For these living legends, jazz is more than just music

When Sunil Sampat heard his first jazz number, he was just a young boy, but he remembers being mesmerised as the LP crackled to life. Today, this jazz critic and contributing writer (on jazz, of course) has a collection of 9000 records; his love for jazz has persisted over the years.

So you can understand why he would be thrilled this week as some of his legends have descended on Mumbai for the JazzMatazz 2011 being held at the NCPA. A similar Jazz Yatra is also being held at Pune’s Ishanya amphitheatre, Yerawada. “This is a mainstream jazz event, as pure a form of jazz as you can get. If you’re going to fuse something, you need to know the pure form of it first; young musicians in the city haven’t heard enough of pure jazz,” says Sampat.

His sentiments are shared by Carlton Kitto, who can be found performing on any given evening at one of Kolkata’s oldest hotels, the Grand Hotel. Kitto represents a dying breed of jazz musicians, beautifully picturised in the documentary Finding Carlton. He lives in a pokey two-room flat in Kolkata but is still “playing the music I love”, which is bebop - a form of jazz with a fast tempo and lots of improvisation which gained popularity in the 60’s. “I started with bebop and I intend to play it all my life,” says Kitto. He says he wants to keep it alive at a time when “anything is labelled as jazz”.

Original fusion
But didn’t jazz itself start out as fusion music in the African-American communities of the United States, mixing together European and African music styles?

“It’s true that jazz is fusion that was created out of cultural necessity, but that’s different from the fusion of today, which is more electronic,” says Steve Turre, trombonist and sea-shellist, one of the participants at JazzMatazz, who is himself known for introducing instruments like the conch, maracas, cowbells and seashells. “They are peaceful, resonate very well and are extremely good instruments to play the blues on,” explains Turre, who sports a gold conch shell around his neck but considers himself a ‘purist’.

Among fusion musicians who went electronic, Turre feels Miles Davis is a good example of someone who did not deviate from the traditional art form in spite of that. But Davis too had been criticised when he went electric.  “All this cacophony and noise, people (who) can’t swing, don’t know harmony, no technical proficiency on their instruments - that’s not jazz musicianship,” Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of the jazz department at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, had remarked in an interview. Wynton inspired a new generation of players called Re-boppers or simply Wyntonites, who modelled their music, their clothing and even their album sleeves on the classic jazz of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and pre-electric Miles Davis.

Rooted in storytelling
The Three Ladies of Blues — Joan Faulkner, Joanne Bell and Harriet Lewis — are equally wary of smooth jazz, a term used to describe influences of hip-hop, rap, etc. Pure jazz is about storytelling, explains Lewis: “A song could be weaved about one word and would tell the story behind that word. Today people sing songs about umbrellas and they have no meaning.”

That sort of understanding comes from an awareness of the history of jazz. “Everything came from the blues, which in turn came from songs that were sung by peasants while working in the fields,” says Bell.

For Turre, jazz is an expression of the condition of life. “Only if you have lived a full life will you be able to share it with others,” he says, adding that he is open to any form of jazz as long as it has feeling.

Sri Lankan pianist and composer Harsha Makalande, for instance, has his own version of fusion jazz, blending Asian elements and instruments like local drums and the oboe. But for him too, it is mainly a means to communicate feelings. And that’s why at his performance at the NCPA on Sunday with his band Khrome, Makalande will be playing mostly instrumental numbers.

“Music goes beyond language, it directly associates your mind; words can compartmentalise your thoughts,” he says.

Makalande is happy to see a revival of jazz in his country, particularly among the youth. “Sometime back they thought it was subdued music, now they realise it can be an energetic and active form of music,” he says.

The Ladies of Blues trio too are seeing youngsters “coming back” to original forms of music. “People are interested in real voices, real instruments, not just mechanical tones,” says Faulkner.
As for Sampat, he’s just happy to see that jazz has stood the test of time. “Jazz keeps evolving. The music is not generation based.”