Ep. 5 Pradeep Kumar - Swami and Friends P.2

Dive deeper into the world of Pradeep Kumar in Part 2 of our exclusive interview. Following our previous discussion on the struggles and realities of the music industry, Pradeep now passionately articulates the irreplaceable value of live performance, describing it as a "familiar place" where he feels "alive." He recounts intense moments, like learning and performing bass for an entire show on the fly, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the stage. Beyond the physical, Pradeep unveils his visionary perspective on digital music, not as a replacement, but as an expansive medium. Learn about his experimental projects where he's designed algorithms to generate thousands of unique song variations, giving listeners unprecedented control. He also shares invaluable advice for aspiring artists on finding their authentic voice and the crucial need for supportive communities and forward-thinking organizers who truly care about the audience and artist experience.

Chapters

• 0:02 intro
• 1:07 relationship with money
• 13:45 fully analog album
• 19:32 types of organisers
• 22:08 deiling with personal issues
• 24:10 uniqueness of a live performance
• 42:01 performance of ottam nikkavillai

Transcript

So, I want to talk a bit about money and now you are a big star and But you've come from humble beginnings. I Remember times when like money was tough What does your relationship as a performer being with money? What how do you think the scene can be better because I know it's tough It like shows don't smaller shows. Definitely people cannot make a living How do you think the scene can be improved? How has your relationship been with money? Yeah, so first of all Like people some people may look at me as a star But no, that is undeniable It is only the songs that I have sung has got me that stature or whatever It's not me as a person because you know me right from the beginning When I started playing guitar, you know So up, you know, I have never focused on That there are Also people there are also artists great artists who wanted that start. 

Yeah, we have been there and I know people Yeah, they have done that and mine. It's fine, but I am different Just that my I have never looked at stage as some place where I feel powerful Hmm, you know, I I would say I feel alive on stage, but it's all again. It's all just words, right? I I it's a very familiar place to me, you know familiar place to be physically also mentally right on stage, so Yeah, I have never had I never felt the stardom I don't know how to make people understand this outside, but even when I am there, you know I'm going there like They say people are I mean the light engineer on these projecting me like a God It's projecting me like a hero. 

I'm coming there standing I have never thought like that For me, it's always Okay You don't the pedal like I do You know the first song like we do in the song and the set list a part of it In the guitar, it's a kind of a matter of tuning character. You know, I am I know There is only one thing how the song is starting what is going to happen. How am I reacting to that? Sure, this is the only thing that is always running in my head So stardom up being a feeling when I could stage layer or other it's always no performing and enjoying Performing on stage. 

That's always been my focus so money If you know part, I'm not one point or a kill Of course, it's not Comedy in front of us over Cause a lot of opportunity are so long and I'm causing a lot of So causal amount of love and art It's a long face of the earth. I don't have a beer on the colour of the ground colour of the ground Calamity, I'm gonna need you want to Particle and I'm gonna walk on the other Colour you know, I'm gonna tell me I love a lot of art. I've been alone in there Artists to the ground I'm gonna put a lot of So I'm gonna part of it. 

So I do one day now, of course LR Ella musicians go through a struggle another group Musical ah the room music plan among the Editors living Not professionally. I'm saying I'm saying just in terms of music learning the music Getting to a point where you can play with musicians and can explore a lot of and the point to go out of the case It's a struggle. Yeah for every musician irrespective of money. 

Yes, right the company Okay, people on the or a causal other one could turn the music of the order Or a panacada music video either number one people Anything on the Famous trumpet player Miles-dales, so the other black musicians music on the Yeah, different How do you do so that one thing? So or? A couple of a little bit Various expression allowing them to buy in gramma. Huh? The dog it's the dog Hmm In our mind, it's all there. We are just accessing those realms to become a musician or access music or play music so If you ask me if I can go to this place only if I have money, I don't think so. 

Because, from an oppressed place like that, from the bottom, the music that came with the idea of telling my life, was the greatest music. That has hit everyone's emotions. Because, in the world, I don't know the exact numbers, but there are very few rich people. 

