Microsoft Word - Jazz Education in India-A Case Study.docx


  

 
 
 
 
 

ABSTRACT 
 
 
 

 
Title of Thesis: JAZZ EDUCATION IN INDIA: A CASE 

STUDY  
  
 Marcus Hansel Daniel,  

Master of Arts in Music Education, 2020 
  
Thesis Directed By: Michael P. Hewitt, Ph.D. 

Professor of Music Education 
School of Music  

 
  

 There are people in India who enjoy jazz. It is a complex art form that requires 

proper instruction. The early part of my own jazz education was done in India and I 

did find learning opportunities rare. I wanted to study the experience of another 

Indian who learns and performs jazz in India to be able to get an understanding of the 

status of jazz education in India.  

 An exploratory, narrative single-case study was done of Kirtana Krishna, a 

jazz singer and guitarist in India. The international faculty at her institution gave her 

world class instruction. One of them, Steve Zerlin, was able to corroborate the facts 

and provide his own input. Two other jazz intuitions have opened and all three serve 

as primers. They have increased the quality and quantity of jazz being performed and 

some of their alumni are continuing their jazz studies in the US.  

 



  

 
 
 
 
 
 

JAZZ EDUCATION IN INDIA: A CASE STUDY    
 
 
 

by 
 
 

Marcus Hansel Daniel 
 
 
 
 
 

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the  
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment 

of the requirements for the degree of 
Master of Arts  

in Music Education 
2020 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee: 
Dr. Michael P. Hewitt, Chair 
Dr. Kenneth Elpus 
Dr. Yo-Jung Han 

 
 



  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

© Copyright by 
Marcus Hansel Daniel 

2020 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

 

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Dedication 

This thesis is dedicated to my wife, Esther Daniel, who believed in me and that this 

was possible. I recall when I first said that I wanted to get my Master's in Music 

Education; it seemed inconceivable, but now has become a reality, and the process 

has completely changed our lives. 

Thank you for your support every step of the way, and for not giving up even when 

we had to be apart for a year and five days. I love you! 

 

Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies. 

- Proverbs 31:10 



 

 

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Acknowledgements 
 It is with great gratitude that I acknowledge the many who have helped me 

write this thesis and in procuring my music education degree.  

 It took great courage, commitment and sacrifice for many individuals in India 

to help me make the journey to the US in order to study for my Master's in Music 

Education. My late father, Francis Daniel, who was a classical pianist and my first 

piano teacher. My mother, Shanthi Daniel, who always knew the value of education 

and encouraged me to pursue this degree. My mother in law, Vijaykumari Murari and 

my father in law MK Murari, who spent countless hours on his knees to see me 

through - from the day we shared our plan with him and until today.   

 The individuals who helped me through some tough barriers in paperwork and 

processes in getting across to the US. Philip Bhaskar, Sudha Rao, Vijay Babu, 

Swaroop Cormaty, Abhishek Kanti and Arava Solomon.  

 For those who shepherded and guided me: VM Samuel, George Cherian, Arul 

Job, Chandra Paul and Daniel David. 

 Friends in the US who were very immensely supportive: Dawn Rodgers-De 

Fouw, Terry Bonham, Delois Bonham, Sheldon Cunningham and Reginald Slade. 

 Friends and fellow students at the University of Maryland who inspired me, 

allowed me to pick their brains, and have just been a lot of fun. Dana Varona, Grace 

Chris, Adam Grisé, Austin Gaskin, Yurong Yang, Michael Quinlivan and Sharon 

How.  

 The exceptional faculty at the University of Maryland. The late Chris Vadala, 

for making jazz so joyful and for gently guiding my piano playing in big band when I 



 

 

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was so lost in the beginning. The amazing music education faculty and my thesis 

committee, Dr. Elpus, Dr. Han. My advisor, Dr. Michael Hewitt, who has been very 

kind and has patiently been steering me in the right direction in the writing of this 

thesis. Learning from him has been a great blessing! 



 

 

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                                                       Table of Contents 

Dedication......................................................................................................................ii 
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii 
Table of Contents...........................................................................................................v 
List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................vii 
Identities .....................................................................................................................viii 
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 
Synopsis of Personal Story ............................................................................................ 1 

The Problem .......................................................................................................... 2 
The Rationale.........................................................................................................4 

Research Questions....................................................................................................5 
Scope and Limitations................................................................................................5 

Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................ 7 
The History of Jazz Education in the US...................................................................7 

The Pioneers..........................................................................................................9 
The Jazz Degree..................................................................................................11 
Jazz Education in k-12 Schools..........................................................................14 

Excerpts from Around the World ............................................................................ 15 
Jazz in Greece.....................................................................................................16 
Jazz in Israel........................................................................................................18 
Jazz in Australia..................................................................................................20 
Jazz in Estonia.....................................................................................................23 
Jazz in the UK.....................................................................................................24 
Potential for Growth...........................................................................................25 

Jazz in the Indian Context ....................................................................................... 25 
Early Jazz in India...............................................................................................27 
Bollywood Music................................................................................................29 
Jazz and Traditional Indian Music......................................................................31 
The Small Indian Jazz Audience.........................................................................33 

Chapter 3: Methodology .............................................................................................. 34 
Axiological Assumption .......................................................................................... 34 

My Narrative.......................................................................................................35 
Epistemology and Methodical Choice .................................................................... 40 
Narrative as an Avenue of Insight ........................................................................... 40 

A Single-Case Study with Narrative Inquiry......................................................41 
Exploratory Study...............................................................................................42 
Case Selection.....................................................................................................43 
Member Check....................................................................................................43 

Chapter 4: The Narratives ........................................................................................... 45 
A Synopsis of Kirtana Krishna's Story .................................................................... 45 
A Synopsis of Steve Zerlin's Story .......................................................................... 47 
A Combined Story ................................................................................................... 48 

Continued Learning............................................................................................55 
Answering the Research Questions ......................................................................... 57 

Chapter 5:  Discussion ................................................................................................. 60 



 

 

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Comparing Results .................................................................................................. 60 
Economics ........................................................................................................... 60 
Enculturation....................................................................................................... 64 

Implications for Music Education ........................................................................... 63 
Directions for Future Research ................................................................................ 65 
Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 66 

Appendices...................................................................................................................70 
References ................................................................................................................... 92 
 
 
 



 

 

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List of Abbreviations 

 

Berklee: Berklee College of Music 

COMPs: Communities of Musical Practice 

GMI:   Global Music Institute 

HBCUs: Historically Black Colleges and Universities 

SAM:  Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music 

STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math 

UMD:  University of Maryland 

US:      United States of America 

USA:   United States of America 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

 

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Identities 
 

 The names of people mentioned are all used with written permission, except 

for Ramaswamy Prasanna, due to his being a well-known figure and the founder of 

Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                            
 



 

 

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Chapter 1: Introduction 

Synopsis of Personal Story 

As an Indian jazz pianist, my jazz education took its own unique path and 

trajectory. I was born in 1973 and my father, a classical pianist, had me undergo 

classical training. He was my first teacher and also taught me how to play by ear. By 

eighteen, I had heard enough about jazz to be interested in it. A former schoolmate 

and pianist, Samuel Samson and I used to play for each other and exchange notes. He 

had a teacher named Dizzy Sal, who, in his prime, was India's best jazz pianist. 

Though Samuel was in the early stages of piano playing  and had been learning some 

pop and playing by ear from Dizzy, through this association he knew that something 

fascinating called jazz existed. I did not know anything about Dizzy Sal, except the 

name as mentioned by Samuel. Only when preparing for this thesis, through my 

reading, I really learned who Dizzy Sal was (Fernandes, 2012). Dizzy met famous 

American jazz pianist Dave Brubeck in Bombay (now renamed Mumbai), India. 

Brubeck took Dizzy under his wing and helped him get enrolled in Berklee College of 

Music in Boston, USA. Dizzy left the US prematurely and returned to India after 

having contracted some undefined disease. He remained a recluse and taught a very 

limited number of students.   

 Samuel was one of the few fortunate students to have Dizzy as his piano 

teacher. When we were in our late teens, he often talked about this extraordinary and 

elusive entity called jazz that Dizzy played, much to my curiosity. Samuel also 

introduced me to my first jazz teacher Victor Martins, who had studied jazz at North 

Texas State University in the 1970s. I took lessons from Victor for just a few months, 



 

 

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before he immigrated to Canada. After that, I studied through books and VHS tapes 

for a few years while continuing classical training. At twenty-three I began my 

Bachelor of Music, in Michigan, at Grace Christian University, where Professor Steve 

Talaga was a faculty member and jazz piano instructor. I took lessons from him for 

five of my eight semesters.  

 I returned to India after getting my Bachelor of Music. After some years of 

running a business there, I changed careers and became a professional jazz musician 

and also a private piano instructor. Around 2011, I formed the group Traffic Jam and 

we performed until 2016. We never lacked an audience, an indication that there are 

Indians who enjoy jazz. Since, 2017, I have been enrolled in the University of 

Maryland, in College Park, Maryland, USA. While essentially a music education grad 

student, I have also been involved in the jazz department. In each semester at UMD I 

have played in two jazz ensembles, one being a big band and the other being a sextet 

or septet and this has been a huge learning experience. 

The Problem  

 The study of jazz for me is ongoing and is currently continuing in the United 

States. The brief personal narrative serves to highlight four factors that contributed to 

my motivation for this research. Firstly, a part of my jazz education was done in 

India, mostly in the early stages. Secondly, the majority of my professional jazz 

career was in India. Thirdly, even though, in India, jazz is a niche genre, there are 

people who enjoy it. The gigs and concerts I played there always had some jazz 

aficionados present. The interest exists, but there are few opportunities to learn jazz. 

Fourthly, my recent experiences of playing in jazz ensembles in the University of 



 

 

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Maryland made me aware that I was a lot less exposed to jazz than my bandmates, 

many of whom had far higher levels of expertise than me. This created an awareness 

of jazz being a much larger ocean than I had conceived of and that I had to catch up.  

 Apart from the brief few months of studying under Victor Martins, there were 

no other opportunities for jazz instruction that I was able to find in India. Most of the 

jazz musicians I played with in the 2010s in Traffic Jam and in other bands were self-

taught, and some part of their learning was online. Being able to receive private 

instruction would have been a dream for them.  

 The private jazz piano students that I had considered themselves privileged to 

have found me, I was a rare commodity. In my city, Bangalore, of about ten million 

people, there were perhaps no more than two other jazz piano teachers, and as far as I 

knew, I was the only one who taught regular weekly lessons. There was one 

competent jazz guitar teacher in Bangalore, and even he did not teach regular weekly 

lessons, just occasional master classes. I did not know any other jazz teachers of voice 

or of any other instrument.  

 One past issue has been resolved. Today, almost any material available in the 

United States can be purchased through www.amazon.in, and my students hardly ever 

lacked the books that they needed. Though jazz can be learned from books and the 

internet, they provide limited guidance. Developing wrong technique is one of the 

potential problems.  

 

 

 



 

 

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The Rationale         

 Based on the interest that exists, it seems logical that if there were more 

opportunities, there would be many more learners receiving jazz instruction. Nothing 

compares to having actual lessons from an expert instructor.  

 Because of the limited opportunities, it is important to study the reasons why 

these conditions exist. Regarding current practice in jazz education in India, I am not 

the best person to share my experience. Two of the larger drawbacks are my age, and 

that I presently reside outside India. A native Indian younger person, in an earlier 

learning phase, who has more recently been receiving jazz instruction in India and is 

a current performer there, would have more updated and relevant information. This 

led to the decision to find a participant to conduct a case study. 

 Of the options considered for an individual on whom to conduct a case study, 

jazz singer and guitarist, Kirtana Krishna stood out as the best option. I have been 

impressed with her knowledge of jazz harmony which indicated to me that she had 

studied it in depth. I knew enough about her to know she had some degree of formal 

jazz study within India and was therefore acquainted with current practices in jazz 

education.       

The Purpose of the Study 

The purpose of the study is to determine the status of jazz education in India through 

the narrative case study of Kirtana Krishna. Though I was unaware at the time I set 

out to do the study, a former faculty of the participant lives close to the university 

from where the research is based. It was opportune to be able to include his angle on 

the participant's experience from the other side of the desk, as a faculty member. 



 

 

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Furthermore, I was able to also view the participant from my lens, and included my 

perspective based on the four aforementioned factors under the "The Problem" 

heading. Therefore, it is a single case study, with three perspectives.  

Research Questions 

 Based on the rationale and purpose of the study I have formulated the 

following research questions, which I hope will yield a better understanding of the 

status of jazz education in India: 

1. What are the circumstances that might cause an Indian to choose jazz as a genre to 

perform?  

2. How does someone interested in jazz develop their musical skill in India?  

3. In what ways do jazz artists build professional careers in India?  

Scope and Limitations 

 A limitation is that it is a single case study. Others might have had quite 

different experiences. Since this study is a primer, in new territory, it is intended to 

explore the topic. Hence, it is also exploratory research. There is potential for future 

studies to expand into having multiple cases.   

 A deliberate limitation is someone who did her jazz studies exclusively in 

India. This is because the purpose is to find out about the status of jazz education in 

India, and someone with mixed experiences might not fit the requirement.    

 Another limitation is that this would be a definitive study in the years from 

2012 to 2019. I wanted the study to be as recent as possible as, the only article I found 

with any reference to jazz education in India is mentions the dates being in the early 

1970s (Pinckney, 1990). Therefore, due to the need for research reflecting the current 



 

 

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situation, I wanted it to be as recent as possible, with a time span wide enough to 

cover the years of jazz activity of the participant in question. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

 

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Chapter 2: Literature Review 
 
 In order to determine the status of jazz education in India, it would be 

expedient to examine the literature on how jazz education developed and progressed 

in the United States as it is the country of origin. Certainly, jazz is often learned and 

taught informally through private instructors and enculturation. However, the degree 

programs in US universities provide the records and the documentation to track this 

growth in a more objective manner. If it is indeed deemed to be a success and has had 

a good growth rate, as jazz education goes beyond American shores, the precedent is 

established. Jazz does require a demanding training regime and jazz education has 

become a field of study; It is a complex, intricate and intellectual genre of music 

(Przysinda et. al., 2017). A few worldwide examples and excerpts bear reviewing 

which helps in understanding the international growth trend in jazz education, and 

also how cultural factors affect each country differently. Finally, the history of jazz in 

India and the current music culture will be examined in order to understand the 

setting into which the current practice in jazz education is being done. 

The History of Jazz Education in the US  

 Jazz initially did not readily receive acceptance in the United States academic 

world. "Introducing jazz into the American academy was a complex and multilayered 

proposition, and one that not only necessitated changes at the institutional level, but 

also demanded initial acceptance on the part an academic community that was not 

fully prepared to make these adjustments"(Calkins, 2012). Classical music had been 

the primary music of study in educational institutions since the eighteenth century 

(Calkins, 2012). However, music education is changing and jazz education is growing 



 

 

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at a tremendous rate. It has been growing in formal and informal settings in the US 

and worldwide. A major milestone for k-12 schools was when participants of the 

Tanglewood Symposium in signed The Tanglewood Declaration which is comprised 

of a list of guiding principles to be followed by music education professionals. The 

document called for the inclusion of jazz in school music programs and was offered 

in an attempt to facilitate a "turning point in the struggle for jazz to be sanctioned as a 

legitimate academic pursuit"(Calkins, 2012).  

 In tracing a timeline for the development of jazz education, it is helpful to 

establish a date for the emergence of the genre. There cannot be an exact year, as jazz 

evolved out its four precursors, brass band music, the blues, negro spirituals and 

ragtime. (Gridley, 2016) Though the range of jazz starting point is from 1890 to 1920, 

a span of 30 years, a plausible and generally accepted year is 1917, making it a genre 

having been in existence for little over 100 years at the time of writing this article. 

One of the reasons for attribution of a starting date of 1917 is the first documented 

usage of the word jazz, though spelled "jass", through the recording of "Livery Stable 

Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. However, owing to the fact the band 

consisted entirely of Caucasian musicians, who were claiming to be the originators of 

the genre, this is controversial. However, 1917 is also the likely year of the launching 

of Louis Armstrong’s prolific musical career, in construing his biographical timeline. 

Through his unique approach, style and ways of improvising on the trumpet, he 

would be more credible as a founder of jazz(Gridley, 2016; Kirchner, 2000; 

Whitehead, 2011). Therefore, although it was a progression and a transition, if a 



 

 

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specific year has to be attributed for historically dating the starting point of jazz, 1917 

may be used.  

 From this point, jazz became a clearly distinct style of music. It is often 

referred to as America's Classical Music (Whyton, 2016), as it historically did start in 

the United States, in New Orleans. Classical Music, on the other hand, is mostly 

European in its origins, although there have been major American classical 

composers. As jazz spread, people wanted to learn to perform it, and jazz education 

transpired. Though it was traditionally self-taught, or picked up from peers,  

methods and materials did start to emerge. 

