New York Times (May 10, 2012)
May 10, 2012, 5:56 AM
In Search of Kolkata’s Lost Jazz Scene
By HITEN SAMTANI
Charles Sykes/Associated Press
Wynton Marsalis, right, performs during the International Jazz Day
Concert held at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York on
April 30, 2012.
“After all, the United Nations flag is kind of blue, and we will be
assembling on 30 April to get in the mood to sing, sing, sing.”
Thus spoke Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary-general, as he invited
music aficionados to help commemorate the first International Jazz Day,
which culminated with a grand concert at the United Nations’ General
Assembly Hall.
International Jazz Day is an initiative of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that honors jazz’s
role as an educational tool. The evening’s concert would include music
legends like Herbie Hancock, Tony Bennett, Wynton Marsalis and other
performers from across the globe.
But earlier in the day, the trumpet, drums and saxophone came together
to celebrate India, a country whose contribution to jazz is
little-known. “Finding Carlton,” a documentary that chronicles the
evolution of jazz in India from the 1920s to the early 1980s, was
screened as part of a United Nations panel titled “Unlearning
Intolerance: Jazz as a Force for Education and Dialogue.”
Susheel J. Kurien
A scene from “Finding Carlton,” screened as part of International Jazz
Day celebrations at the United Nations, New York, April 30, 2012.
Eduardo Ulibarri, the permanent representative of Costa Rica to the
United Nations and the chairman of the United Nations Committee on
Information, which had organized the event, led a panel before the
screening, which included famous jazz musicians and movers and shakers
from the jazz world. Mr. Ulibarri, a jazz aficionado and scholar, said
that jazz had become a tool for social inclusion, and he added that he
was delighted that India’s role in the art form was being celebrated.
He introduced the ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, the acting permanent
representative of India to the United Nations, who said that jazz had
given Indians “a unique insight into globalization.”
In an interview earlier, Mr. Puri spoke about how jazz had imbued India
with a Western cosmopolitanism. “We talk about India as the great land
which has soaked in from everywhere in the world, the land of
assimilation,” he said. “And it is our genuine belief that the
assimilation has had its tensions, but it has basically resulted in our
being sort of inherently multicultural.”
Susheel J. Kurien, the film’s director, made a parallel between jazz
musicians and the many voices of the United Nations Security Council.
“Musicians for that moment in time respect each other, and allow
communication and dialogue to move to a level that most of us can only
aspire to,” he said. Mr. Kurien also proposed that along with Arabic,
Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, jazz be added to the
list of the official languages at the United Nations.
Rosemary A. DiCarlo, deputy permanent representative of the United
States to the United Nations, quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who had
said that “jazz speaks for life.” She added that while jazz’s origins
were American, “its presence and influence were felt everywhere, and it
had been inspired and enriched by a variety of global sounds.”
In a scene from the film, Christine Correa, a jazz vocalist, faces the
camera. A tape is played and the rich, grand sound of the Micky Correa
Big Band fills the room. Ms. Correa’s face transforms. Her mouth opens
in astonishment as she hears, for the first time, the only known
recording of her father, who died last year. “This is my dad,” she
says, her voice cracking with emotion. “This is his sound.”
“Finding Carlton” is full of such moments of discovery. The
documentary, while tracking jazz’s movements in India, reveals
delightful insights about the country itself. Mr. Kurien brought
together a menagerie of first-rate raconteurs, from the impishly
grinning guitarist Carlton Kitto to the cigar-puffing Bombay bon vivant
Stanley Pinto, to Violet Smith, the owner of the Fairlawn Hotel, who
regally declares that in 1940s Calcutta, “there was no unpleasant
music, only jazz.”
Together, they told of a very different India, one where jazz ruled the
social scene and stalwarts like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie
played in venues packed to the rafters. The characters evoked memories
of a time of colonial attachment in the nation’s history, Mr. Kurien
said, a time when “foreign was good, and things that happened abroad
were great. I heard them say several times ‘Calcutta was like Las
Vegas! We were like New Orleans!’ ” It’s a part of the country’s
culture, he said, that has been lost in transition rather than
translation.
In November, India Ink published a post by Naresh Fernandes about how
jazz embodied the spirit of erstwhile Bombay. “Finding Carlton” focuses
more on Calcutta.
What brought about this recent re-examination of the Indian jazz scene?
There was a need, Mr. Kurien said, to document the history of jazz in
India before the people who lived through it are no longer around.
“There are very few remaining people from that time,” he said. Indeed,
three of the film’s characters passed away during its making, and this
clock-is-ticking sense of urgency is felt throughout.
In the documentary, the jazz historian Dan Morgenstern recounted the
thriving jazz scene of 1920s Montmartre, Paris. Subsequent French
protectionist measures against foreign musicians led to an exodus of
American jazz performers to places like Shanghai. Several stopped in
India, and jazz began to gain cultural capital. Initiatives like Radio
SEAC, which the allies began in wartime, spurred the spread. The 1960s
and 1970s saw legends like Duke Ellington coming to play, and
establishments like Golden Slipper, Prince’s, Mocambo and Moulin Rouge
would host revelers until 6 a.m.
But the introduction of a state entertainment tax in the late 1970s
sounded the death knell for the live jazz scene in Calcutta, and the
culture of the city began to shift. The rise of Bollywood led many jazz
artists to follow more lucrative opportunities as background musicians
in Bombay. The film poignantly captures this shift through a scene with
one of Mr. Kitto’s students, a handsome lad with dark, wavy hair who
declares that once he’s ready, he’s going to move on to Mumbai. “Hum
Bengali ladka hai,” he says with a smile. “Mere blood me koi jazz
nahi.” (Translation: “I am a Bengali boy, jazz is not in my blood.”)
After the screening, Ramu Damodaran, a deputy director at the United
Nations Department of Public Information, said that “Finding Carlton”
was a metaphor for something larger. The film was screened as part of
Academic Impact, an initiative that aligns higher education
institutions with the United Nations to support principles of human
rights. “In many societies,” Mr. Damodaran said, “intolerance is almost
ingrained. The only way to counter it is education in its largest
sense, and jazz falls into that category.”
“Finding Carlton,” he said, had many moments that showcased how jazz
bridged cultures and provided a common language of communication.
Though the movie has several technical flaws, including shaky
camerawork and mumbled audio, it mattered little to the audience, many
of whom stayed back to chat with the director. Mr. Kurien’s characters
managed to create, for many of us, a sense of nostalgia for an India we
didn’t even know about.
Hiten Samtani is a student at the Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism and an intern at SchoolBook. Follow him on twitter
@hitsamty
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