Prabir Mehta On the Language of the Cosmos

by Charles McGuigan 10.2024

Prabir Mehta clung to his mother’s hand as they made their way through the bustle of the Ahmedabad Market. He was no more than five at the time and could hear music everywhere. A herd of cars, congested in traffic, blasted five or six different music styles simultaneously, as if competing. Hindus and Buddhists sang their prayers, and even in those rare quiet places you would almost always hear somewhere in the distance the rhythmic pulse of a sitar. In the family home, Prabir would sit on the kitchen floor from the time he was three and beat on pots and pans in imitation of the tabla his uncle played. He looked up to his mother, and she smiled down on him and squeezed his small hand. And then they began to sing classical Hindi songs in unison. 

“Everything in India is music, music is everywhere,” says an adult Prabir Mehta. “Music has been a big part of my life since before I can remember.”

Prabir was born in Ahmedabad, a sprawling city in the dusty almost desert-like state of Gujarat. His mother, Ranna, was a professional singer with a master’s degree in chemistry; his father, Tushar, worked as an on-air journalist with All India Radio (comparable to National Public Radio in America), and held a master’s degree in Shakespearean studies.  

His parents moved Prabir and his brother Herschel to Bombay at an early age.  “Mom and Dad worked in Bombay and the rest of the family—uncles, aunts grandparents, cousins everybody else—lived in Abmedabad,” says Prabir. “So we lived in Bombay during the school time, and as often as possible went back to Admedabad because that’s home.”

Well before either Prabir or his brother were born, Tushar and Ranna traveled to the United States and stayed with family here. This was in the 1970s, and they did a whirlwind tour of the country, visiting Vegas, California, New York, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades. They fell in love with the US and saw it as a land of unlimited possibilities. So they applied to settle here, but it would be a long time before they were able to make the move.

“In the late seventies and early eighties, and I would say even today, the United States was seen as a beacon of opportunity, and if you want to raise the bar the US is one of the few places on earth where you can do that,” Prabir says. “The entire world wanted to be in the US.”

Finally, in 1988, with their paperwork approved, the Mehtas prepared to move their family to a new land.   “We’re moving to the US, so you should say goodbye to all the people that you’re grateful for because we’re leaving,” Tushar told his sons.

They flew into JFK and Prabir, eight years old with wide eyes, stepped off the plane and onto American soil, and the very first thing he saw was a young man with a Mohawk. “I knew I had landed in America,” Prabir tells me.  “I actually wrote a song about it with my band called ‘The Immigrant Song,’ and I know that’s a Zepplin song title, but I made it about actually being an immigrant.”

The new arrivals piled into the minivan that belonged to Prabir’s uncle and headed over to Jersey where they spent the night with relatives. The dinner was Indian fare, as was breakfast the next morning, but early that afternoon Prabir would taste an American standard for the first time in his life, and it would be a game changer.

They were headed to Richmond, and on about the time they passed Baltimore, his uncle pulled the minivan into the parking lot of a place called Pizza Hut. Prabir ordered a drink and he was handed a large Coke that came in a plastic cup the size of small bucket that brimmed with Coke and ice discs. “Okay, this is pretty good,” he thought. 

And then the pizza arrived. No toppings, just cheese. Prabir brought the vertex of the triangle he held up to his mouth, and then bit down. “What I tasted was so much salt and I got that fake carb goodness for the first time,” Prabir remembers. “Some people ask me when I became a citizen. And I say, ‘Well, technically it was when I was 21 years old and I took the oath.’ But I think I became a US citizen about 42 hours after landing in the States and eating at Pizza Hut. I’m here, I thought. There’s no turning back.  There’s grass growing everywhere.  There’s room everywhere. It’s not everything on top of each other cause India is so densely populated. And they have pizza.”

For a time the family lived with a relative in Henrico County, and eventually moved into an apartment. But his parents, who were both highly educated, seasoned professionals, had trouble finding work. 

“We lived with my uncle for awhile in the West End  in Henrico. And then we got our own apartment. We hopped around. Mom and dad couldn’t find a job. 1988 was very difficult. Dad has his master in Shakespearean literature, and mom has her masters in chemistry she was a performer, but having an accent was more difficult back then than it is today,” Prabir tells me. “The openness of embracing it as something that is cool or exotic today didn’t exist back then. I think there was a mistrust of this guy with an accent.” 

