World’s first Hindi a cappella group to tour India

World’s first Hindi a cappella group to tour India. A cappella has a rich history in the college circuit in the USA.

World’s first Hindi a cappella group to tour India

Why a cappella?
A cappella has a rich history in the college circuit in the USA. When our alumni at the Unniversity of Pennsylvania established Penn Masala in 1996, they wanted to express South Asian culture musically, and a regular music band wouldn’t have been unique. It started with just four members, then it caught on well with South Asians on campus, and eventually, it spread across the country.

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How do you usually prepare a song? Does it come out of a jam?
The musical process is a collective thing, and is based on what songs we enjoy. We get together, list down the songs we like, and facilitated by the music coordinator, start coming up with ideas. We may not have a concrete idea of what we will end up with when we start. Usually, someone starts singing, and then individual members come up with the own ideas, add their parts, and that’s how the song takes shape. It’s a collaborative effort.

How do you pick songs? You usually mix two numbers on a song.
Being South Asians, we come from a rich background of music, and we all have our western influences. We fuse music that reflects our culture, be it Bollywood or a South Indian song, with any music, that ultimately sounds good. When it comes to picking English and Hindi songs to combine, we pick songs which have the same thematic content, whether it is the lyrics or musically. We like our songs to have meaning.

Your group keeps changing, when existing members graduate. On what basis do you induct freshmen, since you have to keep a balance?
The only thing we ask from potential members is that they should have compassion for music, and have something interesting to add to the group. The group started out as South Asian, but now we have people from different backgrounds, with a common passion for music. We prefer people with musical backgrounds, be it singing, or playing the guitar or piano. The balance simply comes through transfer of knowledge by the seniors, and the bonding we develop as a group.

Do you have problems such as freshmen not being good enough?
(Laughs) No, because one thing is pretty evident from all our albums – we’ve been doing a good job of transferring knowledge. We take in all the passionate musicians, and while members get older and ultimately graduate, there’s an active process of younger people learning from these guys. It’s always about the experience they get year after year. There’s never shortage of talent. It may take time for people to get acclimatized to the group and our style, but after a while, it always works out well.

So how was it performing in front of the US President, Barrack Obama, at the White House?
(Chuckles) It was one of the most remarkable things we’ve had a chance to do. It was a big honour, and the fact that we were performing on Diwali, and the President had taken the initiative to celebrate the festival, was very special to the South Asian community here. We met him before we performed, and he was very sweet to us. In his speech post the event, he mentioned us specially and said he appreciates our creative energy. He is quite in tune with the Indian culture and is appreciative of it.

What do you have in store for us in your gig at Mumbai?
We’ll be playing a lot of our older songs, along with the newer songs, so you’ll get to hear a broad range of music. One of our alumni, who’s in India, will also join us on stage, and we are quite excited. We will have a great diversity and range in our music, from classical pieces to modern Bollywood tunes to class English rock to r ‘n’ b as well. It will be fun!