Today, we’re talking to Australian Multi-Instrumentalist, Music Producer and Composer, REPUBLICofMONDO — known at AUDIOSPARX & RADIOSPARX as NIGEL MALE.

MERYANA & the team @ RADIOSPARX Music for Business

Published in

AudioSparx and RadioSparx

9 min readJun 4, 2023

**REPUBLICofMONDO composer today, 2023**

Here he shares the earliest guiding lights of his music career, and how travel, his father and playing with the local Aboriginal kids in rural Australia cemented his love of global music.

RADIOSPARX: Welcome REPUBLICofMONDO — NIGEL. It’s great talking to you on our virtual sofa. We’re so glad you’ve joined us from the beautiful city of Edinburgh in Scotland. To get things started, let’s get comfortable and share a beautiful track you wrote in 2010 where you play guitars and bass, called BAHIA. Our readers will be able to listen to this track while they read all about you.

https://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Brazilian/M-sica-Popular-Brasileira/Bahia/430273

And here’s Nigel’s bio for our readers: Australian Composer and Producer Nigel Male creates exciting World Fusion, Dramatic, Downtempo, Chillout, and Nu Jazz for TV themes and commercials. After playing in several Melbourne bands, he began composing for a broad range of media. Expanding his horizons, Nigel created music for ad campaigns in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Europe, including World Cup Kuwait, Estee Lauder, F&F Couture, and WYF TV. Nigel produces and remixes projects for other artists in the USA and UK, and his cinematic music plays worldwide in commercials and film projects.

Now we’ve got your stunning WORLD FUSION track playing, tell us — you’re Australian so our first question is how did you end up in Edinburgh, Scotland?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I was working in Dubai, United Arab Emirates as a Public Relations photographer, and then made connections with an advertising agency who commissioned me to write a theme tune for one of their adverts that was coming out, for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The link is below:-

MUSIC COMPOSED AND PRODUCED BY REPUBLICofMONDO in Dubai, UAE in 2006 for KUWAITI TV

It was for Kuwaiti TV. I wrote it in 24-hours, the agency loved it. I got paid immediately and it went out on TV a few weeks later. Simpler times!

From Dubai, I went to the US, and then from the US I travelled to the UK, then Scotland where I have family. The rest is history!

RADIOSPARX: That’s some journey, from one side of the world to another, from one hemisphere to the other. You must really love travelling. Tell us a bit more about how travel inspires your music.

REPUBLICofMONDO: I had travelling in my blood from an early age and my first trip abroad was to New Orleans. Watching the street music was what I remember the most, Skiffle bands with broom stick basses, and amazing Jazz buskers and brass trios. Later I worked and lived in the Middle East where I first started to find commissions for my media music. Then onto Jamaica and the US while working on a not-for-profit project where I was curating music for local artists. During my time in Baltimore, I developed a love for Urban Beat Poetry. I became a regular at the Organic Soul Tuesdays venue — which is still going — and I’d often meet up with my musician friends from MySpace Music, back in the day when MySpace was the social media platform of choice. I then lived in Venice Beach, LA and became more involved with the alternative Hip Hop scene there.

I eventually settled in Europe. There I would rekindle my interest in Beat Poetry. I would spend time in the Quartier Pigalle and Château Rouge area and met up with Hip Hop/Afrobeat and Jazz musicians who I would work with on various music projects. I moved permanently to Barcelona for some time and now base myself in the UK.

RADIOSPARX: What a journey! It sounds like you love travelling. Are you settled now in Scotland or will you be off again on your global travels soon?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I’m settled in Scotland. I wouldn’t say my travelling days are over, but Scotland is a great base for European travel. I am in Spain regularly, and I like to go to all places where the lifestyle and the music get into my soul, such as Morocco and Italy. I’m so lucky that these amazing places are literally two to three hours away by plane.

RADIOSPARX: Wonderful. Travel is so good for the soul and for creativity. Do you know whether you come from a traveller family?

**FLASHBACK TO THE ‘FRETLESS 80s’: REPUBLICofMONDO recording bass with his TASCAM Four Track Portastudio and ROLAND TR808 Drum Machine**

REPUBLICofMONDO: It’s interesting you ask this. I actually owe my wandering spirit to my maternal grandmother, who was a French Gypsy. I really believe that we are the essence of our ancestors. I see this every day in how I feel about things and how I compose music.

RADIOSPARX: Fantastic, love your idea about our ancestral heritage. It’s such a powerful notion and we owe so much to our ancestors. Thanks for sharing. Tell us about your earliest musical influences.

REPUBLICofMONDO: I would say my earliest musical influences came from my father. He was a piano and organ player who loved to tinker with his Hawaiian slide guitar. He introduced me to African American spiritual music from an early age and his stories from his war years fascinated me and opened up my mind to another world far from suburban Australia where I was brought up. He was a country boy from rural Victoria who was drafted into the army during World War II, where he lived for many years in the Pacific Islands, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

During his time there he started up a Barber Shop Quartet singing African American Spirituals. He had a Baritone voice, and he showed some great pictures of his Quartet, lined up with the jungle behind them. He introduced me to the likes of Harry Belafonte and Gospel Spiritual and Caribbean artists.

