May 29, 2017
Their music is a huge hit across the world and their mash-ups have garnered a massive fan following in the recent years. With 10 albums under their name, South Asian acapella group Penn Masala comprising Anvit Reddy, Sanjit Chakravarty, Hari Ravi, Ajay Vasisht, Pranay Sharma, Praveen Rajaguru, Brendan McManus, Kasish Hora, Yamir Tainwala, Vishnu Rachakonda, Nikhil Raman, Atman Panigrahi, Anirudh Bikmal and Wrik Sinha recently performed in the city. In an exclusive chat with Bangalore Times , the members of the music band spoke about their music and how they handle female fan following. Excerpts: What is the story behind Penn Masala's formation? "The group was formed in 1996 with four guys in a dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania. A capella was just on the rise back then. So, these guys saw all sorts of a capella groups on campus and thought 'why not form a group that mixes Hindi and English music, combining the two heritages that they grew up with.' It's been 20 years now," says Hari. You do a lot of mash-ups. How do you choose your songs? "We try and highlight different genres that are also based on every member's individual interest. We also look at what songs are popular and try to incorporate those numbers into our list. And we choose tracks that have a different meaning, and can be weaved together. If we have two songs with different meanings, we try to bring it together and don't just do a mash-up of two songs. The songs have to have a meaning and certain charisma to them. In addition, we have released 10 albums, and originals are a huge part of our music. We try to do one or two originals for every album," Hari adds. What genres influence the band's music? "While putting together an album, we try to take our influences from many genres and put them together in a package. Some of them include R&B, EDM, classic and alternate rock," he further says. What are the challenges you face as an a capella group? "Our primary challenge is that we keep rotating our members. Every year, the seniors graduate and we take in freshmen, which is a new learning curve for us because we have to teach the newest members a capella background and such. However, that is also our strength because it keeps our music fresh since we keep taking in new talent, and are exposed to new genres of music. It keeps our music fresh with time," adds Hari. You have performed at the White House and for prominent leaders, including Ban Ki-moon. How does it feel to be performing at such platforms? "Hari and I have performed songs at an award ceremony for the music directors who have created those songs, with the Bollywood stars that we all grew up watching, it was a mind-blowing experience for all of us to perform for them. It's not something that we are going to forget anytime soon. In terms of moving forward, it has been a great way to move ahead and keep coming back to India and hopefully we get to do that more in the future," says Pranay. How do you deal with female fan following? "All are fans are amazing. It's great to see how much of energy they bring in to a show, how much energy they show when we put out new content. We are just happy that we have such extreme fan following," adds Hari. Your band mainly does Hindi and English mash-ups. Are you open to other languages as well? "We do try and incorporate other languages in our songs. In the past, we have incorporated Urdu, Arabic, Malayalam, and Tamil in various aspects. Moving forward, we would love to do more musical tracks," says Hari. "We plan to put up more mash-up content, and are focusing on short one to two minute songs and finding popular Hindi and English songs and mashing them up together," says Anvit. Who would be Penn Masala's dream collaboration? "There are so many but we would love to collaborate with Arijit Singh. We are such big fans of his music and we sing a lot of his songs. Even meeting him, not collaborating with him would be amazing," says Pranay. Rain fails to dampen their spirit The group was greeted by some unexpected rain showers at the venue. However, when they saw eager fans waiting for them to perform, they went ahead and did a mic-less performance (before alternate arrangements were made) and sang some foot-tapping numbers like Humma Humma , Sugar by Maroon 5 and Dilliwali Girlfriend much to their fans' delight. The band said that if their fans can wait for them in the rain, they can perform for them in the rain as well.