PERSONALITIES
The
Gigging
Girl
Mohini Dey, have been described as a
prodigy by many musicians. This girl
is probably the youngest bass player in
India
A Girl who eats rhythm,
breathes chords and live music.
Music rematches her soul. In
return she rematches other's by
her music. She had shared stage
with music maestro A.R
Rahman, keyboard genius
Jordan Rudess, three-time
Grammy Award winning guitar
virtuoso Steve Vai or ace
drummer Marco Minnemann
and Guthrie [Govan]. At the age
of 22 she is excelling the sky
with each new day. She first
came to public appreciation with
A.R. Rahman's episode of Coke
Studio. She is frequently seen
with A.R Rahman in his
concerts. Mohini spends much of
her time travelling across the
globe for tours and gigs. In an
interview with Times of India,
She said she don't have friends
of her age as "There are a lot of
differences in our thought
processes and maturity. I don’t
like cheesy topics and instead
prefer to talk about music, life
and nature." She told.
Her father is jazz fusion and sessions bassist Sujoy Dey and her
mother Romia Dey is a classical singer. So music was in her
genes. She only needed to hone her talent with her hard-work.
When Mohini was roughly two or three, she was sitting next to
her father as he played his bass guitar, which was connected to
a processor and a pair of headphones. When Sujoy put the
headphones on his little daughter, she could hear what he was
playing, and, suddenly, she was tapping the floor in rhythm
with the twangs. He realised that she had an ear for music.
Mohini was a trained guitarist by 13, and a meeting with the
veteran drummer, arranger, music producer, singer and
composer Ranjit Barot gave path to her talent. Soon, Mohini
became a regular on Mumbai’s live performance scene. By the
time she was 13, she had performed with keyboardist Louis
Banks, renowned music producer and composer Nitin Sawhney,
sitar player Niladri Kumar, tabla player Zakir Hussain and
Mumbai’s jazz cats Floyd Fernandes, Karl Peters and Joe Alvares.
She had also had a taste of performing with Bollywood artists
Shreya Ghoshal and Suchitra Pillai. It was A.R. Rahman who
gave a big recognition to this talented girl. Rahman, chose her
over Tal Wilkenfeld [an Australian singer and bassist]. That was
a big compliment for Mohini. She managed eight hours of
school, tuitions, homework, practicing her music and
accompanying her father to studios and rehearsals. The thirst
for music made her to cross all the barriers. When she was in
Class 12 she was completing the course via correspondence. The
night before her board exams, she was in Chennai in Rahman’s
studio, recording until 4 am. She flew back to Mumbai, she went
straight to the examination hall from the airport, wrote her
paper, and flew back to Chennai to continue her work.