MASALA'S FAVES
Prateek Sureka, who hosted the brunch for the a cappella boys at his Loudon Street home on Thursday, talks to t2:
Prateek Sureka (far right) with (l-r) Ronak Mehta, Vedanta Kumar and Saksham Karwal
How did you become part of Penn Masala in your time?
Year 2000. Freshman year, first semester, first time in the US. I had been on campus for two weeks. I was having lunch with a friend and he was going to audition for Penn Masala. He asked me if I was going to audition. And I was like, ‘What am I going to do auditioning for this? I haven’t come to college to sing Hindi music’. So he was like, ‘I’m really nervous, please come with me for moral support’. After his audition, the judges [the current Penn Masala team recruits the next] asked me to take the stage. I was like, okay, worst-case scenario, I’ll sing badly! I was so nervous, my eyes were closed. I sang Pyaar ke pal by KK. I was called back for group harmonies to test whether my voice was syncing with everyone else. It’s one of those scenarios where it’s good to have a distinctive sound but not that great!
What exactly was your role back then?
In Penn Masala, everyone is a background singer. There is no lead singer per say. It’s on a per song basis. It’s not like a regular band where there’s a designated person to sing. We audition internally for leads. So what happens is that when a new song is being done, everyone who wants to sing that song can nominate themselves for it.
How does the group maintain quality each year?
The group is encouraged to arrange songs that suit certain singing styles. That can adapt to the skill sets within the group. For example, this year there’s a very good Carnatic singer, Hari Ravi.
What is your role now?
Each of these members has a day job, classes to attend, take exams and on top of this, manage things across a time difference of eight hours. So I told Pranay the business manager, ‘The alumni network is pretty strong in India, let me know what you need. We’ll do whatever we can’. [That’s also where alumni members Saksham and Vedanta offered their online platform SeenIt and Martinian Ronak Mehta, the event management].
We had zero expectations of achieving all of this. We thought we’d do two-three shows. Raise some sponsorship. Worst case, the alumni would chip in from their own pocket to fund the rest of the tour. When the Calcutta show sold out, we realised there was something big here. We went on to almost sell out the shows in the other cities, including Shanmukhananda Hall in Mumbai for 2,700 seats.
Karo Christine Kumar
Pictures: Pabitra Das
