We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Atharva Phadke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Atharva, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

This particular answer is divided into two instances: one, where I started to dream of being a musician, and second, when I started to consider it as an actual job and began working towards laying true my ambition.

Back in 2010, when I was 13, I had started listening more-completely to music by bands and artists that I loved at the time, and still do. Red Hot Chili Peppers being my number one pick, which included watching their concerts online like movies and learning as much as I could about their stage presence and the participation and love of their audience for their music and their personage. I must have watched ‘Live at Slane Castle’ at least 20 times by now, it being one of the best shows I have ever seen as a fan of music in general. Back then, I never understood what it meant to be a band with a setlist and rehearsals and all that other jazz that I now know makes this job a very trying one.

I had a totally childish idea of that job, never truly thinking nor having the need to think of things like promoters, social media presence, marketing, and what have you. It was a purely unmarred vision that was lead on by the love of music and getting to see the world that is banking upon you to play your “greatest hits”, with the prospective audience promising in unsaid measure that they would sing back the lyrics and melodies that you crafted in your four-walled-world.

Daydreaming is one of the first things I learned to do freely as a songwriter and performer. Unbound I would dream of being a member of that very band I so revered (I now laugh at that past naïveté but such is the mind that is tainted with the shamelessness and boldness of youth).

After doing the same thing with other bands that I looked up to such as Alter Bridge and Coldplay, I started to actually write my own music (in hindsight it wasn’t very good, which is actually a good thing), and some semblance of a plan had begun to formulate.

A year or two later, I played my first show with original music and seeing the response of the crowd I decided that if I was to spend my life doing anything that worth doing, it would be music, and doing so in the capacity of a singer, songwriter, musician, and performer would be the ideal choice for me (mostly because the prospect of being those things is still very tantalising to me).

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Even though no one from my family is a musician, neither my parents (Baba/Dad being a police officer and Aai/Mom being an advocate) nor my sisters (veterinarian, and a lawyer), my parents have always been aficionados of all art including theatre, dance, and music. I definitely credit them with letting my freak-flag-fly as a kid who would spend most of his time humming to himself struggling to figure out basic things like the need to do homework or grasp a widely spoken language like English (I was terrible at it). I could throw words around like Dyslexia, ADHD, Synesthesia, and the likes that people have often associated academically-struggling children with, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because I am now doing what I love wholly – music.

It really doesn’t matter if you have natural ability or not, what matters is what you do with it. There are uncountable examples of people pulling extremely brilliant feats through sheer practice and dedication. So, what does it matter, if it is your calling or your purpose, or not. You will keep working on it just the same, because you love it.

I am now an LA-based musician and singer/songwriter from Mumbai, finishing up my Associate Degree in Vocal Performance. While singing is how I translate all music into something perceivable, I thoroughly enjoy songwriting as well. It’s definitely an acquired taste for me. What I love about songwriting is that there are absolutely no rules and you can stretch your “illogical muscle” as much as you want because it’s yours and you get to decide what you do with it. If it sounds good, then it is good music.

I love listening to an immense variety of genres because I mentally catalog music based on moods and shapes. The rock bands, the punks, grunge, disco, IDM, classical music, film soundtracks, percussion/drum music from Japan and Turkey, Hindustani and Carnatic music (mainly Konnakol) which hails from India, and some others too – some of these I’ve now grown to love while some I find innately enjoyable. I cannot explain that statement but such it is.

I started playing gigs around the city of Mumbai, only playing solo, since I could never form a band, due to having little to no exposure to other like-minded musicians. Playing solo made me realise that I love rhythms that catch a listener off-guard, and slowly, I subconsciously started incorporating “weird and unpredictable” things in my music that to me, became just what that song needed to keep it interesting to me, since I very easily and quickly get bored of things.

At the start of 2020, I got a job as a guitar instructor at Adagio, which is in Mumbai. A week after that, I released my debut single – ‘The City’, before embarking on a 7-city tour around India for Motojojo (a dear friend’s startup based in Mumbai), playing 2 festivals during that time. The tour ended just as the world was bracing for Covid-19 and the following lockdown. Fortunately, I held the teaching job in the months of quarantine, working online.

