Humour by Rehana Munir: Jazzing it up

My Spotify playlists are woefully predictable

My Spotify playlists are woefully predictable. It’s where I seek the familiar from The Beatles to Mohammed Rafi, Hindustani classical to Sufi staples. I particularly like the ‘Song radio based on’ function, thanks to which I can start off with Leonard Cohen and end up at Nine Simone via Lou Reed. Of late, I’ve made a brave foray into a realm of music I’ve always found strangely forbidding despite its obvious playfulness and spontaneity. I don’t get jazz, I’ve always thought, but I think it’s long been employing sly tricks to reach out to me.

Getting ‘into’ jazz is as easy as firing up a playlist on any streaming service (Hexcode)

Pressed clothes and harmonies

Growing up in Santacruz, a sleepy cousin of exuberant Bandra, my mother’s prized stereo supplied my sisters and I with a steady diet of Bollywood, with American pop being a notable variation. Since I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, this consisted of an unhealthy amount of a nasal Kumar Sanu and ear-splitting Alka Yagnik, something I’m still trying to recover from. But down the road, where my istriwala operated from the garage of an old bungalow, I could hear a completely different kind of music wafting out. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t follow any recognisable structure. More curiously, and excitingly, the music was live. A tune was usually being rehearsed, starting and stopping frustratingly for an eavesdropper.

And then I was told that that’s where Louis Banks, the famous jazz musician—he of the snazzy jackets, tightly-worn caps and dark glasses—lived. Cut to October 2022. A jazz bar in Bandra, not far from the Santacruz of the istriwala, was hosting The Louiz Banks Quartet. The spelling change took nothing away from the nostalgia. I went. I heard. I reminisced. Jazz seemed a little more familiar.

A Sufi walks into a jazz club …

But what is it about the genre that makes it an acquired taste even for those weaned on rock ‘n’ roll, one of its many swaggering progeny? I think it’s the lack of an easily identifiable structure that does it. Or perhaps instruments like the double bass or saxophone that more popular forms of music don’t often use. I have another theory. Maybe it’s jazz lovers who put the rest of us off, they with their vinyls and whiskeys, looking at us with pity and scorn. I remember a bit from the Ranbir Kapoor film Wake Up Sid (2009), where Konkona Sen’s character tries hard to adapt to Rahul Khanna’s suave tastes. She finally admits she doesn’t like jazz—a damning statement for anyone with cultural aspirations in the city, where western traits are synonymous with good breeding.

But I’m only now able to hear the similarities between jazz and qawwali, a Sufi form with its own improvisations and digressions, albeit of shorter durations within the whole composition. And that’s a sound that I find to be deeply embedded in my musical DNA. Begum Abida Parveen is the one woman I associate with the form, which is a pity. Amir Khusrau, the 13th century Indo-Persian mystic who is known to have invented qawwali, would be very disappointed.

Sax and the city

But, like an idiosyncratic chord progression, I digress. Let’s return to my own little connection with the genre. I was told by Naresh Fernandes, author of the meticulously researched Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age, that the Bandra building where I once lived was the former home of Joe Gomes who, together with his brother Johnny, was among the first Indians to work with the African-American jazz musicians who made India their home in the 1930s. Known primarily as a saxophonist, Gomes’ contribution to Hindi film scores starting from the ’60s is a lively example of musical mingling. See—wily jazz has been stalking me for years now.

But I don’t really know where to begin. I’m ashamed to admit I’m listening to a playlist called ‘Jazz in the Background–Soft instrumental jazz for all your activities’ as I’m writing this. I’ve tried Jazz Classics, French Jazz and Easy Jazz, and I’m still as much of a beginner. Perhaps this is jazz’s most seductive quality: it regularises shaky beginnings. It celebrates striving. It’s not fussed about getting there quick; it’s all about taking the scenic route. Word of advice: don’t let the jazz aficionados scare you off!

Follow @rehana_munir on Twitter and Instagram

From HT Brunch, November 12, 2022

Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch

Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunch