India on Foot

Pam Crain

The nicest thing about Crain is her sincerity.
Although she keeps travelling — her daughter has moved to the UK and
her mother lives in Las Vegas – Crain returns to the city of her birth,Calcutta,India,
where she feels her roots are. “I chat with them on the Internet. They
seem to be quite scared. Here, I don’t mind going home in a taxi at one
and two. Here I can chat with the taxi drivers,” says Crain, who, when
offered snacks by her husband Don Saigal, opted for a laddu and a barfi
instead of sandwiches.

Crain says her mother is an Anglo-Indian
and at age 13 when she was in the boarding of Dow Hill in Kurseong, she
was introduced to the piano. “That’s about it,” she says. But they were
allowed to take back the discs she bought in a small shop in New
Market. “I was consumed by jazz”, her favourite singers being Betty
Carter, Sarah Vaughan and Nina Simone. She was “very lucky” to have
performed with some of the best jazz musicians the country produced.

Perhaps
it was fated that she would subsequently “fall in love” with Carnatic
music, for impossible as it may sound, Crain had begun her career at a
masala dosa joint named Neera’s on the Chowringhee.

When she
returned from Singapore after a year there, she watched Mocambo’s being
built. Crain has performed in all the cities, and she says with a
smile, “even Indore.”

The crowds are still the same, she feels,
but she admits managers of establishments expect the music to play
softly in the background. “But just as the people at the restaurant
talk business, we want to talk our business too. It is very difficult
for a musician to do anything that is not coming out with heartfelt
power.”

Carlton Kitto

“While some turned to alcohol or drugs, many died of starvation,” remembers Kitto, who switched over to teaching at the Calcutta School of Music for 12 years. Now he teaches jazz and classical guitar at schools and at his residence. “I’m trying to keep authentic jazz alive in the city,” says the survivor. Every evening Kitto is strumming on his guitar accompanied by a pianist at the Chowringhee Bar at Oberoi Grand. “The jam session at Mocambo and Blue Fox on weekends had the youngsters queuing up to shake a leg,” he says.

Louiz Banks

Louiz Banks has been spearheading the Jazz Movement in India for the past three decades.

He has been singularly instrumental in bringing a high standard of Jazz performance for jazz devotees in India.

He has proved his calibre, time and again, by performances with greats such as Eddie Henderson, Eddie Daniels, Charlie Mariano, Yolande Bavan, John McLaughlin, Tony Lakatos, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, George Brooks , Wallace Roney , Bob Belden , Roseanna Vitro , Carl Clements, India’s best jazz singer Pam Crain, World renowned South Indian Classical Singer Ramamani, World Percussionist Sivamani, Ustad Zakir Husain, Shankar Mahadevan, the eminent Sultan Khan, among others and crowning it all with a tour all over India with the legendary Dizzy Gillespie.

When he is not playing music he paints impressionistic canvases in oil and acrylic.

And Toto Wallang, Nondon Bagchi, Louis Majaw, Usha Uthup, Rudy Wallang…..