Jazzing it up: Musical Multiculturalism in India

Western music in India has historically prospered through multicultural influences of which the Goan Portuguese and Filipinos deserve special merit. Jazz and Filipinos shared a close relation as once being subjugated by the Spanish in 1565 the inhabitants of Philippines were influenced by the jazz culture of New Orleans, the Spanish territory in North America. Filipinos took the new sound back to Philippines and also to India where  they supposedly formed a musical diaspora. In Western Music their only competitors in India were the Goan Portuguese who were equally adept in that genre. Being schooled in Portuguese schools where music was compulsory, a large number of the Goans made their living by playing western music. The Filipinos followed suit though their field of specialization was mainly jazz. Their presence in the country dates back to 1913 when Filipino String band was often showcased by the Pacific Mail Shipping Line as one of the star attractions of Europe-bound vessels. In 1920s, a Filipino band of
twenty members started playing jazz and they called themselves Filipino Syncomusic Orchestra.

It earned fame for having performed at several places in Bombay in 1935 where it raised money for Mayor of Bombay’s Quetta Relief Fund. In 1922, a report in The New York Times hailed the Filipino musicians of such ship liners as the ‘Italians of the East’. A number of Filipino musicians
settled down in the railway town of Jamalpur in Bihar’s Munger district where they performed for the Anglo-Indian railway employees and officers. In 1926, the first recording of jazz by a multinational band called Lequime’s Grand Hotel Orchestra, recorded in India, featured a Filipino trombone player named Nick Ampier. Once India became independent this genre of music died as the connoisseurs moved out, gigs became scarce and the fountain of multiculturalism became defunct.