 Over time jazz education progressed rapidly, and became more and more 

recognized. This trend continued all over the world and is still rapidly increasing 

today. While western classical music had a head start by centuries, and advanced 

classical education is almost entirely through academia, this 100-year-old American 

artform called jazz appears to be ascending the ranks of university education both in 

its extent and in the degree program offerings. Some chronological excerpts of jazz 

educators, curriculum and programs could provide insights into this burgeoning field. 

Additionally, some forays into the rest of the world, with some examples, depict the 

extent of worldwide influence that jazz education is encompassing.  

The Pioneers 

 The first documented jazz educator appears to be W. C. Handy (Prouty, 2005), 

an accomplished pianist and composer of “St. Louis Blues,” which is a standard 

today. The early part of his teaching career was well before 1917.  



 

 

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 W. C. Handy, the famous "Father of the Blues" and bandmaster, may have 

 been the first jazz educator in a school. In 1900, he was appointed bandmaster 

 at Teacher's Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes at Normal, 

 Alabama. While there, he taught many students the techniques and music 

 which, in later years, would be called jazz. (Prouty, 2005, p. 83).   

Being musically literate, and being involved in publishing and composing, Handy had 

the credentials to serve as an educator. 

 While there would have certainly been jazz education outside the "institution," 

it is far likelier that teaching of jazz in schools would be documented. There are a few 

records of out-of-school, or community-based teachers in New Orleans (Buerkle & 

Barker, 1973). Until the 1940's "institutional" jazz education took place within 

historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), though actual jazz degrees were 

not conceived of yet.  

 Another well-known jazz educator, Len Bowden, began teaching at college 

level at 1919. Prouty (2005) writes:  

 Educator and bandleader Len Bowden is presented as another early innovator 

 in jazz education, having directed ensembles and likely some classes at other 

 predominantly black colleges through the 1920s and 1930s. ... (he held) 

 positions as director of bands at Tuskegee Institute, Georgia State University, 

 and Alabama State University. Bowden later directed the training program for 

 black musicians at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago during 

 the Second World War.  



 

 

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 The extent of Bowden's influence as a jazz educator is unprecedented due to 

the sheer number of military personnel he taught.   

 Bowden was later to direct the training and education of one of the largest 

 number of musicians ever to be undertaken in this country. As director for the 

 training of the black musicians at the Great Lakes Naval Base (1942-45), Len 

 participated in the music education of over 5,000 men, all of whom were 

 expected to function as jazz (dance) as well as military band musicians. ...The 

 learning environment provided by the early pioneers parallels the courses 

 suggested for today's jazz studies curriculum (Carter, 1977). 

 It was over a decade after the time Len Bowden started teaching in HBCU's 

that jazz courses started to occur on non-HBCU campuses.  There were many 

questions surrounding the legitimacy of jazz and acceptance of it took time. "The 

long, arduous passage of jazz from a despised, marginal entertainment to the solid 

respect conferred by academe has relatively little to do with the music, and a great 

deal to do with class, race, jobs, and—that potent persuader—money"(Marquis, 

1998). Racism and other social stigmas associated with jazz hampered jazz education 

in its early days.  

The Jazz Degree 

 The first college to have a degree in jazz studies was North Texas State 

College, which is now the University of North Texas (Prouty, 2005). Even then, they 

did not want to use the name jazz and thus the degree was called a dance band degree 

though it was understood by all to be a jazz degree. This degree came to be through a 

series of small steps, spanning several years. In 1947 M. E. Hall started a big band 



 

 

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called the One O'Clock Lab Band, One O'Clock referring to rehearsal time. This 

became a world famous group (Prouty 2004, Prouty 2005), giving Hall the clout 

needed to introduce courses in performance and jazz history. By 1956 the (Jazz) 

dance band degree came into being. It eventually became called a degree in jazz 

studies in the 1970's (Marquis, 1998).   

 The next institution to develop a jazz degree program was through Schillinger 

House, now known Berklee College of Music. Joseph Schillinger was a Soviet 

immigrant, who was both a mathematician and a jazz composer. He taught his 

mathematically based composition system to George Gershwin, his most famous 

student. Another famous student was Lawrence Berk who went on to form the 

Shillinger House in 1944, expressly to teach jazz.  On the eve of their 10th 

Anniversary his son, Lee Berk, changed the name to Berklee College of Music. In 

1966, they granted their first bachelor's degree in jazz and in 1973 became accredited 

through the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. (Gerritse, 1985; 

Whyton, 2016; Prouty, 2004). 

 It is interesting to note, that a classical conservatory followed suit in offering a 

jazz degree (though at least two other universities had started a jazz studies program 

in between, that is Towson University and Miami University). New England 

Conservatory, which, in present day Boston, is just down the street (Massachusetts 

Avenue) from Berklee College of Music. Gunther Schuller was a French horn player 

in the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, also a composer, conductor and 

author. Even from his early classical days he started gradually changing interest 

towards jazz. His epitome as a jazz musician was when he was in the Miles Davis 



 

 

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nonet for the groundbreaking “Birth of the Cool” album. In 1967, he became the 

President of New England Conservatory and did not waste time seeking to gain 

approval for establishing degrees in jazz studies. "In 1968, Schuller proposed the 

creation of bachelors and master’s degree programs in two areas—jazz performance 

and jazz composition" (Calkins, 2012, p. 82). The jazz department officially launched 

in 1969. Another radical move of Schuller was the hiring of African-American 

professors, who were outstanding instrumentalists from New York City.  

 Three years later, in 1972, a total of 15 colleges and universities offered 

degrees in jazz studies. In another ten years, that is 1982, there were 72 colleges and 

universities that had degrees in jazz studies (Barr, 1983). 

 The jazz degree has not only grown in its ubiquity but also in availability of 

more advanced degrees being offered. Master's degrees, that began circa 1974 

(Fischer, 1999) have become nearly half as common as Bachelor’s degrees. The 

doctorate in jazz, which was almost unheard of two decades ago, is also gradually 

starting to emerge (Downbeat, 2019). "The University of Miami is the only program 

at the time of this writing that offers a doctoral degree with Jazz Studies as the 

primary emphasis"(Fischer, 1999).  

 Downbeat Magazine's special edition in October 2018, has a listing of 

Colleges and Universities entitled “Where to Study Jazz.” This is not a work of 

literature, but rather as it is from a periodical magazine and not a journal. However, it 

contains data fields listed under each college or university through which statistics 

can be extracted. This serves to confirm the exponential expansion of jazz education 

explained in the actual literature, with data that is more recent than the articles. Also, 



 

 

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while the literature is confined to specific regions and institutions, this is a broad 

strokes overview.   

 Two hundred-fifty universities and colleges are in the list of where to study 

jazz, with two hundred nineteen within the US. In the US there are one hundred-

eighty bachelor's degrees in jazz studies/ performance, eighty-eight master's degrees 

and seventeen doctorates. Even Canada has four universities offering doctorate 

degrees (Downbeat, 2019). Therefore, there has been a high growth rate of jazz 

degree programs and even among advanced degrees.  

Jazz Education in k-12 Schools  

 While jazz education has grown at the university level it has also grown 

through private instruction, and in other more informal settings (Prouty, 2004; 

Whyton, 2016). There also is a debate about the canonization of jazz education and 

how conventional and methodical it should or should not be (Reimann, 2012; Whyton 

2006). Due to its enormity, the extent of non-university-based jazz education is 

unlikely be featured in a list, such as that found in "Where to Study Jazz"(Downbeat, 

2019). However, there is likely to be a much larger contingent of jazz musicians 

without scholastic credentials, many of whom might have an equal or higher level of 

expertise (Whyton, 2006).  

 For those who do attend colleges and universities for jazz studies, the jazz 

education that they had in school was probably the biggest reasons they would have 

the experience and playing ability to be able to pass a college audition. Jazz has been 

part of many k-12 school music programs since around 1975 (West, 2015) and the 



 

 

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Tanglewood declaration of 1967 called for the introduction of jazz into school music 

programs (Calkins, 2012).  

 A large part of middle school and high school music education has been 

through jazz ensembles. Teaching improvising has been a challenge in schools as not 

all instrumentalists far the aptitude for it, but in a large jazz band, not all students 

need to improvise, only those comfortable with it. The jazz ensembles are also good 

for student social interactions (West, 2015), therefore, enculturation also takes place. 

Excerpts from Around the World 

 The expansion of jazz education around the world is vast, and is continuously 

growing even in the present time. There is a large, ever growing number of institutes, 

across many countries, and research information gets outdated fast. Though a few 

institutes that stand out could be mentioned, it would be better to feature examples of 

certain countries and the jazz activities and jazz education that takes place there.  

 Apart from Canada in its geographic and cultural proximity to the US, there 

are no determined correlating factors that appear to make one region of the world 

better than others, in terms of quality or quantity of jazz performance or education 

(Reimann, 2012). In the brief summary of worldwide jazz, the choice of featuring a 

particular nation is merely the availability and accessibility of literature, within the 

last ten years, on that country. Though there may be partial homogenization and 

overlapping themes in the summaries that follow, each article has an altogether 

different approach. They serve as excerpts, featuring the particular nations, to aid in 

understanding of worldwide jazz and jazz education.  

 



 

 

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Jazz in Greece 

 As implied by the title, “Jazz in Athens: Frustrated Cosmopolitans in a Music 

Subculture,”Tsioulakis (2011) paints an overall pessimistic and morose description of 

the gigging scenario of jazz musicians in Athens. They are presented as being 

overworked, underpaid and unappreciated. The problem is that the US is constantly 

used as a benchmark and this is an unfair comparison.  Also, through the descriptions 

of the lives of the local jazz musicians, there appears to be substantial live jazz 

activity, which in turn does not does not appear to justify the gloomy outlook 

(Tsioulakis, 2011). 

Jazz education in Greece was spearheaded by the Philippos Nakas Conservatory:  

 In 1990 the Philippos Nakas Conservatory one of the largest  

 music  schools in Greece established a jazz department, which in 1992  

 became affiliated with the Berklee College of Music in Boston. This  

 development had a dual effect: first, it gave employment to jazz   

 musicians; and second, it gave students the opportunity, especially   

 those living in or near Athens, to receive a jazz education without   

 having to leave the country. On these courses, students were   

 introduced to techniques of improvisation and jazz theory, whilst also  

 having the opportunity to participate in ensembles directed by their  

 mainly foreign-educated tutors. This  small circuit of musicians, the  

 single radio station, the dedicated magazine, the four specialised music  

 venues, the educational foundation and the hundreds of eager students  

 was what constituted the jazz music scene of Athens during the   



 

 

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 1990s. Nevertheless, there was still one important thing missing: the  

 audience (Tsioulakis, 2011). 

There seems to be enough of an audience for live jazz for it is survive. 

The negativity continues. 

 The jazz department of the Nakas Conservatory still exists, but in the words of 

 one of its former teachers ‘instead of the big names of the jazz scene it now 

 employs their former students ‘cause they’re cheaper and they don’t object to 

 the rip off that is working for ten euros an hour’. And the audience for jazz 

 has not grown; 

  The only quantity that seems to have disproportionally increased is 

 that of professional skilled musicians. The eager hundreds of the 1990s are 

 now qualified musicians who have either continued  their education abroad or 

 learned through obsessive album collecting and endless hours of transcribing 

 improvisations: (Tsioulakis, 2011) 

 A new generation of locally trained instructors actually seems like a positive 

situation, indicating an increase in the skill level of the locals.  

 There is further lamenting about two jazz clubs that closed down with the 

blame being exclusively placed on a declining jazz audience (Tsioulakis, 2011). 

There could be several reasons for the closing of a bar or restaurant as a failed 

business that may have little to do with the genre of live music being played there. 

Jazz clubs close down even in New Orleans and New York City which certainly 

would have larger jazz audiences than in Athens. Overall the negativity overshadows 

the actual description of unique qualities and experiences of Greek jazz.  



 

 

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Jazz in Israel 

 In this article, Caplan asserts that Israel is a great place for jazz.  He was 

inspired to choose this topic when he came across a jam session in a bar on Ben 

Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, Israel. He participated in the jam, playing the standard 

"How High the Moon," though he does not state what instrument he played(Caplan, 

2017). 

 While there are several institutions where jazz is taught in Israel, The Rimon 

School of Jazz, founded in 1985, appears to be the most prominent. This school 

operates in partnership with Berklee College of Music both as a platform and an 

International student exchange program. As in the previous article (Tsioulakis, 2011) 

the second generation of instructors at Rimon were former students. However, in this 

case, it is portrayed as a benefit to have locals who are competent to teach at the same 

standard as Berklee instructors. It also reveals Berklee's strategy of forging 

partnerships worldwide and thereby boosting its recruitment among international 

students (Caplan, 2017). 

 The late Arnie Lawrence, jazz musician and music educator, co-founded the 

New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Israel in 1986. He is an alumnus of 

the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. The Israel 

Conservatory of Music serves as the platform for the US based institution (Caplan, 

2017). Other institutions which have thriving jazz departments are the Jerusalem 

Academy, the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University and Thelma Yellin 

High School for the Arts.  



 

 

19 
 

 Caplan goes through biographical information of 15 different musicians, a 

majority of whom were born in, or began study, in Israel but eventually moved to the 

US to study at Berklee College of Music or New England Conservatory and stayed on 

with successful careers. While the information indicates that Israel is a significant 

contributor to the jazz world, it is also likely that most of the musicians would have a 

higher degree of fame in Israel than in the US (Caplan, 2017). 

 While fifteen Israeli musicians are listed, two of them, bear special 

mentioning. Anat Cohen is clarinetist and tenor saxophone player. She has received 

numerous awards for her clarinet prowess. In addition to being a solo artist she is 

known as part of the Three Cohens, that band she formed with her two brothers, 

Yuval Cohen on the soprano saxophone and Avishai Cohen on the trumpet, having 

recorded albums and performed with them for a number of years. The other artist is 

double bassist Avishai Cohen(Not the same Avishai Cohen who is Anat's brother). He 

recorded and toured extensively with Chick Corea. He also collaborated with a lot of 

big names including Bobby McFerrin, Roy Hargrove, Herbie Hancock, Kurt 

Rosenwinkel, Nnenna Freelon, and Paquito D'Rivera, Claudia Acuña, Alicia Keys 

and the London and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras (Caplan, 2017). 

 Cohen is among the Israelis who moved to the US to advance his studies in 

jazz. This phenomenon of the interchange of jazz musicians between Israel and other 

countries, particularly the United States is described by the interview subjects. Due to 

the Jewish diaspora in North America and Europe, there is a lot of back and forth 

travel, including jazz musicians that are making Aliyah. Dr. Arnold Palty says that 

there are 6 million Jews in Israel and close to that in the United States. He also 



 

 

20 
 

mentions American Jewish composers such as Gershwin and Copeland. When Yair 

was asked about the Israelis who graduate from the New School in New York, he 

replies "I think they are great. But, I am surprised that so many Israelis are in the front 

of the Jazz scene in New York. I ask myself are they really that good? Or, did the 

American Jazz musicians move on and left the scene for them I don’t know what to 

say about this. Maybe it is because you can't just be a Jazz musician in New York you 

have to be everything. So maybe they just left the scene a little bit open. But the 

Israeli musicians are very good of course." (Caplan, 2017, p.98) Thus, exposure has 

been an important factor for Israeli musicians to become good. 

 Another factor that makes jazz in Israel flourish is the festivals. There is the 

Israel Festival in Jerusalem, the Tel-Aviv Jazz Festival, the Haifa Jazz Festival. The 

biggest and most successful jazz festival however is the Red Sea Jazz Festival at Eilat 

which began in 1987. Some of the notable performers who have played there are Bill 

Evans, Christian McBride, Randy Brecker and John Scofield. Avishai Cohen being 

the current artistic director plays there regularly (Caplan, 2017). 

 Israel seems like a great, thriving, jazz scenario, and certainly has a 

tremendous output from its small population size. Sometimes the lines are blurred as 

to whether they all are actually Israeli citizens, if they have an Israeli origin, whether 

they have some ties to Israel, or if they just have Jewish ethnicity and may have never 

actually lived in Israel (Caplan, 2017). 

Jazz in Australia 

 This is an insightful and relevant article and some aspects of it would befit it 

serving as a model for exploration of jazz in India. Most of the abstract and 



 

 

21 
 

introduction explains how Australia developed its' own distinct kind of jazz. Most of 

it relates to the geographic placement and historical musical roots. Australia's 

distance from the United States and its isolation from much of the world, caused a 

unique blend of jazz to come about: 

 Developing upon Anglo-Celtic and African American traditions, Australian 

 jazz musicians have built upon a transplanted and imagined musical culture. 

 Early Australian musicians developed improvising within a decontextualized 

 environment, acquiring sounds, styles and ways of jazzing via occasional 

 visits by touring bands and early recordings. Musicians temporally and 

 physically distant from direct  interaction with mainstream African American 

 or European activity or creative thought opportunistically appropriated styles 

 and voices. (DeBruin, 2016, p. 308) 

It is the decontextualization that caused Australia to develop its originality, and as 

jazz musicians naturally exhibit a high degree of originality (Przysinda et al., 2017), it 

is staying true to form.  

 The participants consist of five improvising jazz musicians. For two of them, 

their learning was partially through enculturation. The term Communities of Musical 

Practice (CoMP) is also used throughout, first described under the heading of 

"Communities in Learning Jazz" (De Bruin, 2016, p. 311). Another topic is 

"Communities in and Beyond the Institution" (p. 311). For all of these musicians, jazz 

learning took place largely through collaborative experiences, rather than through 

Institutions. Though two of them did attend University to learn music, they cited 

difficulties with the structured environment. All of them forged their own music 



 

 

22 
 

educational paths. This is an example of the concept of "enculturation" espoused in 

Lucy Green's, "How Popular Musicians Learn."(2002) Like it is for popular music, it 

seems that "enculturation" is how jazz musicians learn too. Therefore, the Institution, 

though it is meant to serve the purpose of education, may actually serve the 

Community of Musical Practice to a greater extent, causing musicians to be in an 

environment where they could learn from each other. This is depicted through these 

statements from de Bruin's conclusion: 

 Australian improvisers in this study articulate the importance of their 

 interactions within CoMPs that shape and influence their evolving 

 relationships, processes and perspectives to creative musicmaking. CoMP can 

 situate learning beyond the class within non- linear, multimodal and 

 collaborative environments that for inquisitive learners foster vast possibilities 

 implicit in improvised music. The learning by these participants reveals how 

 CoMPs can possess relevance, value and meaning. 

  Understanding the ways community-oriented music practices 

 culturally and socially facilitate holistic music education outcomes has  

 potential to more effectively shape practices in formal music classrooms  

 (p. 320-321). 

In some cases, there could possibly be greater learning from "COMPs", for jazz 

students than they could learn from their academic courses; or in the least there would 

be the synergy where they could immediately start experimenting with, 

implementing, and unpacking what they learn in the classroom. 

 



 

 

23 
 

Jazz in Estonia 

 While Estonia is largely focused on European classical music traditions, a 

major step towards jazz education occurred in 2004, when the Academy of Music 

started offering courses in jazz. While it does seem like a late juncture, Reimann calls 

it an academically conservative country. Though jazz started being played circa 1944 

(Reimann, 2015), it took a good 60 years to make its way into academia, due more to 

political reasons than anything else (Reimann, 2012). 

 By using the periphery in the title " Jazz Education and the Jazz Periphery: An 

Example from Estonia," she implies that Estonian jazz is in the periphery.   What she 

means is that if the United States, is at the center, Estonia is far from the center, more 

towards the edge or "periphery." She is against defining jazz education in terms of a 

canon, but supports decanonization. "The academic study of jazz history and 

performance should not be an isolated pedagogical system transmitting certain 

immutable aesthetical and stylistic paradigms, and educational practices; rather jazz 

education is an extension of the jazz performance." Like jazz is spontaneous and 

improvisatory, she argues that jazz education should also be so. It should be more 

adaptable to the setting, and she uses the words "flexible" and "changing situations" 

to make her point (Reimann, 2012). She ends with the following statement:  

 I would like to conclude my ruminations by turning once again to Scott 

 DeVeaux (1991) By talking about (American) jazz history he warns us against 

 exclusionary tendencies, grand narratives and canonization. Those thoughts 

 are easily conveyed to the global context and to jazz education. Hence, the 

 future of jazz education relies in inclusion rather that in exclusion, in diversity 



 

 

24 
 

 of methodologies rather than in one orthodox or central approach, and  

 in decanonization rather than in canonization. (p. 185) 

 Estonia is in the periphery, or in a location not expected to be a hotbed of jazz. 

Jazz education, and the resultant performances from the artists that it produces, does 

not have to follow the traditions of the country of its origin. It should form its own 

path and keep reinventing itself according to the circumstances of the students and 

their environment and other musical experience and exposure. In other words, she 

seems to imply, all jazz education, and hence the resultant jazz performance, even 

that in the "periphery", such as Estonia, does not have to be follow the jazz traditions 

that came from the country or origin, but it should forge its own path. (Reimann, 

2012). 

Jazz in the UK 

 Tony Whyton's chapter, "Brilliant Corners: The Development of Jazz in 

Higher Education” in the book "Advanced Musical Performance: Investigations in 

Higher Education Learning"(2016), asserts that in the UK, jazz education largely 

follow the trend of classical music in graded exams of specific instruments. Jazz 

education's growth rate in the UK is explosive and it is represented in over 50 

institutions of higher education.  He describes European jazz having a sound that is 

different from North American jazz, with it's distinct qualities. He also describes the 

conflict between institutional learning and learning through communities and through 

experimentation. There are also suggestions in the article that jazz education also 

develops within geaographical boundaries, in order for the approaches to be more 

suited to the country or culture where it takes place (Prouty, 2016). 



 

 

25 
 

 There is some debate about whether jazz is part of popular music and the and 

conclusion is jazz is separating itself more and more from popular culture due to it's 

unique characteristics, particularly the improvisational aspect. Jazz does seem to be 

quite a well loved genre in the UK. According to descriptions of the extent of 

acceptance and availability of jazz, it seems that after the US and Canada, the UK 

might be the third highest nation where jazz and jazz education is flourishing (Prouty, 

2016).  

Potential for Growth 

 The growth rate of jazz education in both degree programs and non-degree 

formal and informal teaching institutions that exists in the United States is being 

replicated in countries around the world. It appears to be highest in English speaking 

Western countries such as Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand in respective 

order (Downbeat, 2019). It is also high in Western Europe. Few excerpts such as 

Greece, Israel, UK, Australia and Estonia indicate that even though Jazz is not today's 

most popular music, it is alive and well, and jazz education has potential for further 

growth. There is no doubt that education is a growing field. 

 Jazz education is certainly growing, and with the above information being 

established, it does seem that jazz education in India would also have potential.  

Jazz in the Indian Context 

 There is very little literature about jazz Education in India. The following two 

statements might be the only research on jazz education on India.  

 The 1970s marked the beginning of jazz education programs in Bombay. 

 According to Tony Fernandes of the American Center in Bombay, the United 



 

 

26 
 

 States Information Service in  Washington began sending books and other 

 source materials on Jazz to the Center in the early 1970s 

 (Pinckney, 1990). 

In comparison to music education of Indian classical music the topic of jazz 

education is revisited: 

 The absence of formal musical instruction in jazz is responsible for the fact 

 that most Indian jazz musicians are self-taught, in complete contrast to the 

 rigorous training with a guru that is characteristic of traditional methods of 

 instruction in Indian classical music (Pinkney, 1990, p. 58). 

Due to the dearth of articles on jazz education in India, it would be important to 

examine the cultural conditions that contributed to this dearth. 

 In terms of Indian arts and culture, where jazz belongs, or if it belongs at all 

needs to be established. While India has its own genres of popular and classical 

music, any relationship in terms of compatibility or adaptability can be evaluated. 

This can be done through a brief overview of India's jazz history. Also, in examining 

the music culture of India, whether there is a relationship between jazz and popular 

music, or between jazz and traditional music can be explored.  

 It is not a premise that a connection has to be made; jazz could exist in its own 

niche, and it may well be. In other words, if jazz is an outlier, this is not a problem.  

To understand a current jazz artist in India, the setting into which they are placed 

largely determines the experiences they will have in a holistic or phenomenological 

sense.  

 



 

 

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Early Jazz in India 

 Jazz did not take long to reach Indian shores. The earliest documented 

occurrence of a jazz performance was in 1922, by Dan Hopkins and the Syncopated 5 

(Dorin, 2010). As in the United States, the time period when live jazz was at its peak 

in India was from the mid 1920s to the 1940s (Kalmanovitch, 2005). India was under 

British rule until 1947; much of the audience, particularly in the beginning were 

British and from other European countries (Pinkney, 2005; Shope, 2016). 

 African American musicians played at five-star hotels mostly in the cities of 

Bombay and Calcutta for North Americans, Europeans and wealthy, elite, Indians 

(Dorin, 2010; Fernandes, 2012; Kalmanovitch, 2005). Gradually Indian musicians 

began to assimilate the genre and started playing together with international 

musicians.  

 In the earlier years, a few African American musicians lived in India for 

several years at a stretch. Among these were trumpeter Cricket Smith and pianist 

Teddy Weatherford. The latter, who at one time was Louis Armstrong’s pianist, 

remained in India all his life.  

 Three of the greatest Indian musicians deserve mention. Trumpeter Chick 

Chocolate, born in 1916 was the most well-known musician among the first 

generation of Indian jazz musicians.  Later came Braz Gonsalves the saxophone 

player and Louis Banks the pianist. They were born in 1934 and 1941 respectively, 

were most active in the 1960s and 1970s, and are still alive. Braz is not very active 

musically now and Louis Banks went on to be a film scorer since the 

1980s(Pinckney, 1990). 



 

 

28 
 

 Pinckney argues that  "Louis Banks is considered to be one of the most 

accomplished jazz musicians and studio composers in India(Pickney, 1990, p.40) He 

was instrumental in participating in and managing the biennial jazz festival known as 

the Jazz Yatra, which ran from 1978, bringing hundreds of international jazz artists to 

India (Pinckney, 1990). The Jazz Yatra jazz festival ceased after 2004 and this is 

indicative of a waning jazz audience. Prior to Banks generation, the greatest pianist 

was likely Dizzy Sal (1934-1998), from the city of Bangalore. He traveled to the 

United States to study at Berklee College of Music and also performed and recorded 

there. There was an unspecified illness that caused him to return abruptly to India, 

where he remained a recluse at his home in Bangalore (Fernandes, 2012).  

 Among the next generation following Banks, there seems to have been only 

one musician to have reached his stature. Eccentric pianist Madhav Chari was known 

to lash out at his audience, and also was rude and railed at reporters, so therefore 

nobody published his biography. He studied in the United States and collaborated 

with jazz artists Max Roach, Kenny Barron and Wynton Marsalis and performed 

across the US, Europe, and Asia. In 2015, at forty-eight years of age, he died of a 

heart attack. I did attend a concert of his in the same year. He came forty-five minutes 

late and, without apologizing, boasted for half an hour about how great he was, and 

about the impact he had for jazz in India, before starting to play. It was in a trio 

format with an electric bassist and drummer. There was an interval, after which he 

boasted about himself and the trio, and criticized other musicians and reporters for 

another fifteen minutes before continuing. On both sides of the stage, in a 

megalomaniacal style, were huge banners with his picture and the caption "India's 



 

 

29 
 

Greatest Jazz Musician." He sold physical CDs but did not let his material be sold 

digitally or videos posted on YouTube, and did not allow his concerts to be recorded, 

so there are severe limitations to researching him apart from hearsay. He is known to 

have screamed at and embarrass those trying to take videos of him. 

 The epicenter for live jazz was the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. The greatest 

Indian and international jazz musicians played there through the years, and 

particularly in the 1950s and 1960s there were notable artists who stayed there for a 

period of time giving daily performances. These include Louis Armstrong, Duke 

Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, and during their Indian tours spent the 

majority of their time at the hotel (Fernandez, 2012). The city of Calcutta also had a 

thriving jazz hotel scenario and audience, with local and international artists doing 

most of their performing in these two cities (Dorin, 2005; Pinckney, 1990). Among 

the mass of common folk living around India, few would have even heard of jazz, let 

alone heard it. It was an elitist genre and still is only among a tiny niche of English 

speaking, city based, audience.   

 There does not seem to be much scholarly research on jazz music and 

musicians in India since the turn of the century. There is some interest in jazz in India 

during British rule, that is until 1947, with most books and articles describing that 

time period (Fernandes, 2012; Shope 2016). Some articles may go up to the 1980s 

(Pinkney, 1990). Even though jazz never stopped, it may be considerably rarer, and 

hence not a topic for scholarly research.  

 

 



 

 

30 
 

Bollywood Music  

Indian popular music consists predominantly of songs that are heard in Bollywood 

films. Like the name 'Bollywood' is an imitation, so is the music from this massive 

film industry. These film songs are a "ubiquitous presence in urban south 

Asia"(Morcom, 2001, p. 63). The Indian film Industry, Bollywood, churns out about 

1000 movies a year (Hasan & Nika, 2014). Each film contains about six to eight song 

and dance sequences (Sarrazin, N., 2006). Therefore 6,000 to 8,000 popular songs in 

Hindi and other regional languages are released a year through the movies.  

 Anna Morcom has done extensive theoretical analysis on Bollywood music 

and explains how Indian film music does not fit into the tenets of Indian Music theory 

in that "stylistically, there is considerable overlap between song and background 

music. Some sections of songs sound more like background music, breaking 

markedly from the idiom of the song" (Morcom, 2001, p. 63-64). She also says, "The 

appearance of Hollywood-style music in Hindi films is easily traceable to a direct 

influence from Hollywood"(p. 64). From there she goes into detail about Indian rāga 

and has sections devoted to whole tone scales, chromatic movement, diminished 

harmony, orchestration, blues elements and ostinato and how they are "alien to the 

rāga system" (p. 71). This suggests that, popular music in India is largely constructed 

on the Western system of diatonic harmony.  

 In the early days of Bollywood, for less than a decade, most recordings were 

played by jazz musicians as at that point only they could read music (Fernandes et al., 

2016). Apart from this, and the fact that both genres use western diatonic harmony, 

there is not much intersection between jazz and Bollywood. There are no songs that 



 

 

31 
 

actually sound like jazz. Listener's ears are more attuned to western music than most 

would realize, though it would be much simpler forms, and with nothing close to the 

kind of modulations found in jazz. Bollywood dominates the Indian music scene and 

is an essential part of Indian culture.  

Jazz and Traditional Indian Music 

Indian traditional music has far greater possibilities for compatibilities for jazz and its 

popular counterpart. The two most famous Indian Classical musicians, Ravi Shankar 

and Zakir Hussain had a number of jazz collaborations in recordings and 

performances with western jazz artists and even the Jazzmine album by Ravi Shankar 

(Simons, 2011). British born guitarist John McLaughlin guitarist also fused the two 

genres. Essentially a jazz musician, he studied, played and recorded Indian music 

extensively.  

 There are two traditions of Indian Classical Music: Carnatic Music and 

Hindustani Music. Both styles are based largely on aural tradition and improvisation. 

Also, both genres are in the category of world music in which intricate listening skills 

and playing by ear is a large part. "Performance skills in other sophisticated music 

styles - American jazz, Irish Celtic music, Argentinean tango, and Indian raga, among 

a myriad - traditionally have been aurally developed and maintained" (Woody, 2012, 

p. 83). Various aspects of jazz improvisation such as motivic development, target 

notes, reharmonization, and licks contribute to this improvisation tradition. 

Spontaneity, individuality, creativity, and imagination are what make up the jazz 

language (Przysinda, E., Zeng, T., Maves, K., Arkin, C., & Loui, P., 2017). Jazz is 

good genre for exploring playing by ear, as it involves experimentation and working 



 

 

32 
 

with chordal harmony. It provides a platform for organized improvising based on the 

form and chord changes. In this way, jazz improvisation is different from both kinds 

of Indian Classical improvisation.  

 Jazz and Indian Classical are not highly compatible as Indian Classical Music 

has no harmony (Raman & Dowling, 2017)(Sharma 2018), and consists of melody 

and rhythm only. The prominent Indian artists played jazz because of their skill as 

improvising. There are a number of indo-jazz fusion bands. Yet, there remains a 

limited historic discography (Simons, 2011). In the overall scheme and world of jazz, 

indo-jazz fusion remains very small, and is never likely to reach the enormity of 

Latin-Jazz.    

 A case in point of Indo-jazz's drawbacks is John Coltrane. He did take some 

Hindustani lessons from Ravi Shankar, and released a tune called "India" in his later 

album "Live at the Village Vanguard." The tune uses a pedal point on G, or a drone 

like sound known as a tambura (Raman & Downing, 2017). Coltrane is known for his 

extraordinary harmony and modulations in his former Giant Steps. His forays into the 

other extreme, with "India", met with very little success as compared with "Giant 

Steps", which, due to its harmonic symmetry, has been discussed and dissected by 

music theorists and mathematicians ever since 1960 (Mazzola & Pang, 2016). While 

he used many complex modulations earlier in his career, with his experiments in 

Indian music, he almost entirely stopped using modulations. 

 

 

 



 

 

33 
 

The Small Indian Jazz Audience 

 Jazz is now well past its heyday and has yielded popularity to many other 

genres since, with only about 3% of the music listened to in the US being jazz 

(Gridley, 2014). There seems to be no statistics on how much jazz is listened to in 

India, probably because the figures or percentages may be too small to be represented 

on any list, table, or graph.  The latest research of music listened to through digital 

media (Easwaran & Menon, 2019, p. 133) indicates that 18% of the music listened to 

in India is “international.” If for the sake of making an estimate, we say that within 

the 18% that 3% is jazz, that would be 0.54 %. However, it is almost certain that jazz 

would be considerably lower than 3% of the 18%. India's population is large though, 

being 1,210,193,422 in the 2011 census (Chandramouli, 2011). Because of this high 

population, the number of people who enjoy jazz may be higher than an estimation of 

percentage might indicate. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

 

34 
 

Chapter 3: Methodology 

 Jazz, an American artform, is played, learned, listened to, and danced to in 

many countries. "Though it originated in America, jazz is so compelling that 

musicians on every continent have played it, and today there is no city without 

it"(Gridley, 2016, p. 3). While there is successful jazz education around the world, 

jazz education in India has unique traits and needs a deliberate development of the 

ideologies according to the setting.  

