I want to mention straight off the bat that I haven’t watched the famed Bandish Bandits that everyone raved about when it was released. So I watched the eight episodes of its Telugu remake, Jagamae Sangeetham , with no baggage or hope that it would live up to its potential. The web series managed to hook me, bore me, move me, and dissuade me all within a few hours. the web series needed some oomph to make it work While it has its heart in the right place.
The story of Jagamae Sangeetham is quite simple and set in Vaikuntapuram. There’s the young and optimistic Balu (Akshay Lagusani), who wants to live up to his grandfather, Carnatic legend Shastri ( Prakash Raj ), and be a worthy successor. Pallavi (Sushmita Shetty) is the opposite kind of musician. Pallavi resorts to auto-tune to ensure she goes viral While Balu is trained in the purity of tune. When Thyagaraju (Srikanth Meka) turns up to challenge his ageing grandfather to a jugalbandhi, an already overwhelmed Balu begins to feel the weight of protecting his family’s honour.
If Bandish Bandits was all about Hindustani classical, Jagamae Sangeetham taps into the rich art form of Carnatic. Shastri is so stringent in its practice that he does not wish to ‘cheapen’ it with commercialism. His sons try their best to hide the nitty-gritty of economics from him, so he can continue living in his bubble. Balu, who has grown up in a modern world, finds himself torn between honouring his grandfather and falling in love, both with a woman who comes from a different school of music, and Carnatic fusion. When they mock him for being an ‘old school’ singer, not only does he one-up them at their own game, but also schools them on how music is divine, be it Western or Indian. Jagamae Sangeetham seems to embody that in spirit, even if Balu fights against all his might to sing a falsetto when needed, a blasphemy in his world. For all the purity Shastri fights for in his art, he’s also proven to be anything but that when it comes to being human. A lot of the series hinges on Vishal Chandrashekhar’s music, given its theme. But it doesn’t always have the intended impact. Shastri’s pièce de résistance music is good, but feels awfully familiar. There’s little that moves you as the story makes headway, even if the stakes keep getting higher. You understand there’s only one way for this series to end, so the final jugalbandi, while entertaining, isn’t really surprising. Characters also make some odd choices despite the high stakes and the risk of being publicly called out, which seems juvenile.
The web series reminded me of a scene from K Viswanath’s Sankarabharanam (1980), in which Shankara Sastry (Somayajulu) is woken up by a group playing contemporary music.