From there I discovered the Blues, R&B and Soul music and almost became a purist in this style. I started playing in R&B soul bands and my own hybrid blues band with a high school friend. We wrote original compositions and our own takes on old blues classics from the 20’s to the 60’s. I’m self-taught and started playing music at the age of nine.

My interest in World Fusion music also grew when I was exposed to indigenous culture as a child. We would holiday at my grandmother’s fruit farm where my father was born and raised in rural Victoria, Australia. I would play with the local Koorie (Aboriginal) children and soon became fascinated with traditional indigenous music and later became interested in various tribal music from other cultures.

RADIOSPARX: You’re painting such a picture of your musical influences, and that’s amazing. Music comes from so much more than just being able to play a few chords on an instrument. Music is the lifeblood for musicians and you’re explaining this all so beautifully. Tell us about your composing routine.

REPUBLICofMONDO: I don’t actually have any routine or single creative process when I make music. Often, I come up with ideas in my head and then get something down on my iPad. I find the iPad a great starting tool for developing creative ideas.

Then I just ‘AirDrop’ preliminary files to my Mac and take it from there. Other times I might be playing around with some old music or cleaning up files and an idea is spurred on from that. I might then completely rewrite something that I may have started months or years before. I get inspired by many different situations, memories, new music I come across when travelling or even films. Sometimes even certain sounds can inspire me to make music. My rule is that there are no rules, however I think about music every minute of every day.

RADIOSPARX: We love the spontaneity of what you describe. Thanks for this. Please tell us about the kit you use.

REPUBLICofMONDO: I use a combination of my MacBook AIR M1 and a variety of real instruments which I have collected over the years. I will play instruments, my bass, my guitars, and my percussion instruments to get ideas, then I’ll work with programmes to produce the track.

My MacBook AIR runs my Motu Digital Performer and Motu 828 audio interface. I use UVI workstation sampler, Plugsound Pro and various Motu, and Native Instrument synths such as Absynth. I have experimented with different guitars and basses over the years. From acoustic bass guitars to double bass and fretless electric bass guitar. But my mainstay and the one I have kept most of my life in my old 1972 Fender Jazz bass which I still use today.

RADIOSPARX: Inspirational. Thank you. What’s your favorite musical genre?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I would say my favorite music style — for composing — is World Fusion and Chillout. In both of those genres, my favorite traditional genres can still find a home; Blues, Soul, Jazz, Funk, Latin, Dub, Trip Hop etc. In the 90s I listened to a lot of Acid Jazz. I loved the way Acid Jazz uses traditional music styles for inspiration and samples that developed into something fresh in the same vein as Hip Hop did in the 80’s. When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of Rock music but as soon as I discovered Funk, Soul, Jazz, and Blues that was the path I decided to follow.

My formative years with my friend, as I described above, were very much about writing hybrid-style Blues, combining old Blues classics with our own interpretations, and also writing original compositions in the Blues and Jazz vein, with funky elements.

RADIOSPARX: Fantastic. Music has been your life, just as it is ours. We really appreciate you sharing these thoughts with us. Tell us how you deal with the business side of your composing life?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I network with musicians physically and online. I am old-school and a great believer in making personal connections — friendships — with like-minded souls, so I go to as many networking events as possible. I’ve also had a long and fantastic relationship with AudioSparx and Radiosparx, plus I use SoundCloud and sometimes YouTube to share my songs with the world. I’ve had great success with just cold-calling people — a little bit old-school now — as I said, but I think you have to ‘do business’ in the way that’s right for you. Get contacts in whatever way suits you. There is no right or wrong way. Some people hate social media. I am perhaps one of those people, but I can see its benefits. I prefer talking to people in real life.

RADIOSPARX: We get you! What would you say to a young musician who is starting out?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I would say to young musicians, always look to the roots of the music. I love discovering contemporary music and discovering new styles, but never forget about the raw traditional styles that gave birth to generations of exciting new music. Also remember to never be afraid of bending the rules and being individual.

RADIOSPARX: That’s such great advice. Thank you. And lastly, what do you think of AI and the media reports about AI in music?

REPUBLICofMONDO: I am really embracing AI now. I have been using it for Art and Design for a while now, and more recently and decided to start experimenting with AI to create my own original voice samples. This is something I hope to explore more in the future. Just like sampling and virtual instruments, I think it will be a new creative tool to enhance what we create, rather than take over. But the future is unknown so we just need to be true to what we do.

RADIOSPARX: Such fantastic advice. Thanks to you REPUBLICofMONDO — Nigel — for letting us into those deeply personal areas of your music world, and for being so honest and inspiring in everything you’ve said.