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When east meets west

Pravin Mani, the composer, arranger and programmer of the latest fusion album from Magnasound, Ohm Karma, cut his musical teeth alongside AR Rahman in Chennai, before migrating to Australia to produce music albums.

A profile of this young arranger, composer and programmer reveals that Pravin Mani’s forte is his constant experimentation on Indian and world music sounds.

Born in Chennai, Pravin Mani took to playing the guitar at the age of 10, and learnt it without any tutor. He joined his school band at the age of 13, and took to playing the bass guitar, simply because he liked the deep sound it made.
After completing school in 1985, Pravin joined the Institute of Hotel Management in Chennai, just because it boasted of “cool” musicians and wanted to join them. His interest in music led to him buying his first computer, an Apple 2C, just three years of joining the institute, and started dabbling in ‘sequencing’ and ‘midi’, and got hooked to this sphere of music-making. He dropped out of college and started doing session programming for jingles.

At this point of time, he met Dilip Kumar (now AR Rahman) and with a few others, set up a band called Myth. They did a few concerts around the country. Gauging that the music environment in India was not conducive for growth, Pravin left for Sydney in 1990, where he joined the School of Audio Engineering to further his technical knowledge. He completed his post-graduate “tonmeister” program in music production, and started working in a number of studios around Sydney, including Rich Music Studios and Suburban Voodoo.

Ohm Karma is a conscious effort to move away from the bhangra-pop sounds. It’s a rhythmic confluence of world sound swathed in modern dance sensibilities. It was created by fusing samples of various countries like Malaysia, China, The Middle East and Indonesia, as also including vocal samples of Tibetan monks chants, vedic chants, Thai divas and the aboriginal Digiridoo with my own arrangements.

He set up his own production outfit called Mo’Mani Music Productions in 1996, and produced albums for a number of major and indie labels, including Sony, Virgin-EMI, Warner and AMA Records. He was then signed by Warner Chappell publishing in 1997, as a composer/arranger on a worldwide basis. In 1998, Warner Chappell asked Pravin to move to Toronto, to work with more North American R&B artists.

Around this time, Pravin met Shashi Gopal, chairman and managing director of Magnasound (India), and worked on two albums for Magnasound. The first was Daler Remixx which, with Pravin’s musical inputs, got a different touch, and the second was Husn for singer Ash. Pravin is currently working on Southern singers, Srinivas and Vasundhara’s debut albums in Hindi and Tamil.
The pop music specialist, even though based in Toronto, Canada, also does a lot of session programming exclusively for AR Rahman, for a number of Tamil and Hindi films.

Pravin, who has been influenced a great deal by jazz, electro and R&B, is currently on a high, after the release of his new album Ohm Karma, the “electro-ambient” music album. This album, also described as a “hi-energy” dance-trance album gives an Indian twist to the ethnically influenced world sounds. Ohm Karma is a conscious effort to move away from the bhangra-pop sounds that have crowded the Indian music scene as well as the underground music scene in Britain. Says Pravin, “Ohm Karma is a rhythmic confluence of world sound swathed in modern dance sensibilities. It was created by fusing samples of various countries like Malaysia, China, The Middle East and Indonesia, as also including vocal samples of Tibetan monks chants, vedic chants, Thai divas and the aboriginal Digiridoo with my own arrangements.”

To give the album an international edge, it was sent to master mixer Steve Svitek, of NRG Productions, in Sydney, who re-mixed it to its final version.
According to the musician, Ohm Karma is dedicated to world peace and harmony. The album has 10 compositions, including the spiritually-loaded Karma-the soulful journey and the Vedic chant-inspired title piece. Pravin’s friend AR Rahman says tha Ohm Karma is one of the better world music albums that he has come across. “The album boasts of great style and great music,” Rahman asserts.