Axiological Assumption 

 The philosophical assumption that best fits the study is the axiological 

assumption where bias has to be acknowledged. "In a qualitative study, the inquirers 

admit the value-laden nature of the study and actively report their values and biases as 

well as the value-laden nature of information gathered from the field"(Creswell & 

Poth, 2018, p. 21). The value is the quest for expertise in jazz musicianship for Indian 

musicians. The proposed participant of the study and I are of Indian nationality and 

origin.  The biases are ideal within the context of the axiological assumption because 

of partial foreknowledge that the narratives of the selected participants would cover a 

range of situations. There is comparison with my own learning experience and that of 

Kirtana's and how different it was. There is also a comparison between the experience 

of Kirtana and other Indian jazz musicians whom I have known. While usually the 

comparisons made are deliberate, it is likely that comparisons could have been 

subconscious at times or there could be considerable opinionating. This is permissible 

within the axiological assumption as my mind ponders the range of situations among 

various Indian jazz learners and myself. A range of situations would be a jazz learner 



 

 

35 
 

who stayed in India versus a jazz learner who went abroad. Another range of 

situations would be a jazz learner who had the means for advanced studies versus a 

jazz learner who had financial barriers.  

 To make my biases obvious, I have, from the onset, provided information 

about myself. Based on the axiological assumption, I also develop my narrative in 

more details, to make my biases obvious. The assumptions are made from my 

standpoint as the researcher, therefore, my personal experiences provide the 

associations and connections to the experiences of the participant, and the way the 

information is disseminated. 

My narrative 

 This autobiographical material will serve as the perspective, or lens, through 

which I observe the participants. This fits the format of an interpretive biography. As 

the researcher, my presence is apparent in the text. I do admit that the voiced 

represents my interpretation, as much as the subject of the study. Therefore, both my 

ideas, and the participants’ ideas are represented, as it should be for an interpretive 

biography (Denzin, 1989). 

 I was born in 1973, I grew up in India in the pre-internet age, I did not know 

what jazz was. In my late teens, I had a cousin from the United States who visited our 

family for a few days and taught me the blues scale in C, along with the basic 12-bar 

blues pattern. Using my Classical-style scale background, I just did what I learned to 

do with major and minor scales, I learned it in all 12 keys.  

 I had a friend, Samuel, who attended the same school as me and also played 

piano. We met once in a while and showed each other our latest repertoire and tricks. 



 

 

36 
 

I could not wait to show him the blues scale and demonstrate my blues prowess to 

him. He would often talk about a style of music called jazz and told me that if I 

wanted to play jazz, I needed to learn the jazz scale. He did not know this scale, but 

he knew people who did. I then went on a quest to find out the 'jazz scale' by using 

any possible source including writing to my cousin. I found out that there is not just a 

single 'jazz scale'. It has led me to the incredible possibilities of the various complex 

scales used in jazz and there is only more to discover.   

 Samuel knew a little about jazz from his former teacher Dizzy Sal, to whom 

he went for beginner pop lessons for about two years. He used to talk about Dizzy a 

lot, but I had forgotten about this until recently, as he was mentioned in the only book 

I found of the history of jazz in India. (Fernandes, 2016). A specific memory I had 

was of riding our bicycles with Samuel in front of Dizzy Sal's house, which had a big 

treble clef sign in front of his door.  

 While researching for this thesis, I read Taj Mahal Foxtrot (Fernandes, 2016), 

and in the opening pages Edward Saldhana, nicknamed Dizzy Sal, was mentioned. 

The name rang a bell and I could not get it out of my mind. Before reaching the end 

of the book, I decided to text Samuel, to confirm if Dizzy Sal was indeed his teacher. 

It was in middle of the night for him, but as soon as he woke up, he did confirm this. 

He also said that in his prime, Dizzy Sal was India's top jazz pianist, before Louis 

Banks came on the scene. This is confirmed by the latter part of Taj Mahal Foxtrot 

(Fernandes, 2012) as an entire chapter "A Damned Good Show", is dedicated to 

Dizzy, including some photographs. Therefore, it was providence, and a rare chance, 

that I could be influenced by a student of one of India's early jazz legends.  



 

 

37 
 

 When I was about eighteen, I had the opportunity to take lessons with a jazz 

piano teacher, whom Samuel introduced me to. Being the son of a Christian pastor, 

both of my parents dreaded the possibility of me playing in a bar and so the lessons I 

had were taken in secret. I had raved about the jazz pianist, who became my teacher, 

at home, ever since Samuel and I visited him and were left agape with his jamming 

on the piano. Now I had to be careful to hide any association with him.  He was the 

notorious Victor Martin; the bar pianist. The lessons were early on Saturday morning, 

at a time when no one would notice me missing from the house. I was also taking 

classical lessons at the time, and it did make my parents wonder about the other tunes 

I was practicing. I caught my mother recognizing and humming along to some of the 

tunes although a little puzzled about how I had learned them. After only a few months 

of lessons, Victor made the announcement that he was emigrating to Canada. The 

principles of jazz he taught and the foundation he laid for me were invaluable. The 

two concepts he emphasized the most were the importance of practicing scales and 

arpeggios and practicing tunes in all twelve keys.  

 Another source of jazz learning for me was through listening. The roads from 

classical music and rock converged for me as I gained exposure to jazz. I was playing 

in a rock band that literally formed the day I turned eighteen. The singer taught 

classical guitar at the same music school where I took classical piano lessons. He told 

me about the other classical guitar teacher Kenny at the same school who had a big 

collection of jazz and blues recordings. I made friends with him and borrowed many 

of his cassette tapes and every single VHS tape that he had. As I watched the videos 

at home, my father sometimes watched along, and even knew many of the big-name 



 

 

38 
 

jazz legends that were featured. This exposure provided me with a good 

understanding of what jazz sounded like and its typical instrumentation. I liked the 

way the musicians passed on the spotlight to each other when they did their solo 

improvising. This was in contrast to the rock band that I played in, where the singer 

and lead guitarist always had the spotlight.  

 Finally, when I first came to the United States in 1997 and started my 

undergraduate degree at Grace Christian University, I began taking jazz piano lessons 

from Professor Steve Talaga at my college. The fascinating world of jazz was 

accessible from then on. Although it was great at the time, looking back, it seems that 

what I learned was just a drop in the ocean. Ironically, I played more pop/rock and 

classical music in these four years mainly because I played for a singing group, 

making an album with them and touring on a bus. Therefore, I could not focus 

completely on jazz.  

 In 2002, three months after I returned to India with my bachelor's degree, my 

father died of cancer. I took over the family business and my music activities were 

few and far between. The decade starting in 2010 brought jazz back to me a little by 

little, more and more each year.  

 Of the many factors that led to my revival, the strangest was a Spanish girl. 

She was looking for someone to co-write songs with as she had penned lyrics to 

several songs. A mutual friend referred her to me, and I agreed to cowrite with her. I 

moved a digital piano into my office, we worked three times a week, and we had 

fourteen songs in about four months. She had paid an advance to a studio producer 

and he had never finished the job. Since we had all these songs we started looking for 



 

 

39 
 

venues where we could perform them. I had no idea that there were all these little 

restaurants and bars in my city Bangalore where live music could be performed. We 

played only one small gig together and it wasn't successful, particularly due to 

conflict between her and the drummer.  

 This fiasco was all the impetus I needed to seek out my own kind. Finding and 

getting along with local jazz musicians was an arduous process, with a lot of trial and 

error, but it started coming together. By 2013 I was playing out five nights a week. 

Simultaneously I also started teaching piano privately and was also writing 

arrangements for a church every week. I began the process of closing down the 

business. 

 At the time of writing this, I am in studying for my Master’s in Music 

Education at the University of Maryland. While in my undergrad, jazz was a minor 

part of their focus, The University of Maryland has an active jazz department and 

offers degrees in jazz studies up to the masters level. I have taken jazz piano 

instruction for three semesters and have been playing both in big bands and smaller 

jazz combos. I have also taken two courses in jazz theory and arranging and been part 

of the jazz department's official jam sessions. This interpretive biography (Denzin, 

1989) is highly impacted by the recent and current activities at the University in my 

own jazz education, as it is ongoing. All these experiences form the framework by 

which I base the axiological assumption of my personal story. It will play a major role 

in how I perceive the experience of the participant and her quest in gaining jazz 

education as it in the present and ongoing for me. We are from the same hometown, 

on the same quest, but on different stages of this journey, and are finding ourselves. 



 

 

40 
 

Jazz, after all, is the definitive genre of self-expression (Przysinda et. al., 2017). 

Epistemology and Methodical Choice 

Narrative as an Avenue of Insight 

In this single case-study, there is a large element of the narrative. It is the story that 

can provide the insights that would shed light on what kind of jazz education exists in 

India.   

 "Narrative imagining - story - is the fundamental instrument of thought, 

Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, or 

predicting, of planning, and of explaining....Most of our experience, our knowledge 

and our thinking is organized as stories"(Turner, 1996). A wide range of information 

is expected be gathered though the story of the participant. In story form, there could 

be emotions, and expressions of both joy and frustration in the journey of learning 

jazz. However, even emotions would also be revealing of conditions and situations 

that jazz learners in India face. This kind of information could not be revealed in mere 

statements or lists of facts.   

 Daniel Pink(2012) also believes in the power of stories, he says:   

 We are our stories. We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion  

 into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves. 

 That has always been true. But personal narrative has become more prevalent, 

 and perhaps more urgent, in a time of abundance, when many of us are freer 

 to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and our purpose. 

  More than a means to sell a house or even to deepen a doctor's 

 compassion, Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run 



 

 

41 
 

 through the left side of the brain. We can see this yearning for self- knowledge 

 through stories in many places - in the astonishingly popular "scrapbooking" 

 movement, where people assemble the artifacts of their lives into a narrative 

 that tells the world, and maybe themselves, who they are and what they're 

 about, and in the surging popularity of genealogy as millions search the Web 

 to piece together their family histories. 

  What these efforts reveal is a hunger for what stories can provide - 

 context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why 

 that matters. The Conceptual Age can remind us what has always been true 

 but rarely acted upon - that we must listen to each other's stories and that we 

 are the author of our own lives. (p. 115)  

Stories are the key to finding out what each participant experienced and what it 

learning jazz meant to them.  

A Single-Case study Design with Narrative Inquiry 

 Two options for case study methods are the single case study and the multiple 

case study. "A primary distinction in designing case studies is between single- and 

multiple-case designs. This means the need for a decision, prior to any data 

collection, on whether single or multiple cases are going to be used to address the 

research"(Yin, 2018, p. 49). In this case, a single case study was selected. Being a 

field where there does not seem to be any prior scholarly research, in its limited size 

and scope, this thesis serves as a primer. Due to my own personal experiences with 

jazz education, my personal interaction with the subject and having unexpectedly met 

the very professor that enabled the participant to gain her knowledge of jazz harmony, 



 

 

42 
 

triangulation can take place. Therefore, more of a 360-degree view can be made of 

the participant. Also, based on the research questions, the study goes beyond just the 

student life of the participant, but also what being a jazz musician in India means for 

her. Therefore, it is a phenomenological study which takes into consideration, all 

aspects of her life. Due to delving into the details, and being an in-depth study, a 

single case study is used to answer the research questions.  

Exploratory Study 

 As it is probable that no research of this kind is done before, trying to fulfill a 

theoretical basis might not be suitable. Prior expectations do not exist, it is unknown 

territory. Overall, it would be an exploratory study, as this is the guiding principle of 

an exploratory study:  

 Exploratory studies may have a legitimate reason for not having any 

 propositions. Every exploration, however, should still have some purpose. 

 Instead of propositions, the design for an exploratory study should state this 

 purpose, as well as the criteria by which an explanation will be judged 

 successful (or not). (Yin, 2018, p. 28) 

The purpose is to understand the status of jazz education in India.  

 It also does partially cover an aspect of phenomenological research as it is 

"the study of the lived experiences of persons, the view that these experiences are 

conscious ones"(Cresswell, 2018, p. 75). The lived experience of the participant is 

what needs to be disseminated. As she lives in India right now, and due to her recent 

studies at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) and the community of musicians 

she is with, her experience and knowledge about current practice of jazz education in 



 

 

43 
 

India is up to date. This information can serve as a starting point to investigate the 

status of jazz education in India.  

Case Selection 

 To restate what I mentioned in the introduction, my surprise at the 

participant's knowledge of jazz theory is what primarily sparked my curiosity of how 

someone in India did learn her jazz and knew it so well. I knew some outstanding 

musicians who were the best in the country, and also some who studied jazz but gave 

it up altogether. Since it was a single case study, I wanted someone in the middle, as 

representation at either extreme might not have painted a picture of how what an 

average jazz musician would struggle with and have a worthwhile story to share. It 

needed to be someone with a lifelong commitment to being a jazz musician, who was 

serious in their jazz education. The decision was made after narrowing down six 

possible participants and making initial contact with three. Kirtana, the participant, 

was interviewed twice, and Steve Zerlin, a faculty member at SAM was interviewed 

once, in order to corroborate the information given by Kirtana. The case study is 

about Kirtana Krishna with my perspective, and that of her faculty Steve Zerlin being 

taken into consideration. 

Member Check 

 The first interview of Kirtana's was on October 17th, 2019 and the second on 

November 18th, 2019. The interview with Steve Zerlin was on February 26th, 2020. 

The time lapse between the interview and Kirtana and Steve were due to the fact the I 

did not originally intend to interview Steve, however it turned out to be greatly 

beneficial. 



 

 

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 On April 17th, 2020, I conducted a member check with both of them by 

emailing them the part of my manuscript where I respectively retold their stories. 

Kirtana was happy with what I had written. Steve wanted some misperceptions to be 

rectified and I made the changes accordingly.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



 

 

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Chapter 4: The Narratives 

 This chapter contains a brief story of Kirtana Krishna and how she came to be 

a jazz artist. Following this is a brief story Steve Zerlin and his teaching and playing 

experiences in India. Kirtana was a student at SAM at the same time that Steve was 

faculty there. The next section contains a combined story largely revolving around 

their experiences at SAM and their information about jazz education in India. The 

combined story begins with the background of my relationship with Kirtana including 

the incident that became the biggest factor for choosing her as the participant for the 

case study. The chapter culminates with the answers to the research questions being 

provided though the experiences and perspectives of Kirtana, Steve, and me.  

A Synopsis of Kirtana Krishna's Story 

Kirtana Krishna, grew up in Bangalore, India, and her father used to play jazz 

records at home, which influenced her musical taste. As a child, she received 

instruction in traditional south Indian carnatic singing. She also learned some basic 

guitar.   

 When she was about twenty-one years old, circa 2011, she was part of a rock 

band as a singer, and Abhishek Prakash was the bass player. During conversations, 

they discovered their mutual love for jazz. He revealed to her that he was essentially a 

jazz guitarist and asked her if she would sing with him. When Kirtana agreed, they 

formed a duo called "Blue Rhythm."  

 Blue Rhythm quickly put a jazz set together and started playing gigs across 

Bangalore city. They performed both paid and unpaid gigs for about seven to eight 

months. Abhishek told Kirtana about a jazz institution called Swarnabhoomi 



 

 

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Academy of Music (SAM) near the city of Pondicherry in India. She was incredulous 

at first, saying that something like this could not exist in India. However, she 

discovered it did, applied there, and was accepted. 

 When she was twenty-two, in circa 2012, Kirtana began her jazz studies in 

SAM as a singer, attending for one year. Prior to this, she could not read music. She 

covered a good amount of ground in her jazz theory knowledge and understood 

harmonic concepts and form better than most of her fellow students. One significant 

highlight was that, through the private vocal instruction she received there, she began 

scatting. She said that though she struggled to scat in the beginning, she has improved 

over the years and has become good at it. 

 After a year at SAM, Kirtana returned to her hometown, Bangalore, where she 

spent her time doing jazz gigs, and also taught private voice lessons at a music 

school. Further, she had a brief stint in the nation of Bangladesh, where she was also 

involved in a jazz group. Currently, she has permanently returned to the vicinity of 

SAM and is building a house in Pondicherry.  She is highly involved in the activities 

of the town of Auroville, which is a sub-section of Pondicherry, and is an artistic 

community.  

 Since 2015, she has been accompanying herself on the guitar and states that 

she has been constantly improving. She is currently receiving private jazz guitar 

lessons. She teaches private voice lessons, mostly to children. She also continues 

playing gigs in Pondicherry, Bangalore and other cities, preferring to sing with small 

combos like duos and trios, which she says is better suited to her voice. She plans on 



 

 

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continuing to pursue a jazz career, has dedicated her life to it, and hopes to keep 

attaining higher levels of expertise.   

A Synopsis of Steve Zerlin's Story 

Steve Zerlin is an accomplished jazz bass player from Berwyn Heights, 

Maryland, who has had a significant performing and recording career in the United 

States and overseas. He has been visiting India since 1980 and has traversed across 

the whole country, except for the Northwest region. His initial trips to India were to 

learn transcendental meditation. 

