Jazz regains ground in Kolkata, but revival remains a dant dream

In the -lanes of North Kolkata’s Chandni Chowk, an 85-year-old dive bar, unassuming from the outside, but unshakably charming at the very first glance — Broadway Hotel — has been a significant, albeit antiquated spot to get drinks and food on the cheap, frequented office-goers in a rush. But that’s changing now, thanks to its live jazz music.
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In Kolkata, one of the two cities besides erstwhile Bombay, which is credited for being the country’s musical capital in the 1920s, jazz was booming, not least due to the US troops stationed on Indian soil during the Second World War. It is also the city where names of legendary musicians like Carlton Kitto, Braz Gonsalves, and Louis Banks are taken with veneration, reminiscing a time when jazz was hosted and enjoyed in cultural establishments dotting the hub-bub of Park Street, like Chowringhee Bar, Mocambo, and Blue Fox, and Trincas.
Archival image of the stage at Trincas back in the ’60s. (Photo: Anand Puri)
But like Park Street itself, the jazz music scene in Kolkata, too, has changed. With a shrinking audience, tides of time, and high entertainment tax imposed the erstwhile CPI-M government, fewer and fewer places hosted live music. In fact, in present-day Kolkata, only three establishments are placing their bets on jazz, one of them being Trincas, a name synonymous with jazz music in Calcutta. Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium

The Willie Walters Jazz Quartet in front of Trincas at Kolkata’s Park Street. (Photo: Anand Puri)
A more than 60-year-old cultural institution, Trincas revolutionised dining and entertainment in Calcutta as we know it. According to its co-owner Anand Puri, ask any older person about the ‘Sunday Jam Session’ at Trincas, and they will most likely rustle up stories from their times when going there on weekends was the cool thing to do, simply to lay back, drink their cola’s, eat ice creams, and of course, len to live music young bands.
“Trincas has always had music since 1959, and we are one of the few places in Calcutta to carry on the tradition uninterrupted, except for during Covid. As for jazz, we hadn’t had performances since the 70s, but we brought it back in 2020, in phases,” says Puri. And the way he is going about it, he shares, is with soft vocal jazz as opposed to “hardcore jazz”. He says it’s “the perfect introduction” to the genre. “People are coming week after week and loving it, and there are already regulars who are coming to watch the performers. We have got a good mix of people who are absolutely not into jazz as well as jazz aficionados.”
Puri also explains that he is not trying to compete with or recreate Trincas illustrious past, which has music doyens like Usha Uthup associated with its name. “I try not to get entrapped the comparisons with the past because a moment gone will never be recreated. You have to take inspiration from it and create a new one. But you can expect a lot of excitement from the past to inform the present, which will in turn create hory.”

1972 ft. Nondon Baghchi at Broadway Hotel. Kolkata. (Photo: Raghav Sehgal)
And Calcutta’s past is a treasure trove of inspirations for arts and entrepreneurs alike, like it was for Broadway’s Raghav Sehgal. When he introduced live jazz music at Broadway, he did so not only because of his love of jazz, but also because “jazz relates to Broadway and the culture of Calcutta more than any other music form. Calcutta was one of the only cities in the country that had a mainstream music scene, but that was on the decline. So, we decided we must start music here, to provide a platform to musicians, especially jazz musicians because that was something that’s lacking here.”
Broadway Hotel, Kolkata. (Photo: Parichay Samanta for Broadway)
But Sehgal introduced live jazz to Broadway rather gingerly, he admits, because it was reputed for being a busy dive bar, not a jazz club where people sat down to len to music that may or may not make sense to them. “Also, not many musicians wanted to take the challenge of playing at a non music venue,” adds Sehgal. “But there were few arts who decided to take it on, especially because of how well music sits with the aesthetic of Broadway. We have other genres as well, but jazz is at the forefront of our music. The acoustics of the building really supported music of this nature.”
However, even though musicians were now willing to take the plunge to play at a “non music venue”, Sehgal admits that the biggest hurdle was to bring in ‘the right audience’: “It took a lot for us to get the word out there as to what’s going on here [at Broadway] because in the beginning, the audience wasn’t receptive. We had people coming in who would say ‘the volume’s too loud’, or requesting to change the music to some Hindi or other English music; they did not understand jazz.” Despite all initial odds, he opened up the gates of Broadway to everyone with no entry fees, no price hikes in drinks or food, and enough seating capacity. “We are not trying to make jazz this niche, posh kind of setup. It’s been very exclusive in Calcutta in the past, we don’t want that.”

