Jazz just changed its tune

Carlton Kitto still draws in a crowd. It has been 39 years since he first played at Kolkata’s Oberoi Grand.

As the 71-year-old jazz guitarist takes stage at the luxury hotel’s Chowringhee Bar, a table of three holler — “We’ve come here only for you.” A middle-aged woman walks up to him, “You taught my nephew how to play. He still thinks you are god,” she says. Kitto is shy, and after jogging his memory, he remembers,

“He was one of my best students, but doesn’t he play some kind of Bangla rock now?” The disapproval, however, is ephemeral.

A younger man has begun discussing Finding Carlton, a documentary that casts Kitto as the protagonist to uncover the story of jazz in India. Beaming from the attention, Kitto finally plugs in his guitar. Though slouched because of a spinal injury, the next two hours help prove that neither his fingers nor his spirit have been impeded.

At home in his cramped two-room flat, Kitto loses his toupee and some of his inhibitions.

He rails against contemporary musicians who can’t read sheet music. “You can’t play jazz with this A-B-C nonsense.” Authentic jazz, he says, last existed in the ’60s and ’70s. “After that things like fusion and rock crept in. A sitar won’t help invent some new genre like Indo-jazz.” When asked if he had been forced to dilute his music, Kitto recalled being in Kathmandu with Louiz Banks.

“They were filming Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971). We played in the background, but I remember having asked Zeenat Aman for a dance. That, you can say, has been my only transgression,” he says, with a gentle chuckle.

Remembering the first strains of bebop he had heard on his mother’s gramophone, Kitto speaks of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker with an infectious nostalgia.

But since his definition of jazz is constrained by the limits of a few golden decades, his views discount the evolutions within the genre itself.

Even if debates between jazz purists and modernists remain predictable and age-old, the hardest question to ask a jazz musician is still one that’s deceptively simple — what do we talk about when we talk about jazz?

Rock and a hard place

For years now, jazz has existed on music’s peripheries, but it has also simultaneously gained a reputation of being its most inclusive genre. As newer experiments abound, the future of Indian jazz in particular affords many hypotheses.

To appraise its chances, however, it becomes essential to first look back. Both Louiz Banks and Carlton Kitto remember fondly the Calcutta of the 1970s — the suit-and-tie sophistication of ballroom dances at the Grand, the cabaret and can-can dances at Park Street’s Moulin Rouge, and finally their collaboration with the legendary saxophonist Braz Gonsalves and vocalist Pam Crain that gave birth to the Louiz Banks Brotherhood.

“Together, we revived the jazz scene in Calcutta and created a following,” says Banks. It was politics that eventually played spoilsport. After being elected to power in 1977, West Bengal’s Left Front government introduced an exorbitant entertainment tax, which almost doubled the bills of clients in restaurants and nightclubs which had until then patronised jazz bands and artists. “People refused to pay up. Fights started breaking out. The owners had no option. They had to ask us to leave,” laments Kitto.

Adding to an exodus that had already begun in the mid-’70s, jazz musicians started leaving Calcutta for destinations like Australia, the UK, the US and Canada. Louiz Banks moved to Bombay, and besides working with RD Burman, he went on to compose over 8,000 jingles in the next 15 years.

Journalist Naresh Fernandes, author of Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age , believes that because of its Hindi film industry, “Bombay always provided a living for many more jazz musicians than Calcutta ever did.” The careers of trumpeters Chic Chocolate and Franz Ferdinand help prove Fernandes’ point. Having played jazz at the Green’s and Taj Mahal Hotel in the ’40s, they soon came to earn their stripes as composers and music conductors in the world of Bollywood.

Fernandes also challenges the notion that Calcutta was the one city which was at the heart of India’s jazz scene. He says, “In Calcutta, jazz was limited to just one stretch — Park Street. In Bombay, the music had spread right through the city.”

According to Fernandes, it was only because jazz had survived in Calcutta through the ’70s that it became an ‘epicentre’. “Bombay,” he says, “had already moved on to rock ‘n’ roll.”