 Ramaswamy Prasanna, the famous carnatic-jazz fusion guitarist was also the 

founder of SAM. In order to recruit and inspire the students, his strategy was to 

recruit faculty who were exceptional musicians. While Prasanna had difficulty in 

convincing another bass player to move to India to teach, that bass player 

recommended Steve due to the fact that Steve had been to India before and would 

very likely be willing to travel there.  

 Steve taught at SAM for about six years from 2010 to 2016. He began just a 

few months after it was founded. There were twelve students when he began. 

Towards the end of his time there, there were about 53 or 54 students. He taught 

ensembles, ear training, jazz harmony, the history of jazz fusion and private bass 

lessons.  

 Steve played in many of the top jazz venues in all major cities in India, and 

also played in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He performed on weekends and after the 

trimesters ended. During the breaks between trimesters, he would stay on for a while 

before returning to the US. During this time, he performed, traveled extensively 



 

 

48 
 

around India, and taught specialized lessons. He has now returned to Maryland and is 

continuing his performing career, is building a studio, and is open to the possibility of 

going back to India to teach.  

A Combined Story 

 It was circa 2015; I remember the singer Kirtana, a bass player, and I being 

present. There were probably other musicians present. It was a rehearsal for an 

upcoming gig. The bass player asked the group what scale could be used over a minor 

seven flat five chord. Without batting an eyelid, Kirtana answer that the Locrian scale 

could be used. I was impressed and expressed my amazement at her knowledge of 

jazz theory. It was an unforgettable moment and we even reminisced about this when 

I interviewed her. It was mainly because of this incident that I wanted to know how 

she received her jazz education.  

 The first time I saw Kirtana was about three years before this, circa 2012. I 

was at a restaurant in Bangalore named "Herbs and Spice" and she was performing 

along with a guitarist in their duo named "Blue Rhythm." I got into a conversation 

with the guitarist, who introduced himself as Abhishek Prakash. I said I would like to 

jam with him sometime. We exchanged numbers. I did not meet Kirtana at this point.  

 After several months, Abhishek called me to set up a jam. He was prompted to 

do this after seeing a video I had posted of myself on the "Jazz in Bangalore" 

Facebook page. He and I ended up jamming many times and performing together a 

few times. It was about two years later, through our mutual friendship with Abhishek, 

that Kirtana and I got in contact. Somewhere around this time Abhishek moved out of 

Bangalore. Like Abhishek had done about two years before, she called me to ask if 



 

 

49 
 

we could jam. Therefore, she and I started jamming and I have a memory of at least 

four performances together. For the last of these performances, Abhishek happened to 

be in town and joined us. It was ironic that both members of Blue Rhythm had 

become part of my band for that gig.  

 "Blue Rhythm" had been an initiation for Kirtana and jazz came naturally to 

her. She says: 

 All my contemporaries were doing pop, I somehow sought to distinguish 

 myself, and went back to the memory of what I had  already listened to. 

 Abhishek suggested these tunes and when I started singing them. I found  that 

 it came to me very easily, very naturally, I didn't have to make as much of an 

 effort, which is funny, because for most people, it's the other way around. 

She loved it and wanted to explore it some more.  

 Abhishek told her about SAM and she quickly enrolled there. The cost for a 

year at SAM was about Indian Rupees 900,000, which according to the historic 

exchange rate is about US Dollars 16,500. This included tuition, boarding and food. 

The diploma program they had was for two years, but due to the expense, Kirtana 

could only attend for one year. She did however, make good use of that one year and 

worked hard.  

 All the jazz faculty at SAM were from overseas, and Kirtana considered this 

to be a great benefit. She had an opportunity to learn from highly skilled professionals 

from around the world without needing to leave the country. Steve Zerlin was also 

one of her faculty. He shared the following about Prasanna's recruitment philosophy: 



 

 

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 I was talking about Prasanna, and that was Prasanna's genius with the school, 

 as if he said, let me bring faculty form the West, so that the students here in 

 India, who will probably never have the opportunity the leave India and go to 

 the West have a chance to study with Westerners. The ones who, you know, 

 grew up with this music, it's like if I wanted to study Indian music, I don't 

 really want to study it from some guy here, who went over to India and 

 studied with somebody. I want to go to the guy that he went to, in India, you 

 know. So there is a difference, you know, that's I guess the best you can  

 hope when you come from another culture is, is you're never gonna be the 

 same as the people who grew up with that music  and who've been listening to 

 it since they were listening to their parents talk, and they learned how to talk; 

 The vocabulary of it, the feeling of the culture and everything, it's in your 

 blood, it's in your, you know it's in your physiological makeup. So that's  

 what Prasanna brought to India was, those of us from the West who weren’t 

 just - he said I don't want just teachers, I want people who are players; Who've 

 been out actually doing it, who understand this music, and do this music, so I 

 think that that was really what gave SAM the spark that it had. 

During her year at SAM, Kirtana had three vocal instructors who were women from 

Mexico, Jordan, and France.  

 A big breakthrough in her learning was when, inspired by her instructor, 

Kirtana began scatting. As Kirtana told it, she was in a room with the teacher from 

Mexico and as she played the piano and started scatting over John Coltrane's 

Equinox. This is how she animatedly describes it: 



 

 

51 
 

 I will never forget it, it was during one of our, one of the classes and I had my 

 voice teacher ... and she was teaching us minor blues. We were doing John 

 Coltrane's Equinox actually; we were doing that tune. She was sitting at the 

 piano and she said ok, so now if I had to improvise over this, this is how I 

 would go about it, and it was the first time that I was hearing it happening in 

 front of me -  live, I think.  I fell in love with it immediately, because it 

 sounded so..., I mean maybe it was the note choice of what she was using, or 

 the chords, or I don't know what it was. It just like, drew me in and from then 

 from then I want to know, ok, I need to know how the hell to do that.  

It was an epiphany, a life-changing, inspirational moment for her. When I asked her if 

it was difficult to scat, she explained, using jazz terms and concepts pertaining to 

improvisation, that it was difficult, particularly in the early stages. She said that she is 

much better at it now.  

 Most of the students at SAM started with limited knowledge and ability, but 

there were a few who worked really hard and covered a lot of ground. Kirtana was 

one of them, she went from being unable to read music, to have quite a remarkable 

understanding of theory in just a year. She said, "That's me though, that's just my 

efforts, I mean, they taught that to everyone, but not everyone got that you know." 

Steve did attest that many could not read music, or even chord charts, and depended 

highly on their ear; some did need convincing of the value of being able to read. 

However, he had copious praise for the few hardworking students who made 

excellent progress, both his bass students, and those in his harmony class. He said that 

some of his former bass students are currently the best jazz bassists in the 



 

 

52 
 

metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. He also explains about his 

harmony class, "Jazz is a very advanced style of playing music. To understand the 

vocabulary involves a fairly complex music theoretical background. So, in my 

harmony class, I started steering everybody towards it, and those who could get there 

- got there." Kirtana was one of those who "got there." 

  Steve had to cater his teaching for the Indian environment and notes some 

differences. SAM was a college-level academy and it was for those who had at least 

finished high school.  He said that the Indian students were very talented, less 

experienced, and that some applied themselves. He used the word "competitive" 

frequently, when describing the West versus India. As he explains it: 

 If you come over here to learn jazz, you're gonna to really get thrown in the 

 thick of it, because you're in a class with students who kind of grew up and the 

 culture and you really got to cover lot of ground fast. Over there, I couldn't 

 really do that to the students because I had to work with what they were able 

 to get, you have to get them there, and get them step by step to a place where 

 there's understanding. This is  what Prasanna confessed, he said when he first 

 came to Berklee, Berklee kicked his ass, he really had to get up to speed, and 

 he did, he did the work, he really - and it shows in his playing. 

He also explained how India was more laidback as it was more "cooperative" than 

"competitive:" 

 So, the Western influence, I mean it's kind of a butt kicker when you come 

 over here, you know, there's a big contrast between the general mood of 

 learning and pace of living in India, as opposed to when you come over here, 



 

 

53 
 

 it very like, you know, ruthlessly competitive over here. So, the whole mode 

 of behavior, it's got this real competition vibe about it. In India I felt, it was 

 much more of a cooperative feeling thing. Everybody would let each other use 

 everybody's instruments. Everybody shared everything very, very, willingly in 

 India. It's not like that here. 

Due to the students at SAM not having grown up in the culture, and therefore having 

less exposure to jazz and less experience playing it, Steve had to tailor his lesson 

modules according to the circumstances. 

 Kirtana shared information about two other jazz institutions that have since 

opened in India. They were the Global music Institute (GMI) in Delhi and the True 

School of Music in Mumbai. Steve did not know of the existence of the True School 

of Music, but had visited GMI once. In response to my questions of whether these 

were exclusively jazz schools, she responded: 

 I think as more and more people go to music school I think they're 

 recognizing that jazz is kind of a mother ship of theory, of you know, of 

 experimental possibilities, so, I think more people will take it up, and even if, 

 even if it is not in its purest form, uh, I think  songwriters and all the young 

 blood, they are looking for, you com..., I wouldn't say complicated but 

 looking for more sophisticated changes and sophisticated harmony when it 

 comes their songs, so, you know, it, they might, it might still be rock, but then 

 the rock will have some, you know, flat seven, flat nine, you know, which is 

 unusual. 



 

 

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Implementing jazz concepts into rock is a start towards jazz, and it does indicate 

some theoretical knowledge has been acquired. 

 Her statement about these two other jazz schools appears to be reflective of 

her experience at SAM. These schools were a steppingstone to playing or singing 

jazz. The ensembles there did not actually perform jazz. In response to my question 

asking whether the students were able to “get jazz” in two years, my understanding is 

that he implied that they did not. This is because he said that they played rock, pop, 

and funk tunes that were specifically selected to stretch them and help them bridge 

the gap to help them understand more advanced harmonic progressions.  

 Another common factor of the three music schools, and for India in general, is 

the instrument choice. The overwhelming popular choice of instrument is the guitar 

and Kirtana was impressed with the guitarists at SAM who had been there for at least 

a year. In the first interview she said "guitar" or "guitarist" 25 times and only twice in 

direct response to a question. Steve even mentioned that heavy metal was popular in 

India, and that many of those trying to learn jazz guitar at SAM came from the heavy 

metal background.  

 Double basses are rare. Steve saw one double bass, when he went to the state 

of Mizoram for a week to give private lessons to someone who had bought one. 

Kirtana has seldom seen double basses or performed with double bass players. She 

said that most don't even know what it is. I played a double bass player in India only 

once, the rest of the time it was with electric bassists. On the other hand, when 

playing in the jazz ensembles at UMD, double basses were used frequently, and 

electric basses were rare. 



 

 

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 Referring to trumpets or saxophones, which are important to the jazz tradition, 

both Kirtana and Steve said that SAM did not have a horn teacher, and the websites 

of the other Indian schools shoed that they did not have horn instruction 

either(Professional Courses, n.d.; Program Structure, n.d.). Both of them hardly 

encountered horns in India at all. Every ensemble I played in at UMD had trumpets 

and saxophones and the big bands also had trombones. India does present some 

unique instrument preferences. 

Continued Learning 

 Steve did not know of any other instructors or institutions for learning jazz in 

India once a student had finished their two years at SAM. However, he did mention 

some of the alumni who were in Delhi, who regularly met together to play. He said,  

 Those guys have good understanding of the jazz idiom, and the jazz players in 

 the city, the guys who get together and do this stuff, they are their own school 

 cause they understand the fundamentals. Did I give the example - a starving 

 person, if you feed him a meal, you feed him once, if you teach him how to 

 fish, you feed him for life? So, these guys know how to fish. 

 By meeting together, playing together, and exchanging ideas "they are their own 

school" and can keep learning from each other and improving jazz performance and 

understanding.  

 Kirtana's act of moving to the city of Pondicherry helped her to keep learning 

jazz. Though there are jazz musicians in her hometown of Bangalore and other cities, 

these large cities would not have the kind of concentration of jazz musicians in one 

area that she had. Pondicherry is close to SAM, and it is even closer to the artistic 



 

 

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community of Auroville. She is receiving jazz guitar lessons from a teacher whom 

she met in Auroville. She met him when he was a part of the Auroville Jazz Quartet 

which and they played at a bar in Auroville, where she was a programmer. Her 

continued involvement in a jazz community has helped her grow and mature as a jazz 

artist.  

 Steve did speak about some of the wealthier SAM alumni who are presently 

continuing their jazz education in the US. There is a contingent of them at Berklee 

College of Music, and other schools across the US. He has been in touch with most of 

them and he had recently been to Los Angeles where he met with three of them. One 

of them, a drummer, at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, knew his harmony so well  

he did not have to take the harmony classes and was able to  go directly  to the next 

level of classes.  Most of the time, the SAM alumni came to their respective US 

institutions in groups of twos, threes, or more. This may imply that they were not only 

learning from their schools, but also that they were learning from each other.  

 I gained all this knowledge through interviews with Kirtana and Steve. There 

was a time lapse for over three months between my interviews with Kirtana and 

Steve. By this time, I learned they must have known each other since their time at 

SAM overlapped. Steve knew Kirtana but could not remember if she was in his 

harmony class, though he thought that she probably was. After my interview with 

Steve, on the same day, I texted Kirtana to ask her if she was in Steve's harmony 

class. She replied affirmatively. It is an incredible coincidence that I could actually 

meet the very teacher who imparted the theory knowledge, that helped Kirtana to be 



 

 

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able to know that the Locrian mode could be used to solo over a minor-seven-flat-five 

chord.  

Answering the Research Questions  

 Here is a restatement of the research questions:   

1. What are the circumstances that might cause an Indian to choose jazz as a genre to 

perform?  

2. How does someone interested in jazz develop their musical skill in India?  

3. In what ways do jazz artists build professional careers in India?  

 Through the case study of Kirtana Krishna, and through the perspectives of 

both Steve Zerlin and myself, the answers to the research questions are reported here. 

Due to overlapping points in the answers the questions are addressed as a whole, 

rather than one at a time.  

 As rare as it is, it is quite possible for people in India to never be exposed to 

jazz, or for musicians to rarely encounter the genre. There were two factors that 

influenced Kirtana to become a jazz musician. Firstly, her father had jazz records and 

she listened to them growing up. Secondly, her duo partner Abhishek Prakash 

influenced her to play jazz gigs with him and to eventually study at SAM..  

 I was influenced by my friend Samuel, who was influenced by Dizzy Sal, who 

was influenced by Dave Brubeck. The influence Samuel had on me was not only 

creating the curiosity for this supposed final frontier of music call jazz, but also to 

taking me to Victor Matins' house and asking him to play for us. He got me to listen 

to jazz firsthand and introduced me to first jazz teacher. This opened doors for me 



 

 

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that led to additional circumstances allowing me to meet individuals who helped open 

other doors and the cycle has continued.  

 The big first influencer appears to serve as an ambassador for jazz and may be 

the most important factor causing another to choose learn jazz and for some to even 

choose to become a professional jazz musician.    

 I have been a private jazz piano teacher in Bangalore. There were probably no 

more than two other private jazz piano teachers in that city of over ten million people 

and to my knowledge, none of them taught as many students than I did. There was 

guilt in leaving Bangalore, where there was a dearth of jazz teachers. Through writing 

and presenting about jazz education in India, I believe, it would eventually do far 

more for jazz education in India. Additionally, there also is information for future 

researchers. The main point is, though few and far between, the private instructors in 

India do play a small role in helping budding jazz musicians develop their skill.  

 A surprising and positive revelation during the first interview with Kirtana 

was that there were two other institutions in India whose main focus was jazz. Both of 

these are in the two main cities of India. The True School of Music is in Mumbai, and 

GMI is in Delhi. She said that GMI was started by two brothers who were Berklee 

Graduates. GMI mentions itself as a partner with Berklee on their website(Berklee 

Global Partnership, n.d.), and Berklee's website confirms that six ensemble credits 

can be transferred from GMI(Global Partners, n.d.).  

 There seems to be a consistency between Kirtana's experience, my experience, 

Steve's descriptions of the Indian students, and even the literature: Community should 

be built first, and then the career will follow. Kirtana's choice of settling and building 



 

 

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a house in an artistic community helps her to have musician friends and she appears 

to have frequent gigs with barely any dry spells. She never did have trouble finding 

musicians to play with. I had trouble finding musicians and gigs as I did not have the 

community, due to have studied jazz in the US. During my four years of study, I did 

not have any interaction with Indian jazz musicians. It was only after I started 

jamming with local Indian jazz musicians in 2010 that I was able to slowly build that 

community for myself. 

 Steve made three trips to India before he went as a faculty member for SAM. 

During these trips he did not have any jazz performances, and nobody knew about 

him as a musician. However, once he began teaching at SAM he was in demand as a 

high-profile jazz bassist, traveling all over India to perform. Due to his interaction 

with the students and the jazz community, and his renown as a SAM faculty member, 

many gigging opportunities opened up for him.  

