at Kingdom of Dreams.

After having played host to live shows by the visually astounding American illusionist Franz Harary (who made the Taj Mahal disappear), spell-binding Israeli mind reader Lior Suchard, world renowned circus act Acromania – The Mangolian Circus and the Bollywood-based musical Zangoora, Kingdom of Dreams (KOD) is taking its next giant step in a new direction – by setting the stage for a contest, pitting over hundred college bands against each other, that’s going to ratchet up the temperature of the grand venue from March 14 to 16 for the event titled Band of the Year (BOTY) 2014.

This event is Kingdom of Dreams’ second effort towards espousing the spirit of indie music, so to speak, and is tailored specifically to bring unrecognized talent of college campuses to the forefront. While popular names from Bollywood’s music world such as Sonu Nigam, Shaan, Kailash Kher, Honey Singh, Mika, and Sunidhi Chauhan among others have performed at the venue, the Inferno Metal Festival, which was held on February 15 and 16 this year, was KOD’s first large-scale involvement with indie music. Hence, Kingdom of Dreams (owned by The Great India Nautanki Company), labelled as the ultimate live entertainment destination, has already sent out calls to college bands of a multitude of genres to participate in this mega BOTY contest. Despite the fact that each of them will be adjudged on common grounds independent of genre, whether it be rock, metal, jazz or hip-hop, the contest will distil two winners in each of the categories – English and Hindi music.

KOD playing host to The Inferno Metal Festival

While many contests today depend solely on audience voting (that may in more ways than one be regarded as democratic) the truth is often this turns out to be an unfair and misguided evaluation. Hence, only 40 percent of the total votes will be paid consideration to, while the remaining 60 percent will be weighed by taking into account the ratings and opinions of the judges, who are noted figures of the music industry.

Additionally, as incentive to pep up the confidence of the bands and encourage audience voting, the organizers are even announcing the most voted for ‘Band of the Day’ on their social media websites like Facebook and Twitter until the last day of voting on March 10. But that is only the lull the before the actual storm is evoked on March 14. The winning band will be given an opportunity to get featured on MTV along with pulling in an entire dedicated channel on the online radio station Gaana.com.

The first two days (March 14 and 15) of the event are designed to screen bands and cull out the best eight out of the hundred bands belting out their own music. The third day (March 16) will be the grand finale that will be headlined by the Delhi-based Indian classical fusion band Raagleela, where the best eight bands that are narrowed down on, will compete for the top two coveted winning positions titled “Kingdom of Dreams – Band of the Year”.

After gruelling sessions of adjudication, the two victorious bands, one with Hindi lyrics and the other with English, will receive handsome remunerations of Rs. 1 lakh as cash prize each. Apart from that, they will also earn a chance to perform at six of the live entertainment events organized at Kingdom of Dreams, for which they will get Rs. 25,000 for each of their performances. It still doesn’t stop there – the winners even get entitled to gift vouchers worth Rs. 3.5 lakhs. Isn’t that good felicitation and validation for college students who intend to be future musicians? Go ahead, cast your vote, show your love to the band that you think deserves to win and be there at the fest to scream your lungs out.

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