Mystik Vibes
– music without barriers –
Mystik Vibes is a cross-cultural collective from India – a musical collaboration between Hindustani tabla player / percussionist Muthu Kumar, Carnatic flautist Amith Nadig, jazz-pianist/electronic keyboardist Aman Mahajan and French electric bass player Mishko M'ba.
Each of the musicians is a solo artist in his own right, who has performed internationally at many festivals and stages. As a result, the band's sound, though rooted in Indian tradition, is tinged with cultural and contemporary musical influences from around the world.
Mystik Vibes recently launched their debut CD, The Shadow Tree. The band is soon to be featured on IndiEarth Out There (Season 2, yet unaired), a video series for alternative, non-mainstream music from a wide spectrum of genres.
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Amith Nadig | bamboo flute
Amith Nadig comes from a family of musicians and has been widely acclaimed as a child prodigy of Karnataka. The son and student of noted flautist Vidwan B.K. Anantharam, Amith is also undergoing training under PadmaBhushana Sangeetha Kalanidhi Dr. R.K. Srikantan to learn the finer aspects of the Gayaki style of flute playing.
He performed extensively over the past 17 years, at hundreds of concert venues and festivals in India and abroad. Apart from playing many solo concerts, Amith also plays duet concerts with his father. He has 10 albums to his credit which showcase a myriad of colors in flute-playing techniques. One of the youngest A-grade artistes of All India Radio, he has been featured on the prestigious National Programme of Music at the young age of 21, and also on Doordarshan's South Zone hook-up concert.
Mishko M'ba | bass guitar
Mishko M’ba is among the cream of French bassists, having worked with with renowned artists such as Ray Charles, Raul de Souza, Lucky Ali, Khaled, Barbara Hendrix and Didier Lockwood. He has an exciting, intensely dynamic style, contributing melodic and rhythmic structures which are the very heartbeat of the Pondicherry‐based band Emergence. He studied western classical music at Toulouse and focused later on jazz and rock. As an in-‐demand bass player who really makes his instrument sing, he has toured in USA, Europe and Asia with various bands of different musical styles for many years. Mishko is a permanent member of the French band from Réunion island: Ziskakan, and the Paris ensemble Elexir with Raoul de Souza.
He is an active musician on the Indian circuit, living partly in Réunion, France and partly in Pondicherry.
Aman Mahajan | keyboards
Fortunate to have worked with a wide variety of musicians of diverse backgrounds, Aman Mahajan, a pianist, keyboardist and graduate of the Berklee College of Music (Boston), is influenced by jazz, folk, classical and electronic styles of music from Africa, India and the American continents.
Based out of Bangalore, India, Aman Mahajan leads his own jazz/world piano trio, REFUGE. He regularly plays, composes and arranges with UNK: The Radha Thomas Ensemble, Mystik Vibes, Krishna's Temple Rock, Suraj Mani and The Tattva Trippers, and Arati Rao's Kaya Band. Previous collaborations include Lucky Ali, Arooj Aftab, Gamelan Galak Tika, Project O.N.S., Joya, RED Mawkin, Schizophonic, Instinct, Clinton Cerejo (MTV Coke Studio Seasons 2 & 3) and some of the country's foremost jazz musicians.
Muthu Kumar | tabla, percussion
With a huge collection of percussion instruments and skills from his travels around the world, tabla player Muthu Kumar, disciple of Ustad Alla Rakha and Ustad Zakir Hussain, has created his own unique sound with a percussion set up consisting of a cajon, a darbuka, bongo drums, tablas, kanjeera and a wide range of small effect percussion instruments.
Muthu's musical accompaniment can be heard on musical genres as varied as Jazz, Hindustani classical, Carnatic classical, Bhajan, Indipop and Gospel. He has had the honour of playing with greats like Alice Coltrane, Slawomir Kulpowitz, Begam Parveen Sultana, Bombay Jayashree, Maynard Ferguson, Lucky Ali, Anup Jalota, Uli Lenz, François Jeanneau, Mysore Manjunath, Ranjit Barot, Konarak Reddy, Faiyaz Khan and Gerard Machado.
Muthu has conducted rhythm improvisation workshops all over the world and has worked in Colorado University as visiting artist.