 For me, it was through friendly jams, that my first jazz gigs started opening 

up. The musicians I jammed with would suggest places to play, and these musicians 

and I would sometimes visit these places to hear others play live jazz. I was 

introduced to restaurant and bar managers through the musicians I jammed with, and 

thus started calling them to schedule gigs for us to play there. Some managers had 

never heard us play or even seen videos of us on YouTube. This suggests that as 

much as musical skill, or even at times more than musical skill, networking is 

important for a career as a jazz musician in India. Jazz musicians learning from each 

other, building a musical community, jamming, and networking would all be part of 

the jazz enculturation experience.  



 

 

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Chapter 5:  Discussion 

Comparing Results 

The growth of formal jazz education is a trend seen first seen in the US and 

replicated in other parts of the world, and this has now come to India shores, with three 

institutions opening since 2010. There could possibly be still newer institutions of which 

neither Kirtana, Steve, nor I are aware.  

If the trend continues in India, perhaps at some point in the future there may be a jazz 

degree offered. Most likely, this would have to be through a partnership such with an 

international college or university such as the Nakas Conservatory in Athens had or the 

Rimon School of Jazz in Israel (Caplan, 2017) both had with the Berklee College of Music 

(Tsioulakis, 2011). It doesn't have to necessarily be through Berklee though. However, a jazz 

degree in India could be years or even decades away. 

Economics 

 In 2012, SAM was the only option that Kirtana knew about. Because it was 

too expensive for her, she could only attend one year of the two-year program. In 

spite of this she did acknowledge that she was economically privileged enough to be 

able to be a jazz musician.   

 When Steve told me about the SAM alumni who had come to the US to study 

jazz, he referred to them as "those who had the means" and "the lucky ones." For the 

majority of Indians, due to the unaffordability, studying jazz abroad is not an option. 

For some, even studying in one of the Indian academies may be out of their reach. 

Potential students and their parents will likely consider the return on investment, and 

it does not seem to be currently viable.  



 

 

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 Berklee also has strategically teamed up with a number of jazz colleges and 

universities around the world (Toulakis, 2011; Caplan 2017) and even have their 

auditions across the globe. Their marketing for international students has been 

brilliant. I did email asking them if they could provide me with data regarding how 

many students are of Indian nationality and how many students are of Indian 

ethnicity. However, they did not respond.   

 I did have a piano student in India who asked me to prepare him for a Berklee 

audition. When I asked him how he would be able to afford it, he replied that his 

parents intended to sell the plot of land that was to be his inheritance. In the end he 

dropped out of lessons with me as I insisted he pick a later audition date. In another 

instance, a former bandmate passed the Berklee audition that was held in Malaysia, 

was accepted, and made it to Boston. However, he could not gather the funding 

before the payment deadline and ended up attending New England Conservatory. 

From interactions such as those mentioned, it seemed to me that in India the only US 

jazz school people knew about and applied to was Berklee. This view was corrected 

by Steve's information that some SAM alumni had chosen other colleges including 

the Manhattan School of Music and Musicians Institute in Los Angeles.  

 Both Prasanna and Steve went to Berklee and it was their benchmark to 

measure competitiveness. It is not the 1970s anymore, and there are hundreds of 

options all over the world and especially in the US where there are at least 231 

universities offering jazz programs (Downbeat, 2019), most of which tuition would 

be considerably less expensive than Berklee, and also the cost of living would be 

lower than Boston.  



 

 

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 Berklee does not possess a magic formula that makes someone who goes there 

a great jazz musician. I do know some Berklee graduates and have witnessed the 

playing of many. In my opinion, some are phenomenal yet not all are impressive. 

From my interaction with the students at UMD who were getting jazz degrees, there 

was a clear delineation between those who practiced hard, and those who didn't. In 

my assessment, there are two or three diligent UMD jazz students whose skill level 

would be on par with an above average Berklee graduate. It is not entirely what a 

program offers a student, but what a student can extract out of the program, and if 

they can do so for a considerably lower cost, it does seem to be more viable. 

Enculturation 

While it is generally understood that practice is what makes a musician good 

(Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Roemer,1993; Ozmentes, 2012), it is easier said than 

done (Harnum, 2014). It is the community that inspires jazz musicians to put in the 

practice hours and make progress (Renick, 2012). Having to play or show your 

progress, whether it is at a jam session, or to your friends or bandmates, or to a 

professor; this is what might push one to practice.  

 The effectiveness of communities of musical practice (COMPs) is depicted by 

De Bruin (2016) in an article about jazz in Australia. He defines COMPs as "groups 

of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do 

it better as they interact regularly"(p. 311). As in Australia, it would be difficult for a 

jazz musician in India to develop in complete isolation, something I can personally 

attest to during my years that were musically inactive. De Bruin, also cites Lucy 

Green's groundbreaking book "How Popular Musicians Learn"(2002). This book 



 

 

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contains a multiple case study of 14 popular musicians in London, England. She 

presents the concept of "enculturation" throughout the book, as the way popular 

musicians learn. To take the concept a little further, enculturation does not necessarily 

need to be exclusive to popular music. Popular music may only be different as it may 

not require "institutional" learning. Every genre including jazz might depend to some 

extent on enculturation for the musicians to grow, and this can greatly complement 

formal learning because "iron sharpens iron"(Proverbs 27:17). 

   Social media could also play a large role in forming community in rare music 

genres (Cawley, 2018). Some cities in India do have Facebook groups for those who 

like jazz, and I am part of jazz Facebooks groups of three different cities. These have 

been immensely helpful is connecting me with many jazz musicians. Social media is 

a vital part of networking and enculturation.    

Implications for Music Education 

 As is seen in the literature review, jazz education is growing at a fast rate in 

schools, colleges and universities in the US and round the world. In the US, the 

introduction of jazz studies is breaking centuries old purist classical traditions 

(Calkins, 2012). Conservatories and music departments in colleges and universities 

are noticing this trend as more and more of them are introducing jazz studies or 

adding graduate jazz degrees. Therefore, for music educators with knowledge and 

skills in jazz, the employment opportunities are increasing. Therefore, it would be 

advantageous for jazz musicians to study to be school music teachers or college 

professors. 



 

 

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 Due to the presences of alumni from the three music schools, there appears to 

be an increase in young jazz musicians in India and Kirtana, too, believes this to be 

the case. These alumni can raise the bar. Steve mentioned that some of his bass 

students were the "go to guys" in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. If they do indeed have 

professional performing careers, they may need to supplement their income through 

teaching. Kirtana did say she could not make a living by only playing gigs but had to 

also teach private voice lessons. All through my gigging career I also taught private 

piano lessons. Therefore, it is likely that some of the alumni of the three institutions 

are now teaching private lessons.  

When the SAM alumni who are studying in the US return to India, they can 

greatly contribute to jazz education in India. They can inspire fledgling jazz 

musicians and impart their newly gained knowledge. There could also be GMI and 

True School of Music alumni who are studying in the US. If they have a US student 

visa in a non-STEM field such as music, currently policy dictates they can remain in 

the US for up to a year after graduating. Among those that do return, it is very likely 

that many of them would teach. Since they would be well networked, they have a lot 

of influence and could also have a lot of recording and output.  

Some implications for jazz education in India through these musicians 

returning from the US would be are that there would be many more competent jazz 

musicians who can spread their influence. These musicians would probably draw 

bigger crowds when they play at jazz clubs and increase the popularity of the genre. 

Through their pedagogy, jazz might get introduced into music schools that typically 

have western classical lessons, and jazz may be even grow in k-12 schools where jazz 



 

 

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ensembles could even be formed. The future certainly seems to have greater 

possibilities for jazz education through them.   

Directions for Future Research 

 For future research on jazz education in India, there are a wide range of topics 

in need of exploration as it still is a very open, unexplored territory for research. 

Additional case studies examining the lives of professional jazz musicians and 

teachers in India will be helpful in examining the current state of affairs and beliefs 

about jazz in India.  

 Case studies from the other two institutions in India might be an option. This 

could be done to find out more experiences of jazz learners and to compare and 

contrast the jazz education between the three schools. It would also be interesting to 

perform case studies of US returned alumni of the Indian schools, particular if they 

engage in pedagogy upon their return.  

 Other possibilities for research that might indirectly be useful for jazz 

education in India is cost comparisons between different jazz degree programs in the 

US, including the cost of living in the particular university towns. Also, perhaps a 

cost to quality analysis could be made to find out affordable schools that have good 

programs. For prospective Indian jazz students, this is something that would be 

helpful in light of the GDP per capita of India. Some financial analysis could be done 

in terms of return of investment, for returning to India and performing jazz gigs and 

teaching. Since enculturation is also important, jazz department demographics on 

ethnicity and nationality would be helpful.  



 

 

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Conclusion 

 Like Kirtana, there are some in India who are influenced by western culture, 

and who prefer to study and perform jazz. There could be a combination of reasons 

why the genre has appeal. It could be the improvisational element, the rhythm, the 

feel, the harmony, etc., or a combination of factors. The internet provides unlimited 

ways to listen to and savor the music.  

 Accessibility in 2020 is not like it was when I had four instructional jazz piano 

VHS tapes, and a few books in the 1980s and 1990s. There are many audio and video 

streaming services available on the Internet along with a plentiful amount of free, 

downloadable instructional material. Technology provides unlimited listening 

opportunities to make informed taste defining choices.   

  For some, learning a score note for note, or playing pop covers exactly like 

the original may be their preferred artform. However, others might follow in the 

footsteps of Kirtana and pursue jazz.  As for jazz musician and instructor like Steve, 

he believes hearing musicians playing pop or rock covers is uninspiring and that jazz 

musicians are an entirely different breed of artists.  

 At this point in time, as I come towards the conclusion of this thesis, it is 

during the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic. Life does not follow a 

script, nor does improvisational jazz. There is a very human and existential 

expressivity in musical improvisation. Of all western music genres, jazz is the best-

known platform for this kind spontaneity.  

 For Kirtana, singing and playing jazz means everything. She said, "I can't do 

anything else, that I would be depressed and annoyed and defeated ... at life." It was 



 

 

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great that an opportunity like SAM came her way. Her experience at studying and 

performing jazz provides some valuable insights about jazz educational in India; the 

perspectives of Steve and I validate her story.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 



 

 

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Appendices 

Internal Review Board Certificate 

 

 

 



 

 

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The First Interview with Kirtana 
 
Kirtana: Ok, sure it's saying recording. Do I have to do anything? It's saying 
recording, so. 
Marcus: Oh really! I thought it will ask you for permission or something, just one sec, 
ah 
Kirtana: Well let me just get my headphones because I can't hear you very well 
Marcus: Ok, sure 
Kirtana: two minutes 
Marcus: I'm using the computer's mic so 
Kirtana: Yeah, I am too, but I mean somehow you're not loud enough, just hang on 
Marcus: Ok, sure 
PAUSE 
Marcus: Great, is it better, great 
Kirtana: Yes, better, Can you see me? shall I position myself better 
Marcus: Yes, sure, whatever you like, I mean, Nobody's go -  I'm not going to show 
this video to anyone, it's just for me to like do my transcribing, I mean, I'm going to 
transcribe the entire interview and 
Kirtana: Ok, alright, then this is ... there's no problem as such 
Marcus: yeah, ok, great, um, ok sure, so where are you right now  
Kirtana: I'm in Pondicherry 
Marcus: Cool, nice, decided to - did you decide to move there permanently, or 
Kirtana: Yeah, I decide to move here permanently, I'm building my own house here, 
this is roots now 
Marcus: wow, great, great, what prompted you to do that, to move here 
Kirtana: Um, interesting, after SAM I got connected with the Adhishakti theatre 
company, that you know theatre company that is based out of Auroville, and I kept 
kind of doing work for them I would come here and teach them, and then I was also 
part of some of their productions, ok, so I found that its, you know it’s a good 
environment in terms of having a kind of an artists community that's backing you. 
And also its a really nice place to live, you know, it's not polluted it's *** city, so I 
thought it would be best to move and kind of study in peace without too much outside 
influence I suppose.  
Marcus: Nice, nice, ok cool, so tell me about Cheap Delerium.   
Kirtana: It's just my Instagram handle, there's nothing more to it 
Marcus: ok, is it you band or something 
Kirtana: No, no, no, I had, I have a band Sage For The Ages, but at the moment we're 
not doing anything, as in I recorded an EP with them and I haven't released yet, so I 
you know, didn't get two of the tracks mastered and then I'm going to see maybe next 
year I'll put it out 
Marcus: Ok, cool, alright, great, um I have a good friend in Chennai if you want, if 
you needed, you probably already have the contacts, but, uh, he does mixing and 
mastering and stuff, if you're interested I can send you his contact details.   
Kirtana: Sure, because, I 'm having a little, the thing is I recorded, uh, this entire 
album at, this place called Eb, which was run *** for Roshan George Thomas, for 
some reason he majorly messed up the recording process and then, you know, 



 

 

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whatever, there was a lot of noise coming in and then he decided that he didn't want 
*** do the mixing after, I had to find someone else who was not the engineer on the 
process to do the mixing and mastering so there is a little bit of uh, tsk, just bad luck I 
don't know. 
Marcus: ok, ok, sure, I'll send you his details, I'm very satisfied with his work, and 
he's really patient with me, I always come back with tons of feedback and changes, 
and he was always been happy to work with me. He's actually a former student also 
so 
Kirtana: What's his name? 
Marcus: His name is Vasan. 
Kirtana: Ok, alright. Please send me his contact. 
Marcus: He lives somewhere in Chennai, I don't know where exactly, but, he's moved 
so I don't know where he is right now, but I went to his old former studio. 
Kirtana: ok 
Marcus: That's a good three or four years ago. Yeah, cool, ok, let’s just get to the 
actual questions, but it doesn't have to be the actual questions, but 
Kirtana: Sure However, you feel  
Marcus: Ok, sure, what were your first experiences learning music  
Kirtana: Uh, first experiences learning music would be going for Carnatic classes 
when I was young but I somehow never followed through. I mean I went to various 
people in, you know, at, in different ages from six onwards and I never really 
progressed beyond the basics, in Carnatic, so 
Marcus: Is it singing? 
Kirtana: It was singing, yes,  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: Carnatic singing 
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: It didn't appeal to me as much 
Marcus: ok, I see 
Kirtana: Then, when I was twelve, I started learning guitar 
Marcus: ok, oh really 
Kirtana: But again, I, maybe I learned for a year, and the knowledge of what I learned 
for a year I continued till I was twenty four, you know with the open chords, like, you 
realize that you don't need  much to write music, so I learned, you know, just the 
basics, and I took it till I was twenty four and then I decided ok I'm going to study 
guitar now properly.  
Marcus: I see, I see, wow, ok, so, when did you start guitar then    
Kirtana: So, like I said, I started when I was twelve  
Marcus: I mean properly 
Kirtana: Properly would be in 2014 after I did SAM, I finished SAM in 2013, and 
then, uh, around that time was when I *** that ok I'll try and get into studying guitar 
more seriously. 
Marcus: Ok, started in 2013 you said 
Kirtana: 2013 I went to SAM  
Marcus: ok 



 

 

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Kirtana: For, you know, voice educa, for, you know, to study jazz, and just as a 
vocalist 
Marcus: ok, was that straight out of school, or was, did you have some other time in 
between, or I mean how... 
Kirtana: yeah, I had some time in between, so at 21 I graduated from management 
school.  
Marcus: oh ok, ok 
Kirtana: I worked uh corporate till I was 23,  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: it was around that time that Abhishek and I started blue rhythm, so,  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: (laugh) I called it *** to performing jazz and then I realized that actually I 
did not know ***, so ... that's when I said ok fine, this is something that really appeals 
to me, the performance, I might as well go and, you know,  educate myself.  
Marcus: Ok, so how old were you when you started at SAM 
Kirtana: 23 
Marcus: 23, ok 
Kirtana: 22 and a half, 22 and a half and I was out of it at 23 and a half 
Marcus: Ok, great, yeah, cool, so, I mean, what made you jazz 
K : Ha, that's a really difficult, um, I had the memory of listening to jazz, my Dad had 
records and he would play them 
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: So, I remember listening to quite a bit of 
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: But, it was also, you know, mixed with, I mean, when you're teenagers, *** 
years you're also listening to rock and, you know, it was mixed with a lot of other 
things, so at uh, I think, when I wanted to chose a repertoire for me to sing, I found 
that,  uh, and especially because all my contemporaries were doing pop, I somehow 
sought to distinguish myself, you know, and went back to this the memory of what I 
had already listened to. And when Abhishek and I, when he suggested, you know 
these tunes, and we, when I started singing them I found that it came to me very 
easily, very naturally, I didn't have to make as much of an effort, which is funny, 
because for most people, it's the other way around, you know. 
Marcus: I see 
Kirtana: Other things come naturally to them and they have just really get into jazz, 
but, for me somehow it is something that I, felt comfortable with like, I knew, and it 
knew me kind of situation.  
Marcus: Oh Wow, cool, how did you and Abhishek decided to, decide to form Blue 
Rhythm, how did that happen 
Kirtana: (laughs) um, when I was, um, I think, 19 or something, I had a crush on this 
boy who used to play at this band, a, he was the guitarist, and Abhishek was the 
bassist, so I would go to watch *** and that how Abhishek and I formed a friendship, 
and of course, I would sing with them once, and then, he, uh, came up to he 
afterwards, in a couple of months later and said I have an idea for a duo, and you 
know, I'll play guitar, I've been studying jazz, why don't you sing. I said ok, we just 



