Shibani Kashyap turns music guru with Desi Beats

Well known singer and music director Shibani Kashyap has turned her attention to the small screen. She is currently hosting a new daily show on Mastiii channel that airs on 8 pm. Desi Beats focuses on music from the nineties till now. And Shibani turns music gru with this show. Why? “We play popular songs; give out trivia and unknown facts about the actors, music directors and lyricists and many more,” reveals Shibani. Prior to this, she had anchored Bathroom Singer aired on Sahara One. And this musician-singer-composer-performer thinks that this channel is growing fast: “The best part of this Sri Adhikari Brothers channel is that it is dedicated to it’s genre unlike other music channels which mostly air reality shows. Mastiii only airs music with a few interview based shows.” Shibani further feels that an anchor is the most important part of any TV show. “He/she connects the audience to the concept, we also have to look good, act natural and feel for the theme.” “Anchoring Desi Beats comes quite easily to me as I am singer and hence know most of the songs and singers. Additionally, what adds to the beauty of show is that we have a guitar on set which my co- host Chintu Bhosle (grandson of Asha Bhosle) and I sometimes get to use to give unplugged performances of the numbers we are talking about. This was one of the reasons that the channel wanted only singers as hosts.” And unlike many of her contemporaries, Shibani is not fussy about her look. “I am not presented as a talk show diva. I’d rather have pleasant chirpy youthful look, we don’t want to do anything which takes away attention from the music,” says Shibani. Though people have earlier spoken a lot about the glorious sixties and seventies, the period of the nineties has not been spoken much about: “Well, nobody had focused on this time period which has also boasted of great music directors like Anu Malik and Nadeem Shravan, etc. The music of early Shahrukh Khan starrers like Baazigar and DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge) also have been extremely classy.” Given that she is also actively involved in Bollywood (she is giving a song to Sanjay Gupta’s Shoot Out At Wadala and a couple of horror thrillers etc), will it not be difficult for her to juggle between her two commitments? “Well I have to give 5 days a month to this assignment and it’s going well till now,” ends Shibani.