Festival Review
What is…Indian jazz?
By
Francesco Obino
It is somehow arguable–particularly for those who believe in the possibility of multiculturalism and cultural syncretism that anything, once it crosses the Indian border, becomes–eventually and somehow–Indian. Among those, some are enthusiastic and some are suspicious.
The paradigm, as it goes in its most seductive shape, is universally applicable; it works even with those things that few people have spent so much time–and ink–to tag and gag as incompatible with the subcontinent. Incompatible or imported, that is to say; or, again, alien.
Now, what happened then to…jazz? Is it an alien in the subcontinent? And should we be enthusiastic or suspicious?
How did the subcontinent, in its multifarious metropolitan avatars, process the spirit, grammar and irreverent vocation of jazz? Is there any jazz in India, or, Is there an Indian jazz at all? Do we like it? Opinions differ.
Bogus. Jazz, many non-connoisseurs would think, is a prima facie exotic tourist in a subcontinent where everything seems to otherwise find a place. Like Western so-defined ‘classical music’ (the urban myth is well spread that in Delhi there would be only one harp, highly sought out by foreign classical orchestras on diplomatic visits which echo more with high-brow musical comments than they do with diatonic scales), jazz would be only a prerogative of a minority, an imported luxury good. And even worse: it would only serve the clumsy aspiration of an urban intelligentsia to gain a seat in the fine boudoirs of eclectic cosmopolitan chatter. In other words, an instrumental divertissement (in this case of no original musical value) part of an elitist identity claim.
Yet, jazz arrived in India in the 50s, through key figures like Niranjan Jhaveri, and jazz festivals began from the end of the 70s (JazzYatra Festival, 1978). Mumbai, Delhi, Goa, Pune, etc., have sometimes today as many jazz clubs as auditoriums and the number and often the quality of jazz appointments listed every week in India’s newspaper and specialised magazines is a glaring proof of the considerable space the jazz scene has carved for itself in cities. A niche, for sure, as everywhere else, as if small publics were part of jazz’s nature and taste. Also a niche for quality of performances, and often for musical vision, indeed.
There is Jazz in India, good Indian jazz, and it is not completely a prerogative of the few. The prejudices about Indian jazz are to be found based on larger assumptions about India and its ‘alterity’. In particular, what strikes easily is the isolation (especially at home) of those elites which had always easy access to the international musical scene as much as anything else in the world. It’s tempting to make of it all an elitist theory. But Jazz in India is not only that.
The IIC offered once again a hint of all this and a contribution to this larger controversial debate to a select yet diverse public on Saturday, 10th October 2009.
As a part of the IIC Festival of the Arts dedicated to ‘The River’, on stage was Sunny Side Up, an emerging Delhi-based jazz and blues quintet which surprised, and didn’t, at the same time. With an extremely generous voice and stage presence as Vasudhara Vidalur, a rather self-confident Adil Manuel at the guitar, a most comfortable, at times surprising and yet low-key Rainer Pusch (saxophone), a very talented and most modest bass guitar player like Brennon Denfer, and Joshua at the drums, the expectations for a night of jazz at the IIC’s annual art, culture and music festival were sky-high. The group tried to show–often successfully–the full spectrum of its musical identity and experiments: it shifted comfortably from blues notes to New Orleans-inspired jazz, from exciting funky vibes–where Vidalur’s stage presence and voice excels–to an emotional homage to the Beatles (‘Yesterday’), finishing with an unexpected gospel. They surprised. And yet, they seemed to be offering only a tamed, tailored teaser of their art, hinting only few times at a much more liberated idea of jazz, music, and performance: one which is comfortably about much less gentrified settings, deeper vibes and enveloping musical empathy.
In sum, a welcome unraveling musical essay that could surprise and–at the same time–disorient an audience expecting ‘Mississippi Blues and Jazz from New Orleans’. Sunny Side Up showed how professional jazz musicians in Delhi need to be as flexible as possible to different inspirations, tastes, settings and audiences, and how this might be the major asset of a musical scene which is now as vibrant as it can get. A good reason to be enthusiastic, fully in the centrifugal tradition of the genre.
After all, jazz might not be as bogus in India as some may want to think.
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