Indo-Jazz
Hello, everyone! For those of you who don’t know, I am a South Indian, from the Indian state called Kerala. Even though I have grown up in the United States, I have a special place in my heart for my country of origin, which is why I am so excited about today’s post. Just recently, I read an article about Asian-American, specifically Chinese, involvement in the development of jazz as a music genre. Coincidentally, I ended up finding an article speaking of the development of jazz in India, written by Warren R. Pinckney, Jr.
In the 1920s was when jazz first appeared in India, but Pinckney states that only Europeans living in India attended jazz concerts, and the indigenous population was not affected much. Nevertheless, musicians from many areas of South Asia performed jazz in India, until the end of the live big-band jazz era in the early 1950s. This can be attributed to the negative reaction to Western ideas following the attainment of Indian independence, as well as the drop in popularity of big-band music in general.
Still, many Anglo-Indian bands continued to play jazz, and those bands soon became associated with the upper class. In fact, hiring an Anglo-Indian jazz band to play at social events like weddings was seen as a status symbol. Unfortunately, following India gaining independence, many of these Anglo-Indians moved to England, leaving a temporary void in the jazz scene. During the ’50s and ’60s, however, following WWII, the U.S. State Department sponsored tours of American jazz musicians to many parts of the world, including India. Those years were only made better as Duke Ellington’s band played in India, an event that “contributed significantly to the assimilation of jazz in India.”
Another factor that contributed significantly to the assimilation of jazz in India is a festival called Jazz Yatra. For some context, during the late 1950s, many American musicians had been drawing inspiration from Indian classical music, particularly “the spiritual qualities of Indian music” as well as the “tonal resources of ragas and talas,” as shown by John Coltrane’s song, “My Favorite Things.” Due to this “cross-pollination” of musical ideas between India and the United States, a man named Niranjan Jhaveri founded Jazz India in 1975, with the festival Jazz Yatra being hosted in 1978. The festival itself was innately international, as it attracted jazz musicians from many countries such as Brazil, England, Australia, the U.S., and the Soviet Union. This festival was a clear sign of the emergence of a new global consciousness, where people would focus less on their national interests, and give more focus internationally to “the prosperity of mankind.” Music, unlike other practices, was seen everywhere, in different cultures and countries, meaning that it was a universal language. It was seen as able to foster unity and togetherness, something that political and economic struggles were not able to do.
Jazz music also influenced the Indian film industry. In the late 1900s, general movie music in India became a combination of Western music and Indian classical music. It can be seen that “the various references to jazz in Indian movies” was an effect of the “expanding role of Western musical influences in India.”
To end this post, I’d like to consider the “fundamental interrelationships between jazz and North Indian classical music,” particularly how jazz is enriched with concepts borrowed from North Indian classical music. For example, Joachim Berendt, in his book Nada Brahma — The World is Sound, infers that jazz musicians may have been drawn to North Indian classical music because of similarities in modality, improvisation, and “an underlying vocally conceived form of expression, even in instrumental music.”
There are many components of jazz that also mesh well with Indian sensibilities. Niranjan Jhaveri, one of the founders of Jazz India, stated that he “[envies] the honesty in jazz music.” That honesty is preceded by freedom of expression that Jhaveri wishes his music possessed as well. There are two other factors that Pinckney introduces to explain the smooth relationship between Jazz and North Indian classical music. First of all, both types of music were spawned due to the meeting of two other cultures. Jazz was formed by the union of West African and European music, while North Indian classical music was formed from the union of North India and the Mogul culture of Central Asia. Then, the fact that both of them followed the principle of “reverse preservation,” meaning that both were made popular by an ethnic group that adopted them, as opposed to creating them, shows that jazz in general meshes well with North Indian classical music.
While jazz only spread to a small segment of the Indian population, it serves to allow that population to identify with Western culture. In this same way, the intercultural relationships between Indian and Western performers in the same music group helped to create the fusion of North Indian classical music and jazz. Ultimately, the singular presence of the Jazz Yatra festival, and the fact that most Indian jazz musicians are self-taught, as opposed to the path of learning under a guru, as is traditional for most Indian instruments, merely shows that jazz isn’t self-sufficient in India quite yet. Who knows, maybe it will be in the future?
Thank you for reading! I have linked my source below, so please take a look at your leisure.