The poor are the majority. And, where there is no money, there is life. We build buildings, we live in big houses, we turn on the A.C. But, without all this, daily, in a place where people struggle for food, there is life. 

Only where there is life, there can be art. Art is a reflection of what life is, I feel. An artist draws based on that. 

So, when there is art only where there is life, we have to improve that place where there is life. That is everyone's responsibility. We don't take that as our responsibility. 

You are coming from a place where there is nothing. After coming to a place, what we think is, we are in a good place. Now, we can raise everyone. 

We can give them a chance. That won't happen. How many people will you take care of? Since I am saying this, I am not relieving my responsibility. 

I think the word responsibility is a false word. It will be a lie if I say I have to be responsible or I aim to be responsible. I think it should be in my nature. 

It should be in my nature to appreciate art that is not recognised. There is a term for it, underrated. I was underrated for many years. 

Now, I am overrated. Or rated. These are all for the market. 

For me, as an artist, when I wanted to explore something, I wanted to write a symphony. A big dream. I didn't have the money to make that dream come true. 

But, to make that dream come true, I put in some effort. I did some things. In music, my family helped me. 

With the help of many people, I was able to do a project You raised some crowdfunding. Yes, crowdfunding. Around 200 people backed my project. 

They gave money. In one month, we got 10.5 lakhs for producing it. I took a loan of around 14 

lakhs and did a free concert in Boston to shoot this film. 

This was a huge risk for me. At that time, in 2012-13, I was doing this. This is my journey. 

Generally, money or market improving the scene in music, if we want to discuss this, we've talked about it earlier. We need venues in our city. I really like what Kaber Vazhagi is doing, what CNR is doing. 

I think you know Thirma is also doing some things. We know all this. There are many talents who don't know this. 

They should also want to do this. I don't need an organisation. I don't need a producer. 

I don't need someone to take the risk and do the show. I'll pay you. I'll take care of the ticket sales. 

I'll do the show. I need people who can do that. Recently, Kalyani was saying she's writing some new songs. 

Some record labels are saying I'll give you money. If you sign a contract with us within two years, we'll recover the money. I know all the scenes. 

If I know all the scenes, I know how the revenue will come. How much streaming revenue will come. Why are these labels investing new money? They're just adding their catalogue. 

They're just making their catalogue bigger so that they get more credibility and subscribers. So, their revenue will increase. Our song is not going to make any revenue online. 

The ecosystem hasn't formed yet. I still feel live performance is the key for money. If an artist wants to earn money and make music professionally, he should be performing live. 

He should be constantly... Otherwise, it becomes a numbers game again. You're just putting out songs sitting in a box. And then... Okay, suddenly it became famous. 

If they suddenly ask you to sing in a live show and you don't have experience... I'm talking about situations that happen. If you're not focused... A lot of people will come. But for you to be... I'm not being a judge. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't become famous in one song. But as a musician, as an artist, why are you in music? You are improving. I really feel I'm becoming... Maybe it's an illusion. 

I feel I'm becoming a better person every day because of music. Or art. I'm being with artists, filmmakers. 

You talk about what's happening right now. There is so much of... Since we were born, people are giving us so much of knowledge. And we are not aware of what is happening right now. 

What you're aiming for as a musician... I want to go to a place where I'm comfortable. I never feel comfortable at any place. I don't want to earn money. 

I want to explore in what I do. Like I said, I'm gifted. I'm lucky enough to be at this point in my life. 

Some of my songs have hit. I was able to do commercial shows. I was able to earn money. 

I'm doing what I like right now. Not for fame. While I'm creating music, I have my own trip. 

I'm in my own trip. I'm writing and I'm enjoying. Now I'm presenting it to you. 

But presenting it on stage is a known format for so many years. Even now if you ask me to perform, I'll sing any song. It's a performance for me. 

But if I have to present it in a form, if I have to give it to people, I really needed to give something physical to them. Like this is my album. Like a gift. 

That is the reason why I made it a physical album. Especially these songs, I wanted them to have it like a gift. Because it's very personal, intimate songs where I'm just playing with the guitar and voice. 

These are all things I really like and I want to do. And I'm exploring every day. I'm exploring this. 

