Ramu Ramanathan's play JAZZ (2007) has been renamed BOMBAY JAZZ. Just as the new title brings into sharp focus Bombay's tryst with Jazz, the revived production is also looking very fresh and crisp. Denzil Smith has replaced ''Bugs'' Bharagava Krishna in a role that is right up his alley. It was meant to be that way when Ramu wrote the play, envisaging Denzil in the role of his nameless, jazz musician who has sunk into oblivion. Accompanying Denzil is the young saxophonist Rhys D'Souza who has been with the play since it opened, relishing his part as the student and looking more confident than ever. Together they make a brilliant team as they recreate the swinging fifties, sixties and seventies in Bombay then; a city of discarded, forgotten histories- some deliberately so.
The play is a tribute to the fine, mainly Anglo-Indian jazz musicians of the time whose sad decline is trenchantly reflected in their affairs with the capricious Hindi film industry. Popular Hindi film songs of the time such Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (C.I.D.; 1956), Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu (Howrah Bridge; 1958), Baar Baar Dekho (China Town; 1962) and several others have the signature tunes of these masters. They filled up the big, background orchestras of the Hindi films of the time, nameless, but the sound of their music was unmistakable. While composers like Shankar Jaikishan, OP Nayyar and RD Burman are fondly remembered, the original creators of this music influenced by the African-American Blues and Jazz are almost all nearly forgotten, existing only in the memories of their surviving friends and families and in the archives of the period. Some like Chic Chocolate, known as the Louis Armstrong of India, were more fortunate. These wonderful, indigenous musicians of 'Bombay Jazz' built on their own repertoire and played with elan at the Taj hotel and at the other popular nightspots in the Churchgate area.
Ramu Ramanathan draws on the chequered history of this musical tribe, based on the research done by Naresh Fernandes for his play. Etienne Coutinho has directed it. The stage and light design complement the narrative and create the desired ambience. Interestingly, only this team of Bandra boys might have pulled the project off, given their familiarity and close proximity to the people they are talking about. In Ramu's plays, history is succinctly and artfully ensconced in personal narratives. There is remarkable blend of time and the person- witnesses, observers, survivors, and usually, the marginalised. But it is never ''documentary theatre'' although the playwright's work has sometimes been commented upon thus. It is also almost always, witty and humorous. The research and the documentation extend out into creative tropes such as when the jazz musician looks up from his coffin at intervals in the play to hear his friends, wife and lovers speak of him. At other times he mentors his young ward, speaking to him as much of music as of life. These are wise words. Precious real-life nuggets from the lives of these musicians find their way into the play. Meetings with Dave Brubeck and Bismillah Khan are recalled. Only one good musician can recognize the other, however different their cultures and styles of music may be.
In this forgotten world made vivid, cheques bounce, sex encounters are revealed, episodes are remembered and anecdotes retold. Then there is the sound of Rhy's Sax- drawing parallels with the events described, and finally immersing us in its music and the jazz world of infinite possibilities.
