Jordan was performing at the Jazz Utsav in New Delhi
American jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan said that the music genre “found a welcome home in Bollywood”, PTI reported.
The four-time Grammy nominee performed at the Jazz Utsav in New Delhi on Sunday and tracked back India’s connection with jazz music to the 1920s.
“There is a long history of jazz in India going back to the 1920s. Many African-American jazz musicians toured to India to be free from the racial discrimination in the US at the time. The audiences here identified with the theme of freedom in the music as it validated their own aspirations to be free of colonialism,” Jordan told PTI in an email interview.
“Jazz also found a welcome home in Bollywood as it did in Hollywood. Besides that, both jazz and Indian classical music feature improvisation, so I think there was common resonance in the cultural traditions as well,” he said.
Jordan described his childhood experience of seeing sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan and American jazz musician John Handy performing together in San Francisco as “a life-changing experience”.
The Illinois-born musician has himself collaborated with Indian musicians Jay Kishore (sitar) and Vedang Londhe (tablas), to record a CD of ragas, with influence of jazz music.
“When it comes to ragas I know I have a lot to learn and I want to learn, but I’ll say this for sure: When Jay and I play together there is a magic that happens,” Jordan told PTI.
He added that the popular notion that jazz is complicated and belief that only “simple music sells” has turned music into a “commodity with less cultural value”