Swingin’ Rhythms from Italy

 Another week, another set of photos from the relative of a pioneering jazz musician in India and another round of frustration at not having any information to share. Recently, I received mail from the grandson of John Abriani, an Italian musician who performed in Calcutta between 1932 and 1934. But precious little has come up about Abriani in my research.

Until Riccardo Fantin’s mail, my only familiarity with Abriani was a geeky discussion in a collectors’ journal about whether the Italian musician had actually made any recordings in India. Though he’s said to have, no one actually seems to have seen these treasures. A couple of years ago, browsing through a music store in Berlin, I did find tracks that Abriani had recorded – but these were tunes he’d cut in Berlin, one in 1928 and the other in 1939.

Later, thanks to the wonders of Google, I did locate three sides he cut for the Twin label. (They’re embedded below.)

Riccado says that his grandfather, a violinist, was born in the town of Lusiana in Italy’s Vicenza province on May 15, 1898.  Between 1925-1932, John Abriani and his brother Felice, who played banjo and violin, led an orchestra that played regular gigs in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland.

“In 1934, John Abriani returned from India, and continued his career as an active performer, and recording artist, throughout Europe for the remainder of the decade,” Riccardo said. “In the 1940s, he was permanently settled in his native Italy, where his musical presence slowly diminished over the following decades.”

Here’s what a biographical note by Eugene Chadbourne says: 

“The work of this ’20s and ’30s Italian bandleader, who doubled on saxophones and violin, is unfortunately documented sparsely on recordings. He represents one of the earliest of jazz fusion experimenters in that his music combined aspects of both dance band and classic jazz music, from an Italian perspective, naturally. Like many great bandleaders, John Abriani was known for his knack at nabbing naturally exciting soloists and devising frameworks for featuring them, in his case a bit of a matter of necessity since he was not much of a soloist.

“John Abriani…had the courage to take an Italian jazz band to Calcutta, where he held down a steady gig between 1932-1934. There were also recordings done during this stint, part of a HMV Twin catalog of both jazz and old-timey music distributed in India in the ’30s and the subject of many a record collectors’ sweaty nightmares.”

John Abriani died in Milan in 1960, but his memory was revived not so long ago by my friend Atul Sabharwal in this short story.
Here are links to three tracks that Abriani recorded for Twin record while in India. 

Bonus: According Wolfgang Kastenhuber, a traditional Indian group was in the studio at the same time. So they made this record below just for fun that got recorded on the flip side of Three’s a Crowd. It was not commercially released this way, of course.