‘Jazz was used to win hearts’

Naresh Fernendes details the arrival of pop music in subcontinent.

LAHORE:

Jazz was the first pop music that came to the sub-continent. It came at a time when gramophone had become more easily available and tunes from across the world were being carried to the region by British steamships anchoring at the port of Bombay, said journalist Naresh Fernendes on Saturday.

He was speaking at a Lahore Literary Festival session, titled All that Jazz in Bombay and Karachi. Ferenendes, who runs a news website, has authored a book Taj Mahal Fox Trot detailing the advent of jazz music in the subcontinent.

He said although US President [Dwight David] Eisenhower had used jazz as propaganda to win the hearts and minds of people, it had gained roots in the region much before that.

Ferenendes said the first jazz band in the subcontinent came to limelight in 1926. In the 1930s, a band called Correa Optimists became popular in Karachi, performing in various city ballrooms. He said there were 60 jazz bands in Bombay at the time of partition.

He said jazz bands suffered a blow in the 1940s because of growing suspicion among people about all things colonial.

At that time, he said, movies came to India as savior to jazz musicians because local composers did not know how to notate music.

“The composers of that time would hum the beat on their harmoniums relying on jazz musicians to notate it for the band.” He also played the title song of the movie Eena Meena Deeka.

Leon Menzes, a member of Incrowd, a Karachi-based jazz band in the ‘60s and ‘70s, also spoke on the occasion. He said jazz music had taken its hold in Goa because people there had already been introduced to European music at Parish schools, set up by Portuguese colonisers. It spread to other parts of the sub-continent from Goa, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2015.