Their eyes give it away. Chris Perry wears a slick black jacket, the sleeves of his crisp white shirt revealing the glint of dark cuff links. His fingers clasp a gleaming tenor saxophone with a lover’s gentleness. Arms crossed coquettishly above her waist, Lorna Cordeiro is chic in a bouffant and a form-fitting gown that shows a flash of ankle. They stare into each other’s eyes, mesmerised. Behind them looms a giant camera aperture borrowed from the opening sequence of the Bond films.
Usha Uthup, who won a Padma Shree this year, hasn’t stepped out of the spotlight since she first started belting out Broadway tunes and pop standards in 1969 in venues …
In the 1950s, the Anglo-Indian crooner Pamela McCarthy was among the most striking figures on the Bombay bandstand. She was always dressed in a stunning ball gown. Her swinging voice …
http://youtu.be/tIf8EV_04YgTheir singing is like “a sound, good kick, something which can be felt and not described”. That’s what The Times of India suggested 121 years ago after hearing the predecessors …
One evening in 2007, as I wrapped up a presentation at an art festival in Panjim on the role Goan jazz musicians had played in bringing swing to the Hindi …
Jazz, it’s clear, was the world’s first pop. The joyous form had the good fortune of being born right around the time that the gramophone was invented and global shipping …
In 2004, the Sri Lankan pop sensations from the 1960s, The Jet Liners, held a reunion concert in Colombo. As a finale, they performed this song: Bombay Meri Hai – …
A version of this article first appeared in Time Out Mumbai. In 2004, in a review of an album called Integration, the Guardian declared, “Of all the attempts to bring …
Over the past couple of weeks, this music video of performers at Pakistan’s Sachal Studios reinterpreting Dave Brubeck’s classic jazz tune Take Five has spread around the world faster than …
In the mid-1930s, drummer Oliver Tines was a regular member of Louis Armstrong’s band. (That him, hazily in the background, back in 1933.) He was a part of the trumpet …