 

 

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started jamming, and he came up with everything else, with the name and with the tag 
line and the brand concept and everything, he did all of that 
Marcus: I see, what kind of music that that band play 
Kirtana: Oh they played uh classic rock like ***, boyd, like krytos and you know the 
***   
Marcus: Ok, so you guys took a different turn, with *** 
Kirtana: of course, yeah, and I had no idea.. he was a bass player right, I had no idea 
that he could play guitar and in fact he was studying Joe Pass and you know like 
doing his work, I had no idea 
Marcus: uh ha, yeah go ahead 
Kirtana: no so suddenly he had all of this done, like, in terms of technique and he just 
wanted someone to, you know, share it with and have someone else, a bandmate, I 
suppose, so. 
Marcus: I see, did you guys do a lot of gig s and stuff or 
Kirtana: uh, yeah, it was actually going pretty well before I decided to, I mean, we 
probably had 7 or 8 months before I decided to go SAM and those time, I mean, in 
those months, you know we quickly put together a set and we would just perform as 
much as we wanted, not all of them were paid at that time, we were just happy to, you 
know, sing and play, and it seemed like we were getting somewhere, which is when I 
though that, ok, now that this is getting somewhere, I might as well, you know, really 
get my basics, and foundation, understand what the hell it is that I have to be, so I 
kind of left the band midway, and went to study music, and he hasn't forgiven me for 
it (laugh). 
Marcus: I actually remember hearing you guys at Herbs and Spice 
Kirtana: Yeah, that's right, we did have one, I think, one or two shows there.  
Marcus: Yeah, I actually met Abhishek, I took his number, and forgot, I said I want to 
jam with you sometime, and I forgot all about it, and then he called and texted like 
some months later.  
Kirtana: Right 
Marcus: Because, I (laugh) 
Kirtana: no, yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess he was looking for you know, other people 
to play with, so (laugh) 
Marcus: But, sadly I'm not in touch with him anymore, I think once he left to Delhi or 
something, I just lost touch with him 
Kirtana: Well he recently got married 
Marcus: Oh he did,   
Kirtana: He did (big laugh) 
Marcus: Wow, oh wow 
Kirtana: I know (still laughing).   
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: He's married a lovely girl (***couldn't pick up the name) here in *** perfect 
for each other. 
Marcus: ok, yeah, wow, ok, so that 
Kirtana: So that's, how did you hear about SAM, uh, funnily enough it was through 
Abhishek itself like, like, he's been such an influence in my life, my god,  yeah, it was 
through him, and I even remember having this conversation him, telling him that it’s 



 

 

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not possible for India to have such a school, I do, I don't believe, you know, to have 
such a school. And he'd say no no it's true there is such a place, and you can go it, 
there are some amazing that have come down and if you really want to get into it then 
this is the place 
Marcus: aha, I see, I don't know, oddly, in whatever conversation I had with 
Abhishek about SAM he never seemed too impressed, I don't know why.  
Kirtana: He never seemed too impressed with SAM 
Marcus: Yeah, yeah he said, wha, he said he went there and jammed a couple of times 
and everyone and everyone seems to be a beginner or something. That's what he's told 
me, way back.  
Kirtana: Maybe, I don't know what experiences he had there, but, uh, when I went 
there, there were some really phenomenal guitar players, at least in the guitar 
department, everyone was a real cat, uh, those who had at spent a couple of semesters 
there. There weren't too many bass players, the vocalists were ok, uh, there were 
some good drummers as well. Uh, and, I mean it was a, I feel like now it's really 
fallen in terms of the pool that catch, because I think they just accept everyone, earlier 
when Prassana was'n, had a say, it was a, you know a more vibrant environment. But 
all the same, uh I, the teachers that come down, if you know how to make use of 
them, you can go from zero to like a really good space you know in good time,  
Marcus: ok, I see, I see 
Kirtana: In my experience of course,  
Marcus: So you have, like guitar, bass, drums, you have piano there, or were there 
piano teachers? 
Kirtana: yeah, piano as well, piano, and voice 
Marcus: and voice, did they have any other instruments? or do they 
Kirtana: No, no ,no, there was no horn section, no violin, none of that.  
Marcus: Ok. I see, yeah cool, so just talk about SAM and your teachers there if you 
could , you experience there 
Kirtana: Sure, SAM, what would you like to know, ok so, I had three vocal teachers, I 
did one year there 
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: and in my first semester the system was that we would have two bits, and 
then the faculty would change after seven weeks, so we had two sets of faculty,  
M : ok 
Kirtana: uh, I had this Mexican super-star by the name of Magos Herrera, she's quite 
something in Mexico *** 
Marcus: Oh ok   
Kirtana: uh, she was my first teacher, then I had uh, someone called Farah Siraj who 
was Jordanian, she was my second teacher, so in terms of what they taught me it was 
kind of I mean, I was put into the beginner section because I did not know how to 
read music, so, but again, I have a good sense of pitch, so I could pick up things very 
easily, but, in terms of what they taught me, it my beginnings towards vocal 
improvisation over changes, which is I think, you know the biggest thing when it 
come to jazz ex, of course you know you can learn *** and you can learn to sing, and 
you can learn the head, etc, but then understanding changes, like what is happening, 



 

 

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how to maneuver yourself through all that both of them taught all that, not so much in 
terms of technique, which was great, which was exactly what I needed. 
Marcus: Yeah 
Kirtana: And, ah, then of course you had all of the other, common classes and you 
had, you know, your introduction to harmony and how to, you know, what, what the 
hell is going on and ensembles, so that's about it. 
Marcus: And I know, I mean I told I was really impressed with your jazz theory 
knowledge, and haha ... 
Kirtana: hahahaha That's me though, that's just my efforts, I mean, they taught that to 
everyone, but not everyone got that you know.  
Marcus: Ok, yeah, i was, I'll never forget that, that time 
Kirtana: The Locrian bit 
Marcus: Yeah, I will never forget that, yeah, wow, cool, yeah and also , I've hardly 
seen any, uh, anyone scat in Bangalore or India at all. 
Kirtana: Oh really, ok 
Marcus: Oh, but, I mean, you used to scat and you understood the changes and stuff, 
so that was, yeah 
Kirtana: But that, that is what attracted me most, you know, to, I mean, when you 
hear Ella you're like, wow I want to be able to do that, but I also want to be able to do 
it as authentically as possible. Which I, which I still have not got there, I don't know, I 
don't know, heh, you know 
Marcus: Ok, ok, I see, so you went there for one year only 
Kirtana: for one year, yeah, just for one year 
Marcus: Ok, ok, I see, um, is there a reason you decided not to do the two-year 
program 
Kirtana: Yeah, because it was expensive, again I think the only reason, I mean I did 
of course want to go abroad and study, but I think the, the financial, you know, I 
didn't want to loan and all of that, because that's, I didn't want to get into a mess of it, 
so one year was good 
Marcus: so , you kind of had it on your mind that you might possible like to go 
abroad. 
Kirtana: Yeah , yeah, for sure 
Marcus: Is that, are you still open to that, if you can, if money was not an issue, you'd 
do it right. 
Kirtana: Yeah, if money was not an issue, I would definitely *** abroad, definitely 
Marcus: Ok, um, so um, apart from SAM, did you do any other learning with other 
teachers, or 
Kirtana: Yes, so um and after I left SAM I think, um, I wanted to get into you know, 
uh, basically supporting myself as a vocalist, I wanted to study guitar more seriously, 
like I mentioned earlier, so I looked for, uh, guitar teachers, and that's when I started, 
I mean I was teaching as well, I was teaching voice, but I was also studying guitar 
with various different teachers and somehow like, I just could not make, connect with 
any of them 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: Except to, you know, uh till a couple of months when I finally found my 
guitar teacher and now we have a duo,  



 

 

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Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: uh haho, ah, so till then of course I've also been studying, ah, of learning 
videos and I have a you know a large collection books and just material that I sift 
through now and then see how I can get better. 
Marcus: Uh, ok 
Kirtana: But now the focus is entirely guitar, focus on just, is just on you know 
improvising on the guitar 
Marcus: I see, I see, ok, um, did you learn anything online at all 
Kirtana: Ah, yeah, I mean, when I wouldn't get some things I would look it up online, 
I would look up how to play certain rhythms and you know, uh, when I can't hear the 
changes properly I always looked for things online, but not, it's not like I went on a 
course or anything like 
Marcus: Ah, ok, ok, uh, did you pick up stuff from other musicians around 
Kirtana: Um,  
Marcus: Like you jammed with or performed with 
Kirtana: uh, not in terms of technique, I think the musician community has been most 
helpful to me in, in kind of crafting my taste, you know, on what to listen to, who to 
listen to, ah, what, but I, I don't think I ever picked up anything from them in terms or 
technique, so 
Marcus: Ok, ok I see, just general advice or something like that 
Kirtana: Yeah, just general advice, yeah, I mean like ah, yeah 
Marcus: Neither did Abhishek show you anything, or did he 
Kirtana: Not on the guitar, somehow nobody ever took me seriously on the guitar, I 
don't know why, haha, you know, it's like they never bothered to tell me that you can 
do this, this way or you can do it that way 
Marcus: Ok, so to him you were just a singer 
Kirtana: Yeah, it's insulting, but yeah 
Marcus: Ok, that's sad, yeah, was all of your jazz learning done in India 
Kirtana: Yes all of it  
Marcus: Yes all of it was done in India  
Marcus: All of it, ok, wow 
Kirtana: I was lucky enough to have been exposed to people who have played, you 
know, in different scenes around the world, mostly from SAM, so the information 
that I got was first hand authentic from, you know, American jazz players, and Latin 
jazz players. But I did not have to go outside of my environment to receive it.  
Marcus: Ok, I see, wow, um, how, how do your family members respond you 
becoming a jazz musician 
Kirtana: Ah ha, they don't understand it, but they support it all the same 
Marcus: They support it? 
Kirtana: yeah they do, because they know that I, you know I'm an absolute ***, they 
know that I can't do anything else, that I would be depressed and annoyed and 
defeated, yeah ha, at life I had to do anything apart from what I'm doing, so they 
understand that 
Marcus: That's absolutely true about us jazz guys we just can't just do anything else 
and be happy in life 
Kirtana: Exactly 



 

 

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Marcus: yeah, so that's the only thing we can do, are you a natural improviser, can 
you say that? 
Kirtana: Ah 
Marcus: uh, singing or guitar, either or both 
Kirtana: On voice, I'm definitely more comfortable, I would say yes, uh, I am natural 
at it. 
Marcus: Aha 
Kirtana: uh, uh, but at the same time, um, I think form taught to me, so, I can at least, 
I know when to stop and when to start I'm not completely lost,  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: So that much has been given to me and then within that I think I just, yeah, 
Marcus: uh ok 
Kirtana: I think it's seen *** 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: It also depends on, you know, who you listen to, so I've been lucky enough 
to have listened to a lot people who do this stuff right, so I do pick up from that 
Marcus: I see, wow, ok, how are the venues where you play jazz 
Kirtana: um, well there used to more in Bangalore, but day by day they are all 
shutting down, um you know 
Marcus: *** 
Kirtana: Sorry 
Marcus: Is that, is that, because they are less people interested in listening to live jazz, 
or 
Kirtana: No, no, I think's it's a, um in Bangalore, I think it's at, at, at the moment it's 
political climate 
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: uh, because there have always been certain Institution and certain people, 
who might not have able to pay as much, but at least, the passion for keeping the 
music alive. But now, you know, with the current climate, that's become difficult 
Marcus: But, ah, you know when I call, lot of people say that people are not 
interested in jazz, actually that's not true, cause in my experience, every time I've, I've 
played, they were, there has been a quality crowd that has appreciated and you know, 
listen to, listen to jazz 
Marcus: Ok, I see 
Kirtana: So *** 
Marcus: There's always people ready to listen to it 
Kirtana: Yeah, more and more ready, I think there's more awareness now,  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: uh, not a lot people understand it, but they want to make the effort to, you 
know, listen to it, and they've learned to the etiquette of shutting up, haha  
Marcus: Haha 
Kirtana: And you're gonna have people talk, but they're becoming a little bit more 
aware.  
Marcus: Yeah, yeah, do you think SAM has made a big in many, uh guys and girls 
going out there and learning and learning jazz and then performing it 



 

 

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Kirtana: For sure, for sure, bit's it's a, I also feel like it's brought about a kind of, you 
know, a difference in class of musicians, because there are a lot of people who haven't 
gone to music school, and who haven't been to a SAM and who aren't necessarily 
aware of theory, uh, but still, and then there are some of us who, or I mean, I wouldn't 
want to say us, but then are some, ah, you know, some people who go to music 
school, who are not so technically able, but are aware of the theory, so there's a little 
bit of a, you this kind of, I've been to music school, I've not been to music school, 
kind of, you know 
Marcus: ah, ok 
Kirtana: but then I hear some bigger pictures that you all come in, you know come 
together and say that you're playing music and get out of it 
Marcus: Uh, are there other jazz institutions in India apart from SAM 
Kirtana: Yeah, there are two others, there's this, the True School of Music in Bombay 
and uh, the Global *** Music Institute in Delhi.  
Marcus: Oh the, say that again, the global 
Kirtana: Music Institute, GMI 
Marcus: ok, ok 
Kirtana: Uh, and GMI was started by, uh, two Berklee uh, you graduates, uh, they’re 
brothers 
Marcus: Um,  
Kirtana: Tarun Balani and Aditya Balani, and they, they've, you know, they've been 
to Berklee and they want to bring the Berklee vibe here and True school of Music is, I 
know Ranjit Barot's on the trustees, uh board, and I, but I'm not sure who has started 
it, but yeah.  
Marcus: Are they both exclusively, jazz schools, jazz institutions, or  
Kirtana: uh, you know what, I'm not sure but I know that the focus is definitely on 
jazz, I mean, they might churn out a, you other musician, might churn out how to 
make pop songs, but then I know for a fact that the harmony that they study is all jazz 
harmony.  
Marcus: Ok great, so then they're probably a lot, lot of young people learning jazz 
India now because of the three 
Kirtana: yes, yeah, there are a lot of, yeah, I mean, yeah, there are a lot of people 
learning jazz in India.  
OKirtana: 
Kirtana: At the moment, I don't know how good they are or how, how far they're 
gonna go but then, the study material what you, what you're expected to learn is all 
jazz *** (as all changes) 
Marcus: ok, I see, I've actually downloaded uh the syllabus or curriculum, Don't 
know what, I think the syllabus, uh of SAM, and 
Kirtana: ok 
Marcus: *** it looks good to me 
Kirtana: Looks like they're ok haha, good to know 
Marcus: Haha, but mean I mean I you don't know the specific, details, I once called 
on the phone cause one of my students wanted to go there, I once called on the phone 
to ask some questions, but anyway, yeah 
Kirtana: Right 



 

 

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Marcus: Is it hard to find jazz musicians to jam with or even perform with? 
Kirtana: Um 
Marcus: In India or in, from where you're at, in Pondicherry or wherever 
Kirtana: You know, I wasn't actively looking for a, jazz musicians to jam with, 
somehow they always just came my way  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: And I made best of the situation 
Marcus: I see 
Kirtana: Uh, I also feel that, uh, considering the nature of my voice, um, a big band 
doesn't work for me, so I always like to limit my, you know, my performance 
situations to two or three people, and that has never been hard so far, ***(like they're 
always good) 
Marcus: So you never have trouble getting musicians 
Kirtana: No, not really 
Marcus: ok, I see 
Kirtana: I've been lucky that way I think 
Marcus: Ok, because I sometimes had a hard time, but 
Kirtana: Haha, yeah, sure 
Marcus: Yeah, but, I mean, uh 
Kirtana: I think, because I went to school, right, then there was a network which 
formed right, so 
Marcus: Yeah, I didn't have that 
Kirtana: *** a call away, haha, you 
Marcus: ok, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause I was like, trying to convert, like, rock guys into 
jazz, just to play jazz and stuff like that, that never worked 
Kirtana: No but, so much has changed in the past like twenty years I suppose, or 
nearer ten years ***, so yeah 
Marcus: Cause I, I mean I'm 45 and I actually 20 years, 22 years ago I think, I was 
about 23, same age as when you went to SAM, I did my Bachelor of Music in the US. 
At that age, but then I had absolutely no contacts in Bangalore.  
Kirtana: Yeah because you did it abroad right,  
Marcus: yeah, yeah 
Kirtana: If you have *** wanted to continue there then it would have been possible 
for you *** 
Marcus: Maybe, I don't know, you know, I also did it in a very small town, with, with 
very few jazz musicians, so, yeah, that also didn't help me network *** and I actually 
ended up playing pop than jazz.  
Kirtana: Right, which is not a bad thing, because pop music back then I suppose had a 
little bit more value than pop music right now. *** unbearable haha 
Marcus: But like, I toured with pop band, and, nobody asked me, like did you learn 
pop in India or anything like, did you learn to play in India, but whenever I play here, 
I mean, maybe a hundred people have asked me, did you learn in India. 
Kirtana: oh nice, ok 
M; And I've always found, why is it, when I play jazz, you ask that question, I just, 
may, I just, anyway it just is interesting to them  
Kirtana: yeah - it's interesting, I think it's more cultural, to them no, more than pop 



