Music

"There is no jazz at all", replied Radha Thomas when I asked her what was the jazz scene like in Bangalore. Radha had a band those days called Human Bondage, and she used to sing along with her then guitarist husband Suresh Shottam. They were an impressive team. So taken in by their music was Niranjan Javeri of Jazz Yatra, that he took them on an European tour. Success followed the couple immediately after, and they migrated to New York. But the duo did not last together, and neither does Radha sing any more jazz. Back in Bangalore, Radha finds no place where she can sing her blues. "Is the scene that bad?" I asked Gerard Machado, who used to play with Human Bondage with Radha.

Today, Gerard is a musician of his own right. He has a band of his own called the GM Network. "Bangalore audience is very educated as far as music is concerned. But there is not a big crowd that listens only to jazz", agrees Gerard. He only confirmed what I had heard before. All the jazz clubs in town had thinned down, and the music they played was limited. "The Jazz Club in Manipal Centre has a sorry collection of just five jazz CDs which he plays every day, its ridiculous! exclaimed a jazz buff. Take 5 is the only decent place in town for jazz, but you don't find crowds thronging to that place as they would haunt other more upbeat pubs like Pub World, Nasa, Guzzlers Inn, Pecos, and Night Watchman, where the crowd is relatively younger and the beer, a little more inexpensive.

"Bangalore crowd listens to anything as long as there is a good rhythm and a good beat. It does not care whether it is jazz, or rock or pop", says Gerard who plays Karnatic jazz, rock and Blues. "The similarities between Karnatik and Jazz are remarkable. Both are systematic, and have a lot of scope for improvisation, " says Gerard. Except for a brief spell when Gerard learnt Karnatik music from T.A.S. Mani of the Karnatik School of Percussion, he is a self taught musician. He co-leads the Karnatik Jazz fusion band "Megha" and has two titles to his credit: "Clean Licks" released by Magnasound, and "Touch Another Life" released by Crescendo music Company.

His own album Spectrum is lively, imaginative and energetic.
But isn't most Indiam music a rehash of Western pop? How about some original music? "Yeah, people have used up their imagination, they need to be inspired", he says with a smile. And how difficult is it for an young artist to make it in the music circle? It is difficult alright. There is a lot of struggle initially, but it is worth the pain, feels the guitarist. Most musicians start their music career singing in hotels.

This includes heavy metal band Millennium, which bagged the Best Video of the Week on MTV in 1992.

The band is headed for their second release "Power Sutra", which is soon to be launched internationally. But other musicians who are still struggling to make it are having trouble because Bangalore clamped down on live bands. Isn't that what they did in the third Reich? But those artists came back with a vengeance. Lets hope the same happens in Bangalore too.