How did you get from India to London to Deloitte-and-Touche to Carnegie Hall?
I started singing when I was 2 and gave my first 45 minute public concert at 4. I grew up in the city of Jamshedpur in India which is famous for TATA Steel, the largest steel company in India. With time and arduous training under my mother’s guidance and eventual training under a few learned masters of Indian classical music, the 4 hours of music practice each day through junior and middle school helped me start to develop a music style of my own. The focus on musical accuracy and the mental acuity it offered due to its meditative form was so valuable that it helped me through my academic life allowing me to maintain top grades generally throughout my career. At 12, I won a Duke of Edinburgh scholarship and emigrated from India to London, UK. After completing my middle/high school and bachelor’s degrees in England at Sheffield University, I started working for the BBC in London as a broadcaster of current affairs and science programs producing news bulletins and anchoring programs related to European and Asian affairs. During that period I developed good contacts through my press experience since I used to interview a lot of leaders and cover leading events of the time. After a few years at the BBC, I joined a company in California that focused on technology consulting since my Bachelors degree was in Computer Science. Eventually I joined a dot-com, and ended up writing a book on mobile commerce that to my surprise got published in 2001 by McGraw-Hill. I was a performing artist throughout my time in the US in most of the states that I stayed in, something that I immensely enjoyed doing besides my consulting day job. I wouldn’t get as much time to practice but the concerts every now and then kept me going. Over 10 years in the US, I got married, moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Boston to New York City and at each place, I made good friends and the support of music aficionados and connoisseurs. My consulting career also evolved from technology consulting into strategic management consulting. I ended up with a MSE in Management from Wharton and an MBA from MIT Sloan, and then worked for another consulting firm, before deciding to join Deloitte. My journey moved me to Manhattan and I started to perform locally in NYC. The music scene in NY is tremendous, and with time I started to collaborate with many good musicians. It was hard to maintain an active weekend concert schedule while working a Monday to Thursday travel schedule and a full time consulting job. But I balanced it well and I realised that my music helped me focus on my consulting work. With time, I was approached by Carnegie Hall to perform a solo concert and I accepted.
How does music tie into what you do here at the U.S. Firms and into your everyday work life?
Music is the elixir of life. If you think of it, our heartbeat itself is a form of rhythm, one of the first experiences of music that we are born with. Babies are calmed by listening to the heartbeats of their mother – it is natural and undeniable. My music is an improvised version of a traditional Indian classical form that is highly meditative in structure and equally charged in form when it comes down to it. I feel that it can calm like the voice of the Dalai Lama, and fire up an army all at the same time. The complexity of the rhythmic structures within the music is dense enough to inculcate deep mathematical understanding of the nuances of the art and of life. With time and practice it leads to a balanced development of both sides of the mental hemisphere I suppose – the emotional and the logical. The coordination of vocal music with accompanying instruments and artists especially in the classical form is deep enough to imbibe an acute sense of the spirit and an understanding of mathematical structure. My music thus helps me develop my logical skills that I utilise in my consulting work. The same music also provides me with the emotional confidence to work with other human beings and to develop deep relationships – something I am learning to do with my clients and practice partners. And at the end of the day, whatever the type of week I might have had at work, I can easily drown myself in my music whether in practice or on stage and cleanse out the tension over the weekend, fresh in time for the new week!
How does having an MBA from MIT fit into the life of a musician?
When you perform on stage, you manage yourself, you manage your accompanying artists, you manage the audience, their perception, and you work with your surroundings, to create a symphony or performance for all to remember. The performance in itself involves a deep sense of emotional and logical teamwork. To think of it, one could argue that these are some of the key ingredients of a successful consultant or manager. MIT helped me develop many of these skills in an academic setting and gave me the confidence to challenge the boxed thinking of the world around us. As a performing artist, I like to challenge the norm and push the envelope, for great music and great projects are only achieved when creativity truly prospers. And creativity only prospers when the boxes are broken, one at a time. My Sloan MBA was one such key period of my life which acted as a laboratory for me to challenge my thinking, my norms, my musical creativity and my expectations from myself and from life.
Why not just concentrate on a music career?
I have been able to balance both quite well thus far. I feel I can’t do without either – I love my work and love my music equally. Going entirely pro with my music will also imply depending on it financially for a livelihood, and I have seen many musicians compromise their art to sometimes derive more monetary benefit from it. I sing because I love to sing not because I want to make money from it. I have performed almost all my concerts with little or no financial benefit to me. In fact even from the Carnegie Hall concert, I am deriving zero financial gain. And I feel that there are few that are able to balance an active musical career and an active working career. It is hard for sure, but its rewarding and I would fail as a consultant if I did not have my music. It’s a personal challenge and I have braced myself up to it.
Tell me about your music…What makes it special?