Not one to fetishise the past, the Foxtrot author insists on a pragmatic approach, “Jazz was popular in India when jazz was the world’s pop. We moved on. Kids these days are listening to what is being played in Lagos, New York and Bangkok. We have always been contemporary in our tastes.”

Too cool for old school

By the ’70s, the question of contemporariness was steadfastly haunting the world of jazz itself. The decade began with Miles Davis releasing Bitches Brew . With an improvisational style that seemed to borrow heavily from rock, the album had, according to some, crossed a sacred line.

In 1973, Herbie Hancock, who had played piano as part of Davis’ second great quintet, further challenged the world of jazz with his funk-infused album Head Hunters . Convinced that jazz and Indian music had much in common, John McLaughlin decided to form Shakti with Zakir Hussain and violinist L Shankar in 1975. Many believed that the jazz guitarist, who once had a track named after him on Bitches Brew , was now intent on committing professional suicide. In the end, record sales and packed auditoria told their story. Jazz fusion was here to stay.

Still a teenager at the time, Ananda Lal, Professor of English at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, remembers getting his “mind blown” by Herbie Hancock. “While the live music in Calcutta harked back to the ’50s and ’60s, jazz had moved on.” Lal even confesses to being unimpressed by critics who dismiss John McLaughlin’s efforts as either gimmickry or dilution.

“Jazz, by its very definition, is a hybrid, a hotchpotch. Things are always borrowed. If jazz ends up with Indian influences, so what?”

Much like Lal and McLaughlin, Louiz Banks also believes that India’s classical traditions and jazz are inherently compatible. Defining jazz quite simply as “freedom”, the stalwart says that after taking a cue from bands like Shakti, he has for long made “Indian jazz and fusion the focus of his experimentation.”

As the direction of jazz came to be reassessed in the ’70s, the music industry also witnessed unprecedented growth. “There was so much music in a record store that people found it hard to find what they wanted,” says Mumbai-based guitarist Dhruv Ghanekar.

While jazz and fusion came to be clearly demarcated, more avant-garde experiments became harder to categorise. “The labelling was only intended to simplify retail. Genres must be taken with a pinch of salt.” Despite his jazz education and performances, Ghanekar spurns the label. “I use the language of jazz, yes, but what I play is a mix of various genres.

Besides, I think this habit of pigeonholing music is a very Indian one. In Europe, no one really questions what jazz is or isn’t.”

Not part of the club Ghanekar, as one of Blue Frog’s founding partners, has tried hard to bring that international sensibility of liberality to Mumbai, Delhi and Pune. He does, however, seem aware of an oftrepeated complaint — there just isn’t much jazz at the club anymore. “We soon realised that we will not be able to sustain the club by hosting four jazz acts a week. The kind of jazz scene we’d imagined, just wasn’t there, and in the end, commerce took precedence.” Looking to revive jazz in Mumbai, eateries like Café Zoe and a culture club called The Bandra Base hope to soon prove Ghanekar wrong. To find a winning formula, though, Mumbaikars needn’t look far. For 12 years now, Pune’s Shisha Jazz Café has successfully served Thelonius Monk with its Turkish coffee.

Before easing into John Coltrane’s rendition of My Favourite Things , Shisha’s Persian interiors first give customers a chance to rest their backs against colourful poshtis. Amongst the jazz artists who have earned their place on the café’s walls, Miles Davis seems to have been fa-voured most. Co-owner Mehdi Niroomand confesses, “I can’t help it. He is my favourite.”

He sounds guilty when he admits that only Bob Dylan is allowed to interfere with the café’s otherwise pure jazz soundtrack. “We haven’t diluted the music,” he pleads. “Every Thursday, we host a live jazz act. If I wanted any more gigs, you’d soon have some stupid DJ playing his rubbish house music here.”

The audience on Thursdays, says Niroomand, is almost 250-350 strong, many of whom are expats. Similar global influences are fast making Goa India’s jazz hub. As a result of foreign tourists and musicians making a beeline for Goa through the year, jazz guitarist Colin D’Cruz says that he often finds himself “performing to international audiences alongside international artists”. Part of almost 10 bands, D’Cruz argues that Goa’s numerous live music venues and its ability to nurture young talent will bolster jazz in the State, especially in comparison to the metros.