So they took work where they could find it. “Dad worked at 7-Eleven for a while, mom worked at Burlington Coat Factory,” says Prabir. “And then they did this thing with inventory where they’d go to Wal-Marts and inventory all the fishing lures, one by one. They worked wherever the could because it was necessary to pay the bills and feed the children.  I watched them work non-stop.” They didn’t retire until they were in their seventies. “But things are good now, everybody’s healthy and happy,”  he says.

About a year and a half after the family settled in, Prabir’s aunt and uncle presented him with a ukulele, which would be a stepping stone for a guitar. Prabir took to the strings almost instinctively. “It was not long after that that I learned what I need to learn,” he says. “I proved I could learn chords and strum rhythms.” And he wasn’t playing other people’s songs. He was making up his own. 

In short order he received a small guitar. “lt was a toy guitar that had six strings, and it sucked, but you could get away with making one or two things sound good,” says Prabir. “Then eventually they saw that I’m not letting up on it, and so when I was thirteen they bought me a beginner’s guitar: It was a Goya.” He practiced constantly and began to understand the instrument intimately. Somewhere in there, too, he and a few of his friends began playing together in a makeshift band.

A couple years later four or five of his friends along with his parents pooled their resources and bought Prabir a real guitar—a Fender acoustic. His band came to be known, for a short period, as the Blind Side. “It was a hip name and we put out some cassettes,” Prabir says. “We’d create labels and sell them at shows. We were just trying to get the music out there and get people to listen.  That band eventually renamed itself a hundred times and played different places.” Among those venues—The Jewish Mother Alley Katz, Moondance, and Sunset Grill.

After finishing high school, Prabir took a gap year. He and a friend started a small company that created posters for local music venues. “We wanted to take on some promotional work and we started working with a couple of bands which led me to meet a lot of venue owners,” he says.  “I was dealing with Chuck Wrenn at Moondance. And Chris and Heidi at Alley Katz. if it involved music I was into it.”

He was accepted in the music program at Virginia Commonwealth University, but fairly soon realized that scholastic approach was not for him.

“I just didn’t fit in” he says. “I just felt like my mind was not as concerned with why the circle of fifths works, nor was my mind as concerned with the rhythmic changes the Dvorak was able to layer. What I was interested in what how to get to a point where I’m part of the music industry.”

Prabir considered briefly considered mass communications, but was quickly discouraged. “I hated it,” he says. “I thought it was too capitalist for me.”

But then he took a class called Intro to City with Dr. Gary Johnson. “I would walk around the city and be like we just talked about this exact problem in class and now I’m seeing it first hand,” Prabir says. “So I went into urban planning because this is where the real communication happens. This is where the real rubber hits the road. I started to think about these infrastructural things.  It taught me how all of it works together at the same time.”

After college we went to work at the VCU library and with the School of Social Work. Go-nowhere jobs that paid the bills. “I was living in the Fan, playing rock and roll, going on tour and then at some point in my early twenties I met a friend who said, ‘If you want a job in the music industry I think the Richmond Symphony is hiring in the operations department.’”

Prabir applied and got a position as an ops technician. He tells me about his supervisor there, Laura Adams, who was director of operations for the symphony. “There are certain people that change your life forever,” says. “Laura was one of them.  She was my first good boss. Laura was great.”

From her he learned how to make a performance absolutely seamless by working behind the scenes. “Let me tell you what’s done in the world of operations,” he says, bringing his hands together as if in prayer. “Musicians show up. We get them where they need to go. We’re in charge of hiring the guest musicians that are necessary, and getting them from San Francisco to Richmond. We make sure that whatever exotic instrument they need is awaiting them, tuned up and ready to play at the rehearsal, or for their private practice. And if a musician says my reed broke and I use a special reed that comes from Vancouver, we get it delivered here overnight.”

He invites me to imagine opening night of a performance at the Carpenter Centre. “So at eight pm on the dot, the executive director, who was David Fisk at the time, stands on center stage and in a British accent and a great calm voice says, ‘Greetings everybody and welcome to the Richmond Symphony,’ Prabir says in his own calm, British accent.  “And the show is flawless and it was ninety percent because Laura Adams knew what she was doing.”

While learning about operations from Laura, Prabir also acquired a storehouse of knowledge from David Fisk. “I love them both,” he says. “From David I learned about fundraising and grants, and how programming works, and how many people you need in marketing, and who do you have to go to lunch with to get a ten thousand dollar check.”

Prabir would go on to use this knowledge to help one of the city’s greatest art resources. Back in 2005 he became the founding board chair of Gallery 5.  “I was doing backend board stuff, keeping ideas coming, helping Amanda (Robinson, who was founder of the gallery): How were we going to program months of contents?  What’s going on the wall?  Who’s performing? How do we pay the performers? How do we pay rent? How do you make a non-profit work?”

He helped the group through some difficult times over the years, all pro bono.  “That’s been my free gift to Richmond, and to my soul,” Prabir says. “Amanda is great.”

In April 2023 he left Gallery 5 for good and all. “I left the organization,” he says. ‘I said thank you and best of luck, and I’ve since kept my distance because I sacrificed so much time with my family and my music and my personal life. So since April I’ve really enjoyed putting a lot of time back toward the music, back toward the family, and back toward my own mind.” 

Throughout his adult life, Prabir has worked for many organizations throughout the city. 

“I’ve had to learn how to record and edit video, write copy, make marketing material,” he says. “So I’ve worked with the Science Museum of Virginia on a lot of content over many, many years. I’ve put on events through Maymont. I’ve helped their marketing department when they needed a fundraising drive.  I did the Mozart Festival with Classic Revolution RVA for ten years.” He has also continued playing music and scoring independent soundtracks, as well as teaching classes at University of Richmond. 

As it happened, just before the pandemic struck, Prabir and his wife Katie had recently returned from a trip to India. When Covid arrived in all its fury, Prabir, like many of us, retreated to the solitude of his own home where he had the luxury of time and introspection. And then something almost mystical occurred that would lead him down new creative paths.

“I started to really think about Eastern philosophy more often and I was able to reach back and to really connect with my India,” says Prabir. “Up until 2019 I’d lived in a relatively western influence only kind of rock and roll world where the India stuff was allowed only in the world of the Beatles.”

He remembered all the Hindi songs he had learned in his youth and he borrowed his father’s tabla and began playing. “What I discovered is that when I was growing up there wasn’t an Indian musician ever on stage,” Prabir says. “I love Weezer and They Might Be Giants, and Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and all that stuff, but I never saw any Indian dudes on stage.”

That’s when it struck him. “I wanted to put India into rock and roll,” he says. 

So he pressed his first album called “Haanji” which is a respectful Hindi word for “sir.”

“That album is about being an immigrant,” says Prabir. “It’s about coming to the US and learning about US history. Everybody works a nine-to-five job and complains about it, but my parents worked three jobs and didn’t complain. It’s about that and learning about rock music, meeting rock stars, having the American experience as an immigrant. That’s the Haanji album.”

Then in 2022 he had a brainstorm—put on a Diwali Festival. He called his friend Nyan, also a musician, who lives up in Washington. “I said, ‘Hey man, you should do one in DC, I’ll do one in Richmond. It will be small, but it will be a start.’ Much like any other thing, I let the environment shape it. We did one and it was fun.”

That first one in DC was held at Palisades Hub in Northwest, and here in Richmond  at Hardywood on Ownby. “We had tons of people show up,” says Prabir. “The next year was even bigger, and we held it at Hardywood, West Creek. We added a few more bands—Indian musicians only.”

This year’s Diwali Festival will be held from noon till eight on October 26 at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. “Ruchi Gupti a ceramicist and painter will be handling the art portion,” Prabir says. “We’re going to have art vendors and henna vendors. There will be a couple of Indian food vendors. Lewis Ginter is providing beers and wines. And then we’ve got dance performances, classical and folk. And we’ll be putting on a puppet show for kids about the story of Diwali.” The music, of course, will be provided by the four members of the Prabir Trio. “And we’ll wrap it up with a Bollywood dance party,” says Prabir.

Just a few weeks back, the trio released their second album, “Long After the Empire” with a run of six hundred vinyl discs. That first album, “Haanji,” sold out two runs, and the current one seems to be doing very well. The band tours much of the mid-Atlantic with a lot of shows locally and out in Charlottesville. 

Prabir fairly gushes about his band mates. “I can write a song alone,” he says. “But I like work- shopping with other humans. My band mates in the trio are such wonderful musicians and great thinkers. And we all speak the same language—music.  The language of the cosmos.”