And this is what every musician or every artist should think about. For that, money should be taken care of. If that should be taken care of, there should be an ecosystem. 

And if you want to form an ecosystem, the elements in that ecosystem should be formed by us. There's no other way. And it is not about... There is this whole divide, right? They talk about film music, indie music. 

There's one called Indie. That's not Indie. There's one called Indie. 

That's not Indie. But they say it's independent music. There's one called music, right? What are we going to do with that? We have so much creativity and potential Why should we dumb down people? Because of a form. 

Because of a format. Do you see the difference on Instagram and performing live in front of two people? That's the only thing we should focus on. Musicians like me, everyone who jams with me, whether it's Janu, Tapas, Bharath Shankar, Ashwin who plays in my band, Lakshman, we all have the same desire. 

Whoever is playing music with me, the only desire right now is to have more jam rooms. And we are actually building Scrapped's TTC. He's planning to build a jam room. 

That process is happening right now. Building our own communities in music is important. It 

may sound like a cult but we really need to do that. 

Because popular culture has become a meme cult. I think we have to really use all of those things. That's what I like about Scenar. 

How you use visual things. Meme is a new art form. We have to use it. 

It's not like we're all poor. Give us what we deserve. We'll do it. 

We're not musicians like that. We're all rock stars. That's how I want it to be. 

It's not wrong. We're suddenly famous. We think we can give opportunities to musicians like us. 

What will you give? What can you do? You tell me. What can I do? Young musicians I meet them. I talk to them. 

They have to find their own way. It's not my job. I have my own journey. 

I have so many things to... I told my kids my daughter is there. I thought they'll hate music. There's music always at home. 

I thought they'll just hate music. They'll become something else. But they've come into music. They're playing music. They're writing music now. I see them as different people completely. 

I don't think we're a good group. They have their own expression. They have their own experience. 

Let them live their life. Let them figure it out. I feel that should be there for artists. 

There should be an artist's mindset. But those who have money should really know. I've seen that. 

Because that's also an experience. Those who have a lot of money organise stupid shows. Those who organise shows with passion have done great shows. 

Fantastic organisation. People will feel good about it. But those who have a lot of money have done terrible shows. 

That and organising shows They don't really care about the audience and their experience. That's why you'll see all the stampede. What's happening? There's no planning. 

That's why I feel we need focused people as organisers. Think about yourself. If you're putting up a big artist to sell tickets put an opening ad. 

You call them. This happened in my show. An organiser called an opening act and made them read it. 

I was very happy. There were three opening acts. I was very happy. 

I called them and everyone liked the reading. I thought it was very nice. After several months one of these artists is slowly telling me that these organisers haven't yet paid them. 

Imagine he's used my name to get them to play as an opening act and he hasn't paid them. It reflects on you also. Don't have unnecessary thoughts. 

Think simply. If you do a good show I really want organisers or whoever calls themselves organisers to go to festivals. Go to music festivals. 

Go attend shows. Go to different places in India. Go to different places in the world. 

At least watch those festivals. Learn from... When people ask me do you want the hydraulic stage to fly around the audience I tell them no. Get me this bell pack. 

Get me this cable. Don't get me low quality monitors. That's what we want. 

We want good tech. That's all we expect. That's all the audience needs to get a good experience. 

I get really annoyed with these pyros and sound. How do you deal with personal struggles? You have a performance and there's something happening in your personal life which is not happy. Are you able to block it out when you get on stage? It's very rare for me. 

Recently it happened. It was very stressful. My father had a bypass surgery. 

My concert in Canada was confirmed. Everybody went. I had to fly after the surgery. 

I had to see my father. I flew from here. I reached Canada. 

The next day was the performance. I came back the next day. That was quite stressful. 

Different kinds of stressful things happened. In the same show my bass guitarist had a visa problem. He couldn't turn up for the show. 

10-12 songs I had to play bass which I have never played before. For these songs I have never played bass. I went to a shop and bought a fretless bass for the first time. 

I was so attracted to it I played it live. I got the bass in the morning and played it in the evening. It was very stressful but good stress. 