In most of the country’s metros, the dearth of venues comes coupled with another concern — are our audiences really interested?

Having started with shows in Indian cities, The Amit Chaudhuri Band has performed in several international jazz clubs and festivals.

The difference in reception, feels Chaudhuri, is stark. “Unlike Europe,” says the novelist, “people here feel it’s beneath their dignity to pay for live jazz. Half your audience will end up talking, and in venues like Blue Frog, you’ll inevitably compete with the sounds of cutlery.

This air of non-committal interest needs to change.” A distracted audience often makes sponsors reluctant. The Mumbai-based promoter Jazz Addicts usually has to struggle to fund its annual Jus’ Jazz festival. Co-founder Sunil Sampat explains, “Jazz is a bit like a good book. You have to concentrate to get something out of it. This is why audiences and sponsors are sometimes hard to come by. It’s almost intellectual really.”

Watch and learn

Too cerebral to compete against Yo Yo Honey Singh, jazz would perhaps never buy its musicians a Marine Drive flat. Worse still, it even finds it hard to provide the assurance of daily bread. Adrian D’souza, for instance, depends on Bollywood, pop covers and jingles to pay his bills, but never passes up an opportunity to play some jazz. A regular at jazz venues such as Pune’s Shisha and Bangalore’s BFlat Bar, the drummer confesses that even though he began playing jazz in 1992, he became a “jazz musician” only after moving to the US in 1998.

“I spent several evenings in New York’s jazz clubs and something just happened to me. I soaked an entire culture,” remembers the 42-year-old. Prescribing a stint in the US for all of India’s young jazz men, D’souza implores them to imagine the benefits a Californian tabla player would accrue after a month in Benares.

“That’s how you grow in New York.” Unknowingly, fellow drummer Tarun Balani paid heed to D’Souza. Only 19 at the time, Balani travelled to the Big Apple in 2005. During the three months he spent there as a Drummers Collective student, Balani hopped from one jazz concert to another jazz club. Coupled with his education, the opportunity to watch jazz greats like Wayne Shorter left the youngster with new resolve. He wanted to bring a slice of New York back with him to New Delhi.

“The idea was simple. I wanted India to have its own Drummers Collective. I knew of so many people who were just as deserving of such an experience.”

After graduating from the Berklee School of Music, Tarun Balani and his brother Aditya returned to Delhi and set up the Global Music Institute (GMI) in 2011. Though a city campus in Lajpat Nagar already accommodates 55-75 students a year, a newer GMI campus is also coming up in Noida’s Knowledge Park. According to Balani, “At least 70 per cent of our students are exposed to and interested in studying jazz.” The drummer feels that with the genres of rock and pop having peaked a decade ago, younger musicians are increasingly relying on jazz to better express their artistry. “Because jazz is flexible enough to accommodate different genres and because of its insistence on improvisation, I am certain that there will be many more musicians like me who will want to pursue this genre.”

Much like GMI, Mumbai’s True School of Music is also attracting a visiting international faculty that is helping the city stay in touch with a jazz that is contemporary. With modern jazz now just a YouTube video away, Indian aficionados have seemingly stopped counting on figures like Carlton Kitto for their succour.

When asked about the country’s jazz scene, they rattle off a list of names they promptly describe as “future greats” — the Balani brothers, pianists Sharik Hasan and Harmeet Manseta, saxophonist Rhys Sebastian and vocalist Ishita Chakravarty.

Interestingly, most of these musicians are still a long way away from hitting 40. As venues and audiences shrink the world over, jazz has become a Schrodinger’s cat; but buoyed by the calibre of a new generation, India doesn’t need to write its obituary just yet. Tarun Balani, for instance, finds hope in John Coltrane.

Besides naming his son after Pandit Ravi Shankar, the saxophonist had also given one of his tunes the name ‘India’. “Jazz and India, I’m convinced, will always go together very well.”

Shreevatsa Nevatia is a Kolkata-based writer

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