Jazz in my tongue

Jazz has no one language; it can be made one’s own. And the sub-continent has always risen up to such challenges. In 2011, Lahore-based Sachal Studios Orchestra swung the world’s opinion with their cover of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. They melded classical violins and guitar with the tabla and sitar to create a piece which drew praise from even Brubeck, who had said that “it was the most interesting” version of Take Five he had ever heard. The Pakistani version ended being the best-selling jazz standard on iTunes.

Jazz in India had its moment in the sun between the 1930s and 1950s and since then its popularity has been oscillating. But, for a few years now it has been gaining ground especially because of Jazz’s permeance. Musicians are taking to Jazz in their native tongues. Bengaluru-based Radha Thomas (earlier Radha Shottam) of UNK does it in Tamil, while Goa-based Seby Fernandez does it in Konkani.

Jazz has a history of being inclusive. In ‘Jazz Consciousness’, ethno-musicologist Paul Austerlitz notes that jazz has transcended its ethnic, racial, and national distinctiveness (whether constructed or otherwise), having been adopted and adapted by musicians across the globe.

“Brazil comes to mind immediately. What with Astrud Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and then other singers like Flora Purim too. Portuguese and French lend themselves to jazz so easily. Spanish too — Claudia Acuna is a great example. These languages are close enough in structure and even meaning to English, that assimilation has been easy. It’s also obvious that since the music of these countries is polyphonic, their inclusion into jazz is sort of natural,” points out Radha, who was in Delhi recently to perform at the International Jazz Festival.

Former attorney general and jazz patron, Soli Sorabjee, remembers hearing jazz in Konkani. “The thing about jazz is that is improvisations. No jazz tune is the same. Maybe, that’s why it isn’t so popular in the country. What we should remember about jazz is its commonality. It transcended all questions of caste, creed, nationality and religion. It was just one thing — love for music,” notes Sorabjee.

But most singers agree that it is a bit harder with Indian music, which is monophonic and doesn’t bend and weave with chord changes. “In order to make it work,” Thomas says, “one really has to able to pick and choose the melody, the rhythm and the words. It’s like a giant crossword puzzle. And I love puzzles. I have heard that in Goa, there are some singers who sing western-style music in Konkani too.”

Tamil is Radha’s first language and she constantly connects with it as a way of keeping her culture alive. “I guess it isn’t all that odd that I keep going back to my mother Tejiviswam — a huge influence in my life. And, as far back as I can remember her life was all about songs and singing, poetry and writing. She always told me it was important not to be one-dimensional and I’ve taken her seriously,” buttresses Thomas with a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“So, she would rewrite jazz songs like Autumn Leaves and Blue Moon in Tamil and sing them at parties. She was always a huge hit. She would also take Tamil songs and write lyrics for them in English. Her biggest fan was me,” reminisces Thomas, while adding that, “I bet she would have loved my Rendu Dosai (Two dosais) song which starts off like a regular Swing jazz tune and then enters the mystical world of a million dosais.”

Thomas’s Rendu Dosai pays a tribute to Bob Marley’s Smokin Joints. It begins thus: “I ate rendu dosai in the morning, I ate rendu dosai at night, I ate rendu dosai in the afternoon, ‘cause it makes me feel alright.” Radha, who trained in the Hindustani classical Dhrupad style, “Because it’s rhythmic and percussive and I felt it would bring newness into the kind of singing I wanted to do.” She believes she was lucky to find Ustad Farid-ud-Din Dagar, of the Dagar Gharana who agreed to teach her, knowing that she wasn’t going to steep herself for life in Dhrupad. “I learnt it just so that I could nuance my style of singing jazz and the blues,” says 62-year-old Thomas, who had decided to move to New York to pursue a career in jazz singing in her 20s and returned in the 1990s.

“Being from Goa, I felt the need to contribute to jazz in my language, that is Konkani. Just as a Brazil jazz artist would sing in Portuguese or an artist from France would sing in French, I have sung in my native tongue. Jazz does not have any language restrictions, in fact music itself is a universal language,” elaborates Fernandes. His Eke Ratcho Mog (One-night stand), is about human capriciousness.

Goan jazz legend Chris Perry is amongst Fernandes’s mentors. “His biggest hit Mira, Mira in Konkani is still sung by me, many decades later. That is the freedom and power of jazz,” says Fernandes.

Why do you continue to sing jazz? “If you fall in love with jazz, it’s not possible to fall out of love. That’s what happened to me. It’s challenging, complex, difficult and demands the very best out of you. It’s a no brainer for someone who is as competitive as me. I battle myself constantly to do something better, to make something harder and then ace it. I think that a jazz musician performs best if she or he knows there are other musicians in the audience… you are constantly trying to wow your peers,” says Thomas.