What is your relationship with external stimulants and stage? Like alcohol, drugs. You can choose not to answer. Do we consume? Do you have an opinion about others who are drunk? I don't have an opinion about artists consuming but we don't. 

You like to play sober. I think we get really high on stage. So we are coming close to the end. 

What is the unique aspect of a live performance which you can never get in a recorded meeting? I think recording is always for me capturing a moment. That's what I feel. Even the aesthetics of recording is about capturing truly what is being performed. 

So I feel a live performance is actually the real performance. There is this famous conductor, Celibidache. He's a Romanian conductor. 

He says recording of a song is the tombstone of that song. It's a grave. The grave of the song is the recording. 

Which is very hard. But for me, I feel that way. Whenever I feel something is recorded I feel it should remain that way. 

Because I've always been a performer since a very young age. Because of me, in a performance there are literally more physical dimensions to it. You are actually looking at the performer and you are actually feeling the vibrations. 

The real vibrations. I'm not talking about the abstract spiritual energy vibrations. You really vibrate for the music. 

That is important, I think. Visually looking at them and connecting with their music. That's what I really like about a live performance. 

Listening to a live performance. Being there in a live performance. How you get to know them. 

Not about their attributes. You get to know their musical expression. It's really amazing to look at someone completely unknown. 

You have They don't even need to speak your language. They are not even from your culture. They don't even look like any of your friends. 

Let's say they are completely There is no human form, but it is playing music. There you have some way as a musician, you have some way to access how they are expressing their musical thing. I think that is really, that is how you connect with humans fundamentally, I think. 

Whatever that soul connection or whatever they say, it happens to me in a performance, that is very magical for me. We are living in an increasingly digitised world and new things, AI is coming and taking over, even like I can see lots of composers going. In this, I feel like live performance has more value. 

What do you feel like this and would you have any message to upcoming people? Yeah, I think we should use the potential of digital technology fully. It has to be explored fully as a medium. The reason I like recording technology is because it is a medium. 

The interaction of the medium is neither physical nor digital. There is an element of programmability in the digital medium. I think that is the core of digital thing. 

A computer can, you give it a certain set of instructions and that algorithm is read by a set of just zeros and ones. It is just a set of transistors or chips that are just making them, it is just yes or no. You are creating logic through it and you are executing certain function. 

You have a programmable element in digital, so I love to use that element in music. If you are using digital as a medium, which I tried in one of my blockchain projects. Which really opened up my whole idea of creating music itself where we are always used to giving people one mix. 

It gave me an option of giving people a varied number of choices to listen to a song. They can even change the instruments. I was able to make a programmable piece which has different layers where you can change the variants in the layers and the piece itself will change. 

It is like the black mirror band of snatch. Exactly, so you can have your input in the way it has to sound. Even the final output can be given to the listeners. 

There is one and there is programmability involved in it. You can make music by writing an algorithm where some elements of the music can change. Some filters can change or something can change according to some natural phenomena. 

During the day it can sound different and during the night the same piece can sound different using programmability. You can pre-programme a lot of things to create music itself. I created 19,440 different possibilities in one piece which was mind-blowing for me. 

I have never heard more than 500 or 600 of them until now. I created it five years back. I still don't know how some variations will sound. 

There is this element of removing myself as a creator. I find very interesting things that you can do with the digital medium also. This is one of them. 

There are immersive technologies and spatial technologies that are coming up. Immersive tech and traditional art have their own pros and cons but it is an evolution. We can't be so egoistic to say we have to accept VR in it. 

I have an Instagram profile. We have to explore to the maximum. I say to the maximum because it is digital. 

That is the motto of digital. Use it as your ally. Use it to the max. 

You always upgrade. You keep upgrading. That is the trend in digital. 

It either fucks your system up or you get a new device and it gets better. Digital medium has its own interesting things. Even in recording technology we are still using the same tape machines in digital. 

There are many avenues. I am exploring Max, MSP, Jitter now. It is a completely different interface where you can create your own DAW. 

You can create your own pathways. There are many things that you can explore in digital medium. It is important for artists to explore it in a different way and not just go with the trend. 

You just have to break the trend. You should always look at the trend. That is why it is there. 

For artists, this is the trend. I am not going to do that. I am either going to do something different or maybe I can push it somewhere and that may become a trend. 

I don't care. I think it has a lot of scope to do that. Digital medium has so much to do that. 

It is just cluttered with so much of pop culture and so much of trendy things. It is all hidden. They say internet is just the tip of the iceberg. 

How do you define success or failure in a performance? Or is there any way? For us, tapas tells us. After the show, he will say it was a good show. Then we say it is a success. 

He will not talk to us for an hour. Then we know it sucked. We are coming almost to the end. 

If you can distil the essence of performance in one philosophy or a sentence, what would it be? I would always say this. Music is for someone to perform. It has to come out of consciousness. 

While performing, you are moving the consciousness of the observer. You are moving their consciousness towards your route. You are taking a route and you are just taking them along. 

I feel that is the only way I can look at music. I can never feel powerful. I can never say that I am on stage performing to give something divine to people. 

Or give something so valuable. It is valuable. It is not something pure.
 There is a word called punidham in Tamil. I have to destroy the punidham. That is my aim. 

The song I have been writing recently is called Muzhichukappa. I am writing that song. I will get what I want. 

But I want to do it truthfully. I want it to be like that. I want the performance to be like that. 

If I think about it, the way I speak won't change. I am not going to respond to what you ask. A performance should be really thoughtful. 

Thoughtful in the sense... Give everything you have at that point. With the aesthetics. Bill Evans said this beautifully. 

Every artist has this aesthetic guide. There is some kind of an aesthetic that is guiding you. It is born out of your own conditioning. 

Your own learnings. As performers, I feel my duty is to be honest on stage. Just give my fullest at that point. 

That is when I feel this is a conversation. I say this on stage. After a point, it becomes a one-way communication. 

I love to do more chamber concerts. More acoustic gigs. Where you can really connect with people. 

That is how I feel performance should be. It is connecting people. That is a performance to me. 

You have played in great venues all over the world. Do you have a dream venue where you would like to play? I have some halls that I would love to perform. There is one venue which was brilliant. 

KLCC Auditorium, Malaysia. It was one of my best performances. Amazing performances. 

The sound of the auditorium was good. I have had quite a few good venues. I really liked Asian College of Jazz. 

I have heard so much about it. We did an acoustic performance. With choir. 

That was really good. I couldn't get a ticket for that. ACJ. 

They did it for Madras. It was good. I think smaller venues. 

I would say one venue in Tanglewood. There is a place called Tanglewood in Boston. We were part of a music festival. 

A classical music festival. Boston Symphony was playing there. I heard Boston Symphony in 

2008. 

I heard a 100 piece orchestra in that auditorium. That was one of my unforgettable sonic experiences. They were playing Elliot Carter's music. 

A tonal stuff. That was very unfamiliar to me at that time. The sound and the weight of the orchestra. 

100 people playing together. That is still there. I love to perform. 

I really like performing with orchestras. With voices. That is a duality in me. 

I like small intimate performances. But I like big orchestras. Would you like to play something for us? Aadu aattom puriyavillai Ye ye ye oottam nikkavillai Aadu aattom korayavillai Oottam nikkavillai Aadu aattom korayavillai Ye ye ye oottam nikkavillai Aadu aattom korayavillai Vaazhndu paathu puttom Nelamaya maathu puttom Paathu paarvai illai Naamayi maayathu alandhu puttom Uru puthaindha thangam polai Nenamayum naama podachu puttom Thondathondai urungeni On nenavu gandha niyo gnaani Elakkaarum aagi bochchu Enthirikku neeram achchu Enchirundhu ganavu ella Panchu polai paranthu bochchu Oottam nikkavillai Aadu aattom korayavillai Ye ye ye oottam nikkavillai Aadu aattom korayavillai Paam paam paam paam Some sensible musician like you is asking these questions. 

I have never given interviews because all they want to know about is not these things. They don't want to discuss important things. But I am really happy. 

Thank you for considering me. Please cut out unnecessary sections. I think we have. Cool. I shall. Thank you.
 Let's see. I hope we got it all.