Jazz Corner: A Women’s Day Salute to the Remarkable Indian Jazz Vocalists

First and foremost, Happy Women’s Day to all the ladies reading this article. A salute and a toast to you. It may be just this one day in the year dedicated to women but it is a token of respect and appreciation for their awesome presence all year round.

When it comes to jazz, it is the ladies who have been the mainstays of the vocal tradition. From Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen MacRae, Betty Carter and Billie Holiday, it is the women who have dominated vocal jazz in the U.S.

It is much the same on the Indian jazz scene. Since the early 1950s, jazz bands in India were typically dance bands that played in hotels and restaurants. Being a popular part of the evening’s entertainment, these jazz bands flourished in India’s metros of Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai). A normal band would comprise of a piano, drums, upright bass and perhaps a saxophone, trumpet or clarinet, but almost always fronted by a lady vocalist. The music they played was popular jazz pieces, played and sung as covers of the original. This tradition was broken by Pam Crain, who went above and beyond singing just covers of songs by others.

Pam Crain, later dubbed by Louiz Banks as “the Maharani of Indian jazz” began singing in the mid-Fifties. Gifted with an immaculate voice and sense of timing, her phrasing and song delivery separated her from other jazz vocalists throughout her career.

The American jazz diva Betty Carter was a big influence on Pam’s singing career. As with Carter, Pam Crain was striving to stamp her own authority on her chosen song. To somewhat misquote a famous lyric from a Beatles song, Pam wanted to “take a jazz song and make it better,” a true hallmark of a jazz artist. Pam Crain gave her own expression to what she sang. She also set a new standard for jazz singing in India. Her legacy is being carried forward by a few contemporary jazz ladies in India.

Sonia Saigal, Pam’s stepdaughter, is a superb jazz singer who has taken vocal jazz to another level and can easily be ranked among the best jazz vocalists in the world. Sonia will rarely be heard singing a jazz song in the same way twice.

Vasundhara Vee, Samantha Noella, Isheeta Chakrvarty, Shreya Bhattacharya, Anubha Kaul, Ella Castellino Atai, Sonal (‘Skylark’), Simone Jehangir Shroff, Komal Kuwadekar and a few others are all fine exponents of jazz vocals in Mumbai while Ahona Sen from Kolkata, Harmony Siganporia from Ahmedabad and the outstanding Sanjeeta Bhattaharya from Delhi, among others are taking mainstream jazz to an international level. Incidentally, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya has also to her credit a film role.

India is well endowed with fine (female) jazz vocal talent. In a longer article, each of these terrific vocal talents would occupy a chapter.

In the 1970s and 1980s, jazz fusion became a popular variant of the mainstream of jazz; combining mainly electronic based jazz sounds with strains from other music genres. This experiment in the West inspired an Indo jazz fusion movement. Jazz artists in India combined their talents with Hindustani and Carnatic musicians to fuse into a unique combination of sound.

A number of Indian women singers were drawn into the fusion style of jazz, which usually involved voices and percussion from Indian disciplines combining usually with jazz style keyboards, bass, guitars and drums. Many of these vocalists then combined their talents with sounds from Europe, South America or Africa.

Asha Puthli has been a versatile jazz vocalist from Mumbai. Early in her career she moved to New York in the 1970s. A singer-songwriter, Asha Puthli has recorded a few albums in the U.S.

She is described as a vocalist in the jazz, rock, funk/ soul, disco and avant-garde genres. Puthli has some remarkable collaborations with prominent American jazz musicians.

Arguably the most versatile of all Indian singers is the unique Usha Uthup. She can be described equally as a jazz, folk, pop, rock, vernacular or Bollywood singer. Regardless of her choice of genre, Usha Uthup’s singing is always dramatic and enjoyable. There is never a dull musical moment in an Usha Uthup concert.

Radha Thomas from Bengaluru has been a prominent jazz and blues vocalist who has creatively explored the art of vocalese; she has sung her lyrics to the instrumental music of Chet Baker and others. Radha has performed internationally.

Sandhya Sanjana is a prime example of the jazz fusion era. She is one of the first to have blended Indian classical music with jazz and other Western music and can be described as one creating a vocal bridge across musical cultures. Sandhya now lives and performs in Amsterdam.

Although not a vocalist, Merlin D’Souza belongs in this article because of her pioneering work in creating vocal-based jazz and jazz fusion groups. Merlin is a superb jazz pianist whose group Indiva included, among others, the marvellous jazz/blues vocalist Vivienne Pocha. Merlin and Vivienne are very capable of springing musical surprises in concerts.

We would like to stretch the ‘Indian’ women vocalist theme by including a fine jazz vocalist from Sri Lanka, Yolanda Bavan.

In the 1960s, Bavan joined the iconic jazz vocalese group of Lambert, Hendricks and Bavan and sang at the Newport Jazz Festival. Like Usha Uthup, Yolanda Bavan sang in a saree!

She has also sung with Louiz Banks in Mumbai at a Jazz Yatra in the 1980s.

The jazz scene in India is brimming with talent and we are particularly thrilled about all the ladies in the forefront.

Happy Women’s Year, starting March 8.