My music will both calm the spirit and charge the mind. It will bring about sorrow and it will bring about mirth. I use the simple power of the human voice combined with basic instruments to create and evoke moods and emotions in listeners that they may have rarely experienced before. It is complicated yet simple to the ear. It is appealing to the connoisseur and the layman alike. I remember when I was growing up, I had two German Shepherds and whenever I would practice singing, they would come into the studio, sit on the sofa and go to sleep listening to me practice for hours. They would leave the moment I stopped. My music is derived from the traditional North Indian classical music (also known as Hindustani music), one of the oldest forms of singing in the world. This music is like the Sun and all other forms of music are like its rays. The rays get their energy from the Sun. Every form of music out there whether Rock, Pop, Hip Hop or Jazz, is in some way or the other based on an Indian Raga. Raga is the melodic form while tala is the rhythm underlying the music. Raga, which means color or passion, is a framework to create music based on a given set of notes (usually five to seven) and characteristic rhythmic patterns. The rhythm of music is explored through beats in time.Basic constituents of a raga can be written down in the form of a scale (in some cases differing in ascent and descent). By using only these notes, by emphasizing certain degrees of the scale, and by going from note to note in ways characteristic to the raga, I try to create a mood or atmosphere (rasa) that is unique to the raga in question. I use the above techniques to create musical experiences that transcend the listener into another state of musical consciousness and enjoyment. For those who like classical and lighter music, this is a treat. For those who like rock and pop music, this is even wilder when it assumes full form. And lastly, there is something in this for all types of listeners since I perform a wide variety of music from Shayri, poetry, fast taranas, trivats, chaturangs, khayals, thumri, and classical songs from films with my improvisations in them.
Is there really such a thing as “perfect or absolute” pitch and how do you know when you have this gift?
Yes, absolute or perfect pitch is the ability of a person to identify or sing a musical note without the benefit of a known reference note. I was classified as one with “Active” absolute pitch. This was measured in a formalized setting by the Acoustical Society of America. Active absolute pitch possessors number about 1 in 10,000 in the United States. Most scientists believe that the acquisition of absolute pitch requires early training during a critical period of development, regardless of whether or not a genetic predisposition toward development exists.
There are two types of absolute or perfect pitch:
"Passive" absolute pitch: Persons with passive absolute pitch are able to identify individual notes that they hear, and can identify the key of a composition (assuming some degree of musical knowledge). Some may be able to identify several notes played simultaneously, and therefore identify complex chords. Those with passive absolute pitch are not always capable of singing a given note on command.
"Active" absolute pitch: Persons with active absolute pitch are able to sing any given note on cue, without prior pitch references. Usually, people with active absolute pitch are not only able to identify a note, but can recognize when that note is sharp or flat. Not all people with active absolute pitch are musicians. However, musical training is necessary for full development of the auditory potential of a person with absolute pitch. |
Why is strong a supporter of propagating traditional music in an improvised manner to the youth?Like I had mentioned earlier, my music is like the Sun and all other forms of music are like its rays. The rays get their energy from the Sun. There has been a tremendous recent surge of music that is created, supported by, edited or entirely composed using computers and electronic media. While that’s great in essence and I equally enjoy modern music, we as humans have always appreciated the innate quality of something that’s truly human – something that may have errors, yet is difficult, hard to do and just plain touches the heart. It is the difference between listening to a real guitar versus a simulated one. I feel music has come down to depend on the efficiency of the sound engineers, the computer wizards who know how to use musical software packages such as Cubase quite well, or those who can sample music from around the world into their computers and then drag and drop amazing tunes together. I love club music, don’t get me wrong, and I love going to Rock concerts but I feel there is a little too much automation now that supports these events. Performers depend on props way too much. Their studio recordings come out amazing as they are edited and engineered by amazing sound technicians, however their live performances unless supported by background computer-played soundtracks, don’t quite sound the same. OK so what’s wrong with using modern technology to enhance ones music. Nothing really I would argue on one hand, however on the other hand I would say that the extent to which this has been happening has relegated the “human-ness” of our music. The erosion of the underlying essence of what music is all about is coming about in a big way. I see a lot of the older generation of people in concerts of more traditional or classical forms of music. The younger generation find such events ‘stuffy”, “limiting”, “boxed” and to some extent “boring”. I want to take away these stigmas from traditional music that the youth now have, and encourage them to come listen to music that is although traditional yet contemporary, universal, human and amazingly exciting. I am therefore experimenting with improvised methods of rendering traditional music to my audiences – without computers, without electronics, but with styles, tunes, instruments and melodies that are passionate, engaging, genuine, intense and just kick-ass.
What do you want the public to come away with after listening to you at Carnegie Hall?
I want the public to realize and possibly accept the fact that a human voice, a pair of simple Indian drums and a reed organ can make them feel so calm, excited, engaged, passionate, happy, sorrowful, wowed and exhilarated. I want to bring traditional Indian “vocal” music to the western public who has thus far been more exposed to Indian classical “instrumental” music from stalwarts such as Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar who have done a tremendous job propagating this art. And I want the public to come away hopefully beginning to accept me as a performer of high calibre who can entertain them, educate them and lead them into a new era of traditional contemporary World Music. |
