Music that is all encompassing: one moment, it is resonant of green paddy fields; at another, it trembles like desert winds. This is what singer and composer Pradeep Kumar’s ‘Pann’ sounds like. To create the 30-minute piece, he has tapped into the sounds of five Tamil landscapes such as kurinji (mountains), mullai (forests), marutham (agricultural lands), neithal (seashore) and paalai (dry lands), and added a bit of futuristic touch. The singer, along with a team of over 40 musicians, has created what he terms the “world’s first programmable NTF on such a scale”.
The seed for ‘Pann’ was sown during the lockdowns. “With no performances for two years, I was forced to be at home. That is when I thought, how does one create a viable economy for musicians? There are lakhs of them in Tamil Nadu alone, like nadhaswaram and tavil players especially who were majorly affected,” he says. Pradeep’s search took him to blockchain technology, realising “it was very fundamental to art, be it a performance or painting”.
To him, the best thing about “using such magnificent digital strength”, is that an artiste is able to “create provenance for their art work”. He explains: “We are able to say that I created this work. We are able to prove that we are its creator.” For him, this was ground-breaking. This technology, that used an alternative economic system — that is crypto economy — drew him, and Pradeep started exploring the world of NFTs.
