Finding Music

Amit Chaudhuri is an ordinary looking chap ”“ his bookish, humble air and sensible attire, befits his status as a literary heavyweight and lecturer in creative writing, but barely hints at his maverick, jazz credentials. Chaudhuri lets his music do the talking and it’s a measure of his growing stature in the notoriously snobbish world of jazz, that he was invited to perform at the internationally renowned and respected London Jazz Festival, late last year.

The community-focussed, not-for-profit Vortex Jazz Club, has an intimate and hospitable feel that’s a snug fit for Chaudhuri’s deeply personal journey through Western rock, pop and jazz, and classical Indian and devotional music as showcased on the 2007-album, This Is Not Fusion.

“This Is Not Fusion came out of what I was listening to when I growing up in Bombay during the 1970s – American pop, singer/songwriters and rock and blues. I was drawn to Indian classical music too but it demanded a lot of attention and gradually I began turning to this tradition in the 1980s – a process helped by Western music not being very good at this time,” says Chaudhuri laughing.

“I immediately noticed similarities between the blues and Indian classical music ”“ the pentatonic scale are common to both, and notes are treated similarly. For example the Todi raag has a scale similar to the riff from Eric Clapton’s ”˜Layla,’ which inspired the piece ”˜The Layla Riff to Todi’,” he continues. After a brief introduction to the band, Adam Moore (guitar), Bart Dietrich (piano), Paul Williams (bass) and Hanif Khan (tabla), Chaudhuri opens with this track. He works his way through the mellifluous Todi raag, its notes nudged along by occasional piano keys, bass chords, and tabla-flourishes. The meditative music morphs into the familiar chords of Clapton’s ”˜Layla’ and a bluesy guitar jam ensues and the two alternate, melting into each other over a beguiling ten-minute ”˜fusion.’

Chaudhuri establishes common ground between Gershwin’s opera aria turned jazz standard, ”˜Summertime’ and Indian classical music, with a drifting raag mixed with subtle piano and guitar that flutters away thanks to a soaring trumpet.

The personal dimension running through Chaudhuri’s work resurfaces with ”˜Moral Education,’ which is based around Indian public service posters, that he remembers fondly from his Mumbai childhood. “These posters from when I was growing up in India are popular kitsch art and carry messages covering daily ablutions, bathing, preparing for school, helping old people cross the road, doing homework and drinking milk,” he explains with a nostalgic glint in his eyes.

Another example is ”˜Trucker,’ which draws on Chaudhuri’s observation of the gaudy colours and mottos found on honking-trucks across India. Equally the time Chaudhuri spent in Berlin has resulted in an eponymous-titled, sonic tapestry, woven from juicy funk, melancholic blues, pattering tablas, psych-rock and Chaudhuri’s observations ”“ it’s all stitched together by a gently chugging rhythm mirroring the motion of the train on which Chaudhuri spent a day exploring the East German city, gleaning wistful verse.

The second half of the show is a showcase of new material including a ten-beat cycle rotating between tabla-driven raag, sloppy funk and spiky Hendrix-esque blues (”˜One Fine Day’), another vivid composition takes in the comics of Chaudhuri’s childhood, devotional raag, iconic American rock (”˜Hi Ho Silver Lining’) and country and Western. ”˜Messages From the Underground,’ like ”˜Berlin,’ draws inspiration from a city’s metro network, in this instance London’s Underground and works station announcements such as “Mind the gap” and “Stand clear of the doors,” into a rocky raag.

It’s a mesmerising, challenging two-hour show offering insight into Chaudhuri’s remarkable ”˜fusion,’ which will be developed further with his second LP, Found Music, scheduled for release in May on Vortex (the venue’s spin-off label). The title signals a strengthening of bonds with the concept of everyday ”˜found sounds’ that came through with his debut album.

February saw Chaudhuri in the studio mixing and recording the album, performing in Kolkata before further gigs in the UK in March to coincide with the publishing of his new novel, The Immortals. In Found Music, other than taking a “second look” at the Beach Boys’ pop classic, ”˜Good Vibrations’ (“in the ”˜Layla Riff to Todi’ way”) and a piece by Spanish classical musician Roderigo, there’ll be Chaudhuri’s version of a country-western song about reading Lone Ranger Comics in Mumbai and a couple of songs “which are both seemingly jazz compositions with an Indian melody at their centre, but coming together seamlessly.” Then there’ll be ”˜So You Want to be a Rock ”˜n’ Roll Star’, a title borrowed from the Byrds hit, but Chaudhuri’s composition otherwise, “where the title is the found art”. The song, he adds, is about a guy who grew up in the Seventies in Mumbai and thought he could sing and play the guitar. “Now he does pretty much nothing. He lives with his mother.”

Chaudhuri’s approach, born out of analyses of Indian classical music and contemporary western music, and conceptual and personal alchemy of music divided by thousands of years and miles, as well as language, religion, ethnicity and culture is extraordinary. Indeed his celebration of the similarities and commonalities ”“ rather than the differences – between supposedly alien traditions and sounds, is a philosophy we could learn from in an increasingly divided world.

With inputs from Shamik Bag