I upset my peers, alienated music directors: Sona

Being vocal is synonymous with Sona Mohapatra. The singer has time and again raised her voice against a lot of things, and she knows that it impacted a lot of things for her personally and professionally.

One such issue she strongly believes in is the representation of female singers in the music industry. She says she has been talking about it for eight years. “Be it big music festivals, releases or in mainstream… even if you switch on the radio, you will see that out of 10 songs, you will at best find two songs with female voices. Out of 100 songs, only eight-nine have female voices, solo female songs have completely been down in mainstream. It is all about testosterone,” says the 45-year-old, popular for songs such as Ambarsariya and Jiya Laage Na.

Talking about music festivals, she says they have had “poor representation” of female artistes, which she puts at “a pathetic 3%”. “I was calling it out, upsetting my peers, alienating a lot of music directors, guys who call the shots, because I come across as a troublesome woman, all the time complaining. But here’s the good news. After all those years of calling out NH7 music festival, I didn’t get invited by them, but in their last edition the representation suddenly went up from an average of 4-5% to 21%. It was a significant jump, so they did listen, maybe there was a certain embarrassment or consciousness,” says Mohapatra.

She feels ‘troublesome women’ like her do help make that change. “You don’t necessarily endear yourself to everyone,” says the singer, whose National Award-winning documentary Shut Up Sona will have its Australian premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne and is also nominated in the Best Documentary category for the IFFM awards.

She is naturally excited. “At a time when many of my peers were investing in online followers, I decided to jump off the cliff, invest a huge chunk of my savings and produced this film with zero backing and complete belief. To be selected at IFFM among the hundreds of submissions to the festival this pandemic year is special... this is our first screening Down Under,” says the singer.

FMOHAPATRA, SONA

ondly remembering her mother, late actor Sridevi on her birth anniversary on Friday, actor Janhvi Kapoor shared a throwback picture on social media.

The Dhadak (2018) actor expressed her love for her late mother by sharing a memory from her childhood featuring herself and Sridevi, in which they are beaming with joy. “Happy birthday Mumma. I miss you. Everything is for you, always, everyday. I love you,” she captioned her post on Instagram.

She also added a red heart emoji to her post, which many replicated in the comments section. Her post was showered with red hearts from many celebrities, including Dia Mirza, Maheep Kapoor, Shanaya Kapoor and Manish Malhotra.

Sridevi died in Dubai in 2018 when she went to attend a family wedding. Earlier this year, on Sridevi’s third death anniversary, Janhvi posted a picture of a handwritten note, which seems to be penned by her mother. It read, “I love you my labbu. You are the best baby in the world.” HTC

PHOTOS: INSTAGRAM (L) Janhvi Kapoor; the throwback photo she shared on Sridevi’s birth anniversary