Pawan of ‘Love Story’ has been the talk of the town ever since Saranga Dariya came out. It will be an understatement to say the film got a huge hype and even the business hiked after the number released. Soft spoken and humble, Pawan hit the bulls eye with his debut film in Telugu. He was born in Chennai and moved to Hyderabad when he was very young. He finished his academics in Hyderabad and relocated to Chennai just to learn music. In a chat with Y.Sunita Chowdhary of Klapboardpost.com, Pawan says, “I would listen to a lot of music in school and interact with many musicians when I was around 16 years old. That was during intermediate. It was a slow, gradual process and I began installing software on mom’s Ipad and sent it to friends. I began with a keyboard. I was doing graduation at St Mary’s and was simultaneously attending the music institute ABRSM. The piano lessons were for three years.”
Pawan would always discuss music at home and his parents encouraged him, suggesting he join a good music institution. He is a lucky man, his father Vijay C Kumar is an accomplished cinematographer in the Telugu film industry and has been working for the past 30 years. His grandfather is also a cinematographer. He shares, “Art was always there in the family but my people were not pushy. My brother works in an IT office, he has a good taste for music as well. In Chennai there were two big music institutes, Swarnabhoomi Music Academy and AR Rahman Conservatory. The latter is almost like an engineering college. I did three years of intense study in KM Music Conservatory. They teach you a lot of stuff. There is history, analysis, hindustani, western etc that shapes your thought process. It was too much for me to learn everything at once. I took it slowly and the teachers taught me with a lot of patience and that helped me in the second year. I have observed a lot of people go there without knowing what they want but they want to do music. There are so many options when you take up music, you can become a teacher, a musicologist etc. I wanted to self-discover. I was in performance and also in composition and was also a DJ in between. I saw my grades doing well in composition”.
The music director recalls a lot of people, juniors asking what their perspective should be and what they should be inclined towards. He quips, “Learn everything from the beginning and you’ll find what you like. Theoretically I was weak but I picked up a lot. With the newly learnt music grammar I could speak so well. We had composition classes in the third year, so I decided to take it up as a major. It was not just music, it was a knowledge pack. I had an idea of symphonies and my brother introduced me to western classical music. I had a basic idea about how it works. I explored sound designing, Hindustani etc.”
Is music moving at a fast pace? “Yes, way rapidly outside compared to India. There will be a vast number of genes and we shall see new people coming in. Luckily we have an ensemble called the 100 feet road ensemble. I clearly remember that my composition was to make 5 and few of them were from the 100 feet road. The three compositions selected for the final day were watched by AR Rehman. He called me for dinner right after the show and asked me how I made it. He told me to make a music album. He called me for a project that didn’t happen immediately. My first project officially was ‘MOM’. I did the background score and I was also the additional programmer for Be Nazara. AR Rehman began calling me for work and for four years I was with him. The first was MOM, then the Dark Stuff, The Fakir Of Venice, Robot 2.2, Nawab, Mersal, Sarkar, Bigil.”
About Love Story, The 29 year old musician says he never thought the songs would pick up so well in the beginning. He says, “Most of the songs are situational and thought it will be enhanced after the film releases but it became a hit far earlier than expected. before only. Saranga came with high expectations. My career took after my study at AR Rehman’s school. I wanted to work in Kammula’s Fida but it didn’t happen. The compliment from Chiranjeevi and Mahesh Babu was overwhelming. Chiranjeevi had spoken at the audio event and Mahesh Babu tweeted about that and AR Rehman retweeted and the entire experience was surreal.”