My sophomore single – ‘Fear’, was released in August 2021, which encapsulated my struggles with anxiety regarding “people and the things they do and think.” It was picked up for a Weekly List by Rolling Stone India and a couple of other local music blogs like Livelee.

Still gigging around, I came to L.A. for school, and in the second-half of 2022 I put out 2 back-to-back singles as “sister-songs”, namely ‘Hygiene’ and ‘Soon’, both of which talk about different aspects of social class, loss, self-worth and caveats relating to propaganda.

I am currently in the process of recording 3 new songs, all planned for release this year that is 2024.

The first being about the natural radioactivity of bananas, second being about the Orwellian quote: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”, and the third song that came from a wonderment that was “What if I was a horse? That would be cool as hell.”

‘Indian Man’ and ‘Banana Handshake’ are in the process of post-production and recording, respectively.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had a genuine “this-is-my-calling” moment in 2013, when 6-months into teaching myself how to play the guitar I wrote my 3rd song ever, and it was absolute trash but it sent a surge of an-unnameably-awesome-feeling that I still feel in some shape or form every time I finish writing a song.
About a year after the aforementioned experience, I felt the exact opposite of it. A total disregard for the fact that I was still learning, I felt useless and totally talent-less. An hour or so after that crisis simmered down, I just simply decided that this was my purpose – to make music and write songs.

Growing up I used to sing all the time, even before I took up an instrument. It was only after I took up the guitar that I realized how helpful singing or even humming is. I never had formal lessons so I had make my own exercises and whatnot, mostly just learning how to play Red Hot Chili Peppers’ and Coldplay’s music on this horrible acoustic guitar that was just the worst. So, when it came to learning solos, I quickly found that I was outgunned by just using my ear, so I started humming what I needed to play to better fit it into my memory. I approached music guns-akimbo and it is a genuine surprise that it worked. No cap.

When you’re a few years older than when you first start making music, we all have our self-teachings that we somehow inculcate within our minds. I learned that to make music that surprises even your own brain, one must dampen and/or even decimate one’s own inhibitions.

For me – books, films, plays, podcasts, music – provide us with information about whatever we want to learn. There have been some from all of these things that have definitely made a dent in my mind, and still hold an undeniable place in my subconscious. These things that you watch, read, listen to, or even think of, will never truly leave you. They will forever change you as a person day-in and day-out, and I think that is absolutely smashing and I must never stop seeking out information from wherever I can access it.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have read a lot of books over the past few years, mainly philosophy, fantasy fiction, and science fiction. Some books just make a profound impact on a readers’ life and I definitely have my fair share of those. To name some authors and their works:

*George Orwell –
1984 (this book and its message about social class, propaganda, and totalitarianism still holds true, close to 100 years after release)
Animal Farm (because the world functions on corruption and exploitation)

*Ayn Rand – (Her books have always taught me to exercise a clean and honourable work ethic and the need to believe in one’s self and one’s craft)
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
We the Living
Anthem

*Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (an absolute must-read for everyone)

*The Bhagavad Gita (Not as a religious work since I am an agnostic, but as a person who struggles with anxiety, this book has really helped me find my centre in dire times. It’s just such a mood.)

*Fyodor Dostoyevsky –
The Idiot
Demons
Crime and Punishment

*Virginia Woolf –
A Room of One’s Own
The Waves

*Arthashastra by Kautilya

*Poverty, by America – Matthew Desmond

Honorable mentions: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, and The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

Other works by Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, Chomsky, Emerson, Thoreau and the likes that would otherwise render the list too long.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atharvaphadkemusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atharva.phadke.94/about
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@atharvaphadke934?si=Dba-3LzNHEMjQOfC
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/ZSkx7zaCutSmnnjr5

Image Credits

Wei-Hong Weng, Belle Shen, Mihir Singh, Logan Hannig