INTERVIEW
The Sound of
Music
Photography :Ghulam Murtuza
He has taken his first PCR test to travel overseas and is pretty excited about it. The soft-spoken Grammy awardee ( for Slumdog Millionaire) PA Deepak who is part of AR Rahman’s technical team as audio engineer, is self-effacing too. But watch between his words and you meet a brilliant mind with a sense of humour that lives and breathes music. Deepak is currently working on an album with a Dubai based producer and his 3rd album has got nominated for the 64th Grammy Awards 2022. Manju Ramanan chats up with him on his musical journey. When did you start learning music? I started learning the guitar when I was 6-7 years old. I grew up in Vishakapatnam (Vizag) and was soon part of orchestras and bands. When I met with a small accident, I couldn’t play the guitar since the waiting period during the healing was long. So, I checked on other things I could do and there was this music studio without any sound engineer at that time. I started exploring everything I could do around music and soon I was the only audio engineer in Vizag at one point in time. I also interned in local Doordarshan serial in 1998, till Nagesh Kukunoor came by and Rockford happened. I also did another film with him called Bollywood Calling, that has Navin Nischal in it. Then some Telugu films happened too but I wasn’t satisfied. I felt like a frog in the well. How did you move out of your comfort zone? I have friend who is a flutist with Navin Kumar who has played with AR Rahman. I asked him of the possibility in getting into his gang. Through him I met Ranjit Barot and then Saleem Sulaiman too. Also, a flight ticket to Mumbai from Vizag, back in 2004, used to cost Rs 26,000 back then and I couldn’t always fly back and forth and
both of them told me that they will let me know in some time. Within one month, I got a call from both people saying there is a film we have and you need to come to Mumbai to complete it. Both the engineers working with them had left. So, I told Salim Merchant that I had already promised Ranjit sir that I would work with him. I joined him and work was hectic and I would even sleep in a space in the mezzanine floor at the studio. That was the time Farah Khan used to come pretty often to the studio during the making of Mai Hoon Na. There is a massive choir section in the film and that is when I saw the stalwarts such as Clinton, Vijay Prakash etc who were part of the singing chorus. I was like a kid in a candy shop. It was like wow! When Ranjit sir used to go for concerts, I would work with Salim Sulaiman – I worked on films such as Mujhse Shaadi Karoge etc. You are a musician turned technician. How does that work to your advantage? The advantage I have is that I have been a musician and then a technician. So, when I am giving
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