We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Prana Kishore below.
Hi Prana Kishore, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Mental Health, Grammys, and Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli Mission
The Recording Academy the Grammys invited Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli to become their Voting Member due to his extensive work as a Singer, Song Writer, Music Composer, and Music Producer. His new mission is to compose music that relieves stress and makes next-gen listeners happy with upbeat mood-changing Prana Music to also help the global mental health crisis. Music can play a major role, and instantly reach everyone in the least cost-effective way in the private space of individuals. He requests every Grammy Artist to consider keeping mental health in mind in everything they do with the objective of how they can help everyone in need of help. Grammys is not just about nominations and awards. Musicare is one division that does a lot of work helping Grammy artists with their problems. Grammy Museum does amazing work preserving our rich history in music for the next generations to know who the greatest singers were, composers instrument players, and why they worked so hard in creating masterpieces with facilities they did not have at that time.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
This is the story of Prana Kishore/Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli Indian American from Nashville, USA, from learning an instrument from a blind Teacher to Song Writing, Singing, and composing without music sheets, to releasing through his Prana Kishore Records,90 albums in 9 languages worldwide to winning the Prestigious World Artist Award from Josie Music International award in 2023 and Guinness Record for Longest Officially Released Song lasting 5 days. His journey in music started in India at the age of 7 when his father gave him an Indian percussion instrument, the Tabla. The Tabla Teacher, who was blind, came home daily at 6 am and his mother woke him up at 4.30 am to practice. He had to learn without any music sheets because his teacher was blind, and he memorized each class. He started giving stage performances at the age of 9, traveling to many cities in India. He became an Accidental Singer in Engineering College to Avoid Bullying when he discovered his voice, singing Hindi songs to avoid bullying, and realized he was good at it when his band gained popularity. He took lessons to sing Indian classical music and became the youngest classical singer. passed the vocal exam to sing on government radio as there were no private radio stations. While studying for a master’s degree in engineering as the leader of a college band he won many Best Vocalist awards. Prana Kishore Band became the biggest in India in the 80’s with 60 musicians and performed 600 stage shows. Early Career and First Album as a Music Composer India, Every Sunday Prana Kishore taught Tabla and singing lessons at Madras School of Blind, Free of charge in memory of his blind teacher. He met Joseph Krishna-MS Viswanathan music director and learned about instant music composing in studios and went on to sing for record labels HMV and INRECO. He was also working as Sales Manager of Ford Trucks. Prana Kishore recorded his First Studio album in 1983 “Nazhayira Divya Prabandham” in Tamil (4000 verses praising God) was his transition from percussion player to singer to music composer. He donated all the sales proceeds to a temple. His family migrated to the United States in 2000. After a 20-year gap in music, he returned to the studio facing challenges of the ever-evolving music industry, Music distribution moved from selling cassettes and CDs to music downloading to live streaming. He learned the specifications of song recording and the standards required by Apple Music and Spotify. He learned music recording software like Logic Pro and Pro-tools. He released his Double CD 108 Minutes biggest album in 2012 in the World Music genre in Sanskrit “Om Shri Rama Hanuman Raksha”, which means God will protect you. He established himself as a Singer, songwriter, Music Composer, and Music producer, designing his album covers, and started Prana Kishore Records to distribute 90 albums through Prana Kishore Records Worldwide doing marketing and PR himself with one goal that his Prana Music should help the mental health global crisis
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Music is a divine gift from God and he was fortunate that his father initiated him into music. Music helps children to do well in their studies by removing their stress and always helps them throughout their life. The musical talents be it songwriting, singing, or playing an instrument must be encouraged by everyone for the overall benefit of the society. As musicians, we can change the world and make the world a happy place bring peace even stop conflicts. Prana Kishore Plays 10 Instruments, Sings in 9 Languages. He has in
SPOTIFY 3.2 Million Streams from 162 Countries out of 195 Countries in the World and majority do not even understand the languages of his songs which are in Sanskrit, Awadhi, Hindi. Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, and other Indian languages.Instruments Proficient: Tabla, TablaTarang, Mridamgam,Dholak,Bangoes,Triple Cango,Thumbas,Digitaranag,Drums,Organ, and Pancha Mukha Vadya
Awards:
1-World Music Artists Award from Josie Music Awards in 2023
2-Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Officially Released song lasting 5.5 days for this album
“Secret Sounds of Sacred Sanskrit”
3-Asia and India Book of Records for his album “Healing Mantras Miracle Chants to Walk with Sri Krishna to Happiness and Heaven”
Genres: World Music,New Age Music,Chants and Healing Music,Rock,POP, Devotional Music
He has written 2 books on Chess with his father
His latest Book “How to Write Sri Rama Jayam-Jai Sri Ram to Solve Your Problems in 21 Days” was dedicated to Sri Rama Temple in Ayodhya, UP, India
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The biggest lesson is to always keep learning if one has to be successful or even to survive in any industry or career due to ever changing technologies which can make one obsolete over night. The trends in music are changing every day. EDM alone has 9 types now. Genres are becoming fluid making it difficult to distinguish a genre.
Technology is changing and the perceived threat from AI in music is creating more copyright challenges for everyone. AI can now write lyrics, compose music, can play many instruments, and sing in male or female voice.
Does this mean the artists will lose their jobs or income and Prana Kishore says NO. AI can be successful only with the help of humans and not on its own. Prana Kishore joined the Recording Academy in its fight to ban AI-generated music from Grammys to protect Artists and copyright problems AI can create. Prana Kishore also joined the Recording Academy in its fight to stop the fraud in concert tickets and the congress passed laws in July 2024
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pranakishore.com
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PranaKishore
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3UZEeD1clI9Haz2etF5hAi
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/prana-kishore/500341815
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/prana-kishore-bommireddipalli/1131031120