 

 

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Marcus: Ok, yeah, I see, um, is jazz you career 
Kirtana: Ah, I'd have to say at 29 I think it's becoming my career, haha and uh 
Marcus: Ok, um, can you make a living gigging 
Kirtana: Gigging alone, no, but gigging and teaching, yes.  
Marcus: Ok, is teaching pretty good? 
Kirtana: Yes,  
Marcus: Are you teaching right now 
Kirtana: Yes, of course,  
Marcus: Ok, how many students do you have 
Kirtana: 7 
Marcus: 7, ok, do you teach singing? or guitar? 
Kirtana: yeah, I don't teach guitar 
Marcus: ok, I see 
Kirtana: I think I, I'd like consider myself a student of guitar and a teacher of voice. I 
think that's ok. 
Marcus: ok,  ok, how's the, how's the practice environment, do. you find the 
musicians around you practice hard or ... 
Kirtana: Absolutely, it's amazing in main Auroville and in Pondicherry, uh, it's a 
small circle, there aren't too many people, but the people who are here are very 
serious about what they are doing, which is again one of the reasons why I want to be 
here. Um, it's a place for the arts to thrive and everyone practices really hard, or 
constantly you know, updating repertoire and listening to the current trends in the jazz 
world, it's, it's it's great, it's really great. 
Marcus: Ok yeah, how's your practice like? 
Kirtana: It's very serious at the moment, oh, with guitar especially, uh, voice, voice, 
ah,  I practice kind of a, you of kind of *** gigs, I think *** most *** my practice 
***. 
Marcus: Really? 
Kirtana: I have given myself till 35 to be able to, you know, some more teaching and 
learn on guitar improvisations for another six years. So , in 6 years I better get there. 
Marcus: Haha. I don't know. It's something you can never stop I guess in jazz, you 
can never stop learning 
Kirtana: Sure, sure 
Marcus: 'Cause I'm 45 and I'm, I'm still learning.  
Kirtana: No but that's great. I mean I don't ever want the study to stop, I, I think the 
more you can discover about the music everyday and *** the more combinations you 
can try that's great, but I think uh, you know, there's got to be a stage where you can 
stay that ok I, I'm at least competent on this, and I still can't say that.  
Marcus: Ok, I see, so um, how do you say, how's the gig environment in India, I 
mean overall, not just Bangalore.  
Kirtana: Um you know I'm so confused about it because in some ways. I think it's 
good, and on some other days I think it's bad, I think, uh, so far, uh musicians have 
been a little bit entitles in the sense that they expect the venues to do everything, you 
know, for you in terms of payment and promotion and everything but I think I've 
understood the mindset now that you've got to do your own leg work, and you've got 
to bring the crowd to you, you know that means pitching your word out there and 



 

 

81 
 

trying to, you make sure your *** and kind of build a following for what your trying 
to do and then the gigs you'll get is good for you. If you have a name for every city 
that you go to with your own efforts, that's great. But you're ex, if you're relying on 
someone else to do that for you it doesn't work out.  
Marcus: Ok, ok, yeah, actually while you mentioned that, there's an interesting e-
book I came across, I'll send it to you.   
Kirtana: Sure, sure, is it ***(published) 
Marcus: It's called the the uh, 6 Figure Musician.  
Kirtana: ok, haha, monetizing, haha 
Marcus: yeah, yeah, so , I mean, if you literally do everything that's in it, I think you'll 
make money anywhere.  
Kirtana: Oh, yeah 
Marcus: Uh, I never literally did everything that's in it, so, yeah, it includes lot of 
social, social media and all that stuff.  
Kirtana: Right 
M : I only facebook and I don't even look at it everyday so,  
Kirtana: Haha 
Marcus: Yeah, um, do you feel you're properly paid when you do gigs? 
Kirtana: Again, um, when I'm relying on the venues, no, not really, but when we go 
on a gate share, then yes,  
Marcus: Say that again, when you go on a  
Kirtana: When we go on gate share *** we have like say, we make a good deal with 
the venue saying we'll give you 25 or 30% and then you know, sell tickets, then we 
made, we make actually quite a lot *** these 2 shows that we did with Shanks, that's 
that we went with that model, just this weekend, and we actually ended up making 
quite a bit, much more than what we expected.     
Marcus: Oh really 
Kirtana: Which *** you know in a traditional setup if you've gone to B Flat *** ok 
we'll pay you five thousand rupees. Er, you know, per person, right ok they'll give 
you ten grand in total but then that's that's not much. so, in terms of the tickets, we did 
do a lot in turn to promote and to invite people and you know, all of those efforts 
were made, so we made money. 
Marcus: Ok, I see 
Kirtana: So yeah, gotta be a little savvy, hehe, but venues don't pay, they don't pay 
much. 
Marcus: I see, ok, have you done anything in Chennai, cause you're lot closer *** 
Kirtana: Chennai, no, no actually no, Chennai is such a dead scene 
Marcus: yeah? 
Kirtana: Nothing happening there. 
Marcus: Ok, ok 
Kirtana: Pondi has got better scene than Chennai, unless a singing a *** or Carnatic 
Margari Basan, that style, haha, otherwise, no. 
Marcus: Uh, do you see a future for yourself as a jazz musician in India 
Kirtana: I hope so, haha 
Marcus: ok, haha, I see, I see 



 

 

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Kirtana: Uh, I mean, you know, um, I think as long as I can just continue to study and 
I have a few bunch of people who are around, I think um, I think it's it's a viable 
thing. I don't ever expect to be famous or you know, or even make a name for my... 
pure jazz is very selfish, cause it's just for me, me and my head like, my jazz, I'd, I'm 
not really interested in, in you know I don't know if I will ever make it to stage where, 
you know where Blue Note will come and tell you can I ***, not gonna happen, I've 
made my peace over that, haha. 
Marcus: It's weird because I've had the, like very opposite thing happen like, I've 
done like, like three restaurant gigs with a singer, and the in Bangalore, and then she 
thinks she's like a superstar, that prima donna syndrome, it's interesting that you have 
none of that.  
Kirtana: yeah, well you know, I mean, it's reality right, and it's the, I don't think 
anyone should do music to be famous or to even earn money on what you can make, 
pay your bills I think that's ok. But I think for much more Spiritual and, more, uh, you 
know a vast intention, it's a part of expanding and knowing more 
Marcus: ok, I see, uh, so you're building the house with with what you earned with 
jazz.  
Kirtana: Oh my god I wish I could say yes but no. 
Marcus: Ok, ok 
Kirtana: *** I mean I don't want to put this thing, I don't want to come across, you 
know, in the wrong way, but in a sense I am privileged to be able to do this because if 
I didn't come from a certain family and if I didn't have a certain backing, I don't think 
I would be able to follow, pursue jazz, I didn't think someone who is you know, from 
another kind of an economical background would be able to do this. You know, be 
able to afford a guitar or be able to *** so I have my mom who's helping me out, you 
know, building this thing for me so that I don't have to, you she can say, ok, do your 
jazz in peace you know, it's really, I'm really grateful to her.  
Marcus: That's nice of her 
Kirtana: yeah, it's very nice of her 
Marcus: Would you, has it ever crossed your mind, I'm trying to say, I'm trying to 
frame these questions right, but you could possibly be performing jazz somewhere 
else and would you like that or prefer that to India or you're content or what, what's 
you 
Kirtana: Uh, I think the kind of person that I am I don't *** I mean, uh, I'm not going 
to say that I haven't had these thoughts, I did want to go abroad, and I did want to 
study music elsewhere,  
I mean of course, you know *** to you know having finished studying there maybe 
stay back and explore a scene and see if I could fit there. But, at the moment I think, 
uh, I want it to be that, I get to a level where I can be assessed on a world stage, and 
then maybe you know, try and maybe get gigs and tour elsewhere. But, I don't think I 
ever want to live abroad, I think I love India too much, it's a great country and uh you 
know I'd rather do something, that is maybe not culturally mine, but do it here, *** do 
this somewhere else. 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: Yeah 
 



 

 

83 
 

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Marcus: Um, Do you see a future for jazz in India? 
Kirtana: Yes, yes, of course I do, I think uh, I think as more and more people go to 
music school I think they're recognizing that jazz is kind of a mother ship of theory, 
of you know, of experimental possibilities, so , uh, I think more people will take it up, 
and even if, even if it is not in it's purest form, uh, I think songwriters and all the 
young blood, they are looking for, you com..., I wouldn't say complicated but looking 
for more sophisticated changes and sophisticated harmony when it comes their songs, 
so, you know, it, they might, it might still be rock, but then the rock will have some, 
you know, flat seven, flat nine, you know, which is unusual, so, haha, yeah 
Marcus: I hate to this in the middle of the interview, but I need a bathroom break, if 
you don't mind, 
Kirtana: Oh, ya ya, of course, of course 
Marcus: I, I, I worked  out in the gym then I drank like 2 liters of water, so if you 
don't mind, sorry about that,  
Kirtana: No problem, of course,  
Marcus: I'll be right back 
Kirtana: not, at all, ok I'll get some water myself 
 
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------------------------ 
 
Kirtana: Hi 
Marcus: Ok   
Kirtana: Hi 
Marcus: Hi again, Um, tell me about any, tell me about any recording in the works or 
past recordings or what you're working 
Kirtana: so uh, in June, um, I had, uh, you know formed a, ok wait, so, uh in 2016 I 
had moved to Bangladesh, to work with a, some people, um, somebody that I was in a 
relationship with but not anymore, so, haha, *** we had a band that's when *** you 
know we started doing uh, recordings uh, of uh, Tagore, so we did jazz arrangements 
somewhat of Tagore, it was interesting, I know that time *** 
Marcus: Talk about fusion, ok, anyway 
Kirtana: Yeah, I’ll about fusion yeah, that's in, I mean that was ok, uh and then um, 
uh, earlier this year I'd formed this band with again a couple of SAM musicians itself, 
and we kind of a arranged my songs and uh, I recorded this EP, and you know *** 
like I mentioned earlier in the beginning of this interview, I'm waiting to release 
them. Then uh, with my guitar teach and we've formed this duo, so, with him we are 
going to be recording three songs in December.  
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: So, one is an original and two of them are rearrangements, so 
Marcus: Ok, I believe I saw a video of, I think it was a Bossanova tune,  
Kirtana: Aha 
Marcus: On facebook, a couple of days ago 



 

 

84 
 

Kirtana: just ***. yeah yeah yeah yeah 
Marcus: Ok *** 
Kirtana: So our, our set is very largely Latin jazz, we do a lot of Bossa and Samba, 
and you know a couple of *** 
Marcus: Were you singing in Portuguese by any chance?  
Kirtana: Yes, yes, yes  
Marcus: Wow! 
Kirtana: So I'm stu..., I studying Portuguese at the moment.  
Marcus: You are? 
Kirtana: Yeah, haha.   
Marcus: To sing it, or you just like the language 
Kirtana: No, to understand what the hell I'm singing 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: *** imitate the web, well enough but then I want to know what, what the 
meaning of it is, there I can be *** better  
Marcus: Ok, ok, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, yeah I remember you're singing Girl For, 
Girl From Ipanema (in Portuguese) haha, yeah, but that's interesting. Um, tell me 
about composing, do you compose a lot and what's the process like for you and... 
Kirtana: Uh, so I think could say I write songs more than, you know, actually 
compose music, so uh, the process has always been that you sit with the guitar and 
uh, and look for changes that sound appealing ... 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: And then find a melody over it and then write the words to it. So, it's always 
the case and that hasn't changed, haha 
Marcus: Ok, Uh have you wri... How how many songs a year would you write 
Kirtana: uh, god, so, I mean, I think as an exercise I started writing songs when I was 
twelve or thirteen 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: so, if I were to really count all of that I don't know how many songs I have, 
maybe like, I really don't know, but *** what I can perform today would maybe be 
twelve or fifteen  
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: That I'm happy with 
Marcus: I see, I see, you had some shows in Bangalore right?   
Kirtana: Yeah, yeah 
Marcus: Who were the band members, uh, who were the band members you played 
with and tell me about those shows and so that, the project that is, uh, that I'm 
currently, uh, you know, pushing out of everything is uh, this git... *** what I'd like 
to call a teacher student duo, uh, wherin I'm, I'm, you know, I'm the student and my 
guitar teacher so him and I we perform uh, Its two guitars and both of us sing, and uh 
we, we do jazz, latin jazz mostly and some swing standards thrown in. so that was the 
video clip that you watched.  
Marcus: Ok, I see, wha... what attracts you to latin jazz 
Kirtana: oh my god, I, you know, it was this emotional opening, I did not, I'd  never 
un, I never, I didn't realize how, at... uh attached I could become to that, that form of 
music but uh, sometime around, last year, 2018, uh I started listening to George 



 

 

85 
 

Roberto, and I had heard him before, but for some reason, I, you know, I, I, I just 
started listening really hard to him and then, uh, I, I  felt really connected and then 
after that it's just artists just kept coming, you know, my way one after the other, and 
now, I don't know, I think I have a, I think I'm most invested in that Music at the 
moment, like I have very vast collection of artists and I keep learning Portuguese 
songs of artists and songs all the time, so haha 
Marcus: Wow, that's cool, you should probably go to Brazil and ***(just learn jazz) 
Kirtana: I do, I want to go, I'm planning a trip, yeah, I'm planning a trip maybe for 
two thousand and twenty two, not twenty one, twenty two maybe,  
Marcus: ok, if you, if you ever want to come visit here you're welcome to some stay 
with us,  
Kirtana: Oh, that would be lovely,  
Marcus: on your way to Brazil or whatever, so, yeah 
Kirtana: On my way to Brazil ... getting a Visa to the States though, I don't know how 
*** that's going to be like 
Marcus: I actually got rejected my first time, I got rejected like three times 
Kirtana: Right, but you're persistent, so I don't think I have the money to spend on 
haha, Visas, they don't return that money to you, they don't return rejection money to 
you 
Marcus: yeah, yeah, Wow 
Kirtana: cough, cough, excuse me 
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------------------------ 
Marcus:  So, uh, so your Bangalore gigs were with just the guitar teacher and you? 
Kirtana: Yeah, with just my guitar teacher, yeah 
Marcus: How many did you have?  
Kirtana: We had two gigs, for one Friday, one Saturday, we just, we actually debuted 
this set, uh, last Sunday, over here at *** theatre. 
Marcus: Oh you did? 
Kirtana: Yeah, so, that was like, I mean it's, it's very new actually, it's just, it's been a 
couple since we started jamming*** 6th of October, and then we got two gigs in 
Bangalore, so that's Friday - Saturday 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: And then, I think our next gig is in November, so I'm trying to see if I can 
get some in the meanwhile.  
Marcus: Where is that, the next gig 
Kirtana: Uh, it's at the storytellers bar in Pondicherry. 
Marcus: Oh, it's over there. Is Pondicherry a good place for gigs.  
Kirtana: Uh, shh, it's funny, uh, it used to be an absolutely amazing place, for for 
gigs, uh, there was this space called Kashakiasha that was run by an American 
woman, uh, for about 10 odd years she ran really happening scene and then last year 
she got deported. So ... you know... 
Marcus: Oh no, that's terrible 
Kirtana: That's terrible, it was great but she had some really fantastic musicians come 
play and she herself is a violist and, you know, she really supported the scene, uh, I 
mean and then there are a couple of other places and within Auroville there are 



 

 

86 
 

always, you know, there's always something of the other happening, in terms of 
Music and also interestingly enough, I'm also part of this, uh um, four-part, uh, vocal 
ensemble, uh 
Marcus: Oh 
Kirtana: that are doing, you know, jazz harmony 
Marcus: Wow 
Kirtana: Yeah it's really interesting 
Marcus: Oh wow!  
Kirtana: Yeah, haha 
Marcus: Tell me more about that - sounds exciting 
Kirtana: Uh, so there's this pianist lady by the name of Shakti, who's Ukranian, uh, 
cause in Auroville there are ***. And we're doing, we're doing some Latin standards, 
we're doing ***, *** and Triste, and there are four girls who are, you know, who's 
singing, jazz harmony and I, I've got alto, *** 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: So, yeah, its, its fun 
Marcus: Who writes the arrangements 
Kirtana: She does, the pianist 
Marcus: Wow, wow 
Kirtana: Yeah 
Marcus: Writing jazz arrangement is I think way harder than classical ever is 
Kirtana: Yeah, absolutely 
Marcus: I think jazz itself is definitely much harder than Western Classical 
Kirtana: Yeah I mean, because you have the whole improvisational bit to it and then 
if you are, yeah I don't know, if you're writing arrangements for, for four-part 
harmony, it's not easy cause you've the bass, you've got the drums you got the piano 
and then you got these like, you've got to fill up the chords, right, it's really like 
superb really difficult work.  Most challenging thing I mean, most challenged affair 
of the long term.  
Marcus: Aha, cause I have a lot of friends who are classical