Meet Upasak Mukherjee

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Upasak Mukherjee. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Upasak, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I believe confidence and self esteem comes from honest proof of discipline. For me, it is not so much dependent on outward successes but in showing up consistently. When it comes to confidence in music, it comes from practicing your craft, when it comes to confidence in your body, it comes from going to the gym regularly, when it comes to social confidence, it comes from putting yourself out there even if it is uncomfortable.- you get the drift. Being willing to fail and seeking discomfort promotes action and consistent action demystifies the actual importance of outward success and helps the brain prioritise “doing” instead of “achieving.” To me, that is the source of true confidence and self-esteem.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I compose music for film and media. Having graduated from Berklee and studied the art of film and game scoring, I moved to LA and have been working on supporting many impactful stories through my music. A recent film of mine, Elijah, directed by the incredible Razid Season, has recently won an award in the Tasveer Film Festival, which is an Academy Award qualifying film festival! Currently, I have been working on multiple films- some murder mysteries, comedies, American Bollywood, animated action films and some documentaries.

Of course, the root of all my music is the Tabla. I started my musical journey at the age of six under the guidance of my Guruji, Grammy nominated Pt Subhen Chatterjee. On top of recording sessions and composition work I also keep busy with performances. This summer, I had a blast touring in a few venues in Boston, Vermont and North Carolina- I collaborated with folk musicians from China, Sweden, Algeria, Iran, Brasil, Chile, Ecuador, to name just a few. It was an honour playing with members of the SilkRoad Ensemble for four consecutive years during their GMW program. I also played the North Carolina Folk festival with a talented group of folk musicians! The shows in Vermont were particularly special since I got to play with the banjo legend Greg Liszt and the fiddle pioneer Darol Anger with virtuoso cellist, Miranda Henne’s quartet for the 40th year anniversary of the Phantom Theatre. This music was truly unlike anything you have ever heard! We played everything from bluegrass, fiddle music, Shakti tunes, film music to Bach and Vivaldi and after making it rain in Vermont every time we played it, I am convinced that Vivaldi’s Summer is incomplete without a Tabla in the arrangement!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1) Seek discomfort! Go out there and fail as many times as you can! If you’re failing, it means you are doing. Doing is more important than succeeding. Ironically more action leads to more chances of success anyway.

2) Travel- even if you have a small budget. Venturing outwards is an absolutely crucial part of the experience of looking inwards and understanding your own biases.

3) If you practice failing consistently, you are bound to find some areas where you are bad at failing. It’s a pretty good idea to build your life’s work around these areas.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Of course! I would love to collaborate with film makers and game developers. Whether you are in pre-production or deep into the process, feel free to reach out anytime. Here’s my website-

https://www.upasakmukherjee.net/

Hit me up on insta at @upashock.wav or shoot me an email from the website. Let’s get creative!

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