I was of course tempted to call the title of this post, the cliched - "All that Jazz" but luckily I refrained from doing so ! (Not just to escape cliche - but because my Jazz Journey is a musical journey - not just covering Jazz !)
The fact is that JAZZ has been a wonderful journey in my life - a journey of PASSION, CREATIVITY, SELF DISCOVERY, SELF-CONNECT and SPIRITUALITY !!!
Wow that's a lot of Destinations in this journey ! :-)
Let me start this account by declaring that one of my biggest passions ( probably the biggest - but then my wife might object !) is MUSIC.
It has always INSPIRED me, made me feel ONE with Existence, connected with my INNERMOST or PUREMOST.
I started my musical journey way back in 1983 listening to some Popular Pop - I was in the Eight Grade / Standard.
A lot of the intitial music that i was exposed to was British Pop. This went on to American Pop and then the SECOND Inflection Point in my musical life when I fell in love with HEAVY METAL !!! The year was 1987.
I got into it big time - like I always get into all my passions in life - 101 %. I started a journey of DISCOVERY. I started listening / buying / trying bands or artists whose names I had never heard of before !
The excitement and the fun was in the Discovery !
Many bands started pouring into my life - Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, etc.
Then in 1988, I moved to Mumbai ( from Bahrain, where I was doing my schooling ). This is when I met a friend called Parag - who pushed into my THIRD Inflection Point in my musical journey - getting Deep into Rock - the music , the artists and the lyrics.
I got into it so much that I even set up a musical store in those days. This was in 1989. The store was in Andheri Lokhandwala and it was called GENESIS ! It lasted for a year and I discovered the passion within me to SPREAD the Passion to others. I was busy converting people from AIR SUPPLY to JOURNEY / STYX !
Then my life got into College, MBA, CAREER ( which was Advertising) and Music was playing a less active role in my life.
This changed a bit when one of the Advertising accounts / clients I was handling was a music company - Polygram !
I fell in love with the music business and wanted to be a part of it someday. And that happened ! After a couple of years I saw myself in Sony Music.
Before that, I changed my job and I went off to the US for an official assignment. The year was 1996 and my FOURTH Inflection Point in my musical journey !
This is when I was exposed to two new genres of music - Jazz and Blues ! On the first weekend of my stay in the US, we went off partying with my colleague and his friend ( who was a computer programmer by day and Bass guitarist by night !). He took us to the famous Jazz club - the BLUE NOTE for a Sunday Jazz Brunch show ! http://www.frommers.com/destinations/newyorkcity/N24399.htmlIt was awesome - we were sitting right in fronto fo the stage - and the experience was really good. It was a jazz vocal band playing - though I don't remember who now.
Bu the experience that really touched me was after, when he ( the bass guitarist) took us to this non descript hole in the wall BLUES BAR called Dan Lynch's Blues Bar ( which I believe has closed down now). It was located somewhere in Manhattan NYC in the Village.
It was just fantastic ! Basically, it was a small bar and amateur bands just jammed there playing from the afternoon till the wee hours. Musicians just signed up in a register - stating what they wanted to play - and that's what they did !
I had never really heard the Blues before this - and I fell in love ! Because it had a lot of electric guitar, I just loved it !
So, though both started off together ( Jazz and Blues), my heart went out for the Blues, primarily because of the ROCK connection ( It helped that all modent Rock owes its Origin to the Blues !)
A couple of years of Blues happened - and I started veering away from "conventional music". It was difficult to live in this "idealist" world as I had by now joined Sony Music in 1999
Sadly, I was a bit disillusioned with the job - I realised the business of music was .. just that - BUSINESS ! It was difficult to grapple with the "awesome talent" that existed everywhere in the world of music and there was the "other music" which was commercial and therefore was made money !
Reading this book, THE HIT MEN, (http://www.amazon.com/Hit-Men-Brokers-Business-Vintage/dp/0679730613) also did not help me in joining the industry that I had joined. It is a fascinating account of how the US Music industry has always worked - Personal connections, Mob influence, Drugs, Personal agendas and a little bit of talent !
I realised that I was buying far less music than I would have not working for a music company. Of course, the free / heavily discounted CDs were partially reponsible !
I soon left Sony, went back to advertising, where I started picking up the broken pieces of my music passion. That helped.
What helped even more was I finally purchased a DECENT Music system ( Canton Speakers + Rotel Amps) . At the time of purchase I was freaking out on Modern Rock - Linkin Park, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Staind, etc.
By the time the system came in, I had fallen in love with Jazz all over again !!
I was visiting Bangkok as part of an office conference and I chanced upon an attractive box set of modern jazz - a compilation by this european jazz label - ECM called RARUM - a set of 12 CDs. This featured compilations made by the artists themselves - Paul Motian, Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, John Surman, etc. All were strange names to me - which made the investment even more exciting, fun and RISKY !!!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/299610/
I got this collection home and even my wife seemed excited with it. Then, the first real connection started when I attended a JAZZ Workshop conducted at Planet M ( a music shop in Mumbai). The person conducting it was an old timer from the Jazz Society in Pune called Max Babi.( He writes for this jazz website - check it out ! )http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/contrib.php?id=149
His passion for Jazz just hit me there and then ! I asked him to recommend some music from the store and I ended up buying some Oscar Peterson ( which I love till date !) http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll Check him out too !!
He played some artists ( which I had obviously never heard of - like Saskia Laroo, a Scandinavian Trumpeter) and I realised that JAZZ was a huge Ocean of unexplored gems of talent that I was going to have a blast discovering ! This was two and a half years ago and I am so happy to say that that journey continues with great fervour till today ( even greater actually !)
The next connection was my next jazz workshop. I found out that they were doing a 3 session workshop on MILES DAVIS conducted by Jayanto Sengupta.
This was how I put my foot on the JAZZ Gas Pedal and started cruising on the awesome JAZZ highway !! I will share this in my next post ! Toodles !!!
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