Amyt Dutta performing at Skinny Mo’s in Kolkata. (Photo: Margub Ali for Skinny Mo’s)
But, paid jazz was, in fact, a niche thing, as Munir Mohanty, who opened Kolkata’s only jazz club, Skinny Mo’s, admits. In fact, he was convinced that to run a jazz club in Kolkata, where the vibrant scene was a thing of the past, one had to lower the stakes to the minimum – “You have to own the place, and all you have to do is pay the band, pay electricity and not be worried about closing down. Once I was able to do that, Skinny Mo’s became a reality in 2019, and that’s how we have been running for the last 5 months.” 

Since its inception, Skinny Mo’s has evolved triumphantly from three lockdowns and no alcohol license: “The initial response was wonderful. We sold out on every gig. I was amazed that people were coming even without alcohol. The musicians loved playing there, because everybody was just sitting and lening to music.”
Arjun Chakraborty, a 17-year old jazz drummer who has performed at Skinny Mo’s, agrees. “At Skinny Mo’s, people will sit quietly and len to the music. There are no lights, everything is towards you, and they’re just seeing you. It’s very intimate. The acoustics, the stage, the sound – you step in and you feel like you have stepped into a New York jazz club.”

Arjun Chakraborty performing at Skinny Mo’s.
Chakraborty is one of the youngest musicians of the many who are now taking a taste for jazz. And he is, like his industry seniors, hopeful for the future of jazz in the city of Mr Kitto: “The revival will take time because jazz is the music of struggle. People gave their sweat and blood to play it. And I wouldn’t say it vanished from Calcutta, but it definitely did shrink after Mr Carlton Kitto passed. But now, with all of the venues hosting jazz musicians, and youngsters playing and taking interest in the genre, there’s definitely a revival that is happening.”

But Amyt Dutta, acclaimed guitar, music composer, producer, and mentor who is one of the most celebrated musicians in the country, disagrees. “If you have three venues hosting jazz in a whole city, a ‘revival’ doesn’t work out like that. If you go from 0 to 1, it’s merely an improvement. They’ve been trying but the wheel is not churning.” 
According to Dutta, who has been playing to national and international audiences for over four decades, one of the reasons why the wheel hasn’t been churning is due to poor reception of the genre. “If you go to a jazz festival, even if there are 600-700 people coming in everyday, I doubt everybody would get the experimental part of jazz. But if you play the conventional, old fashioned swing jazz, they would associate that with their living room whisky, playing records in the background after a long day. People are used to familiarity. But if I go up on stage and play jagged, f****d up kind of jazz, they won’t get it. I’m talking about a ratio of 100:8, so the gap in understanding the genre is huge.” He says, “You have to have the heart and the mind space to get into jazz.”

Jaimin Rajani, singer-songwriter from Kolkata, concurs, citing that people don’t want to invest in a genre as complex. “Jazz is very cerebral music, and because it is so cerebral, not so many people enjoy jazz now. People’s attention span has gone down, so we are more into ‘simpler’ stuff which doesn’t have as many intricacies as jazz. You don’t have to invest in it. But jazz requires a lot of understanding.” 
Mohanty believes for Kolkata to have its erstwhile status of being a hub for jazz music, “we need to bring good jazz to the table, and the only way to do that is if we all tie up because each city in India has a small jazz scene and the pool of local musicians is also very small. The younger generation will start getting interested, and not just people who already know jazz.”
A revival may or may not be in near sight for jazz in Kolkata, but as Trincas’ Puri says, “We started it, now we just have to hang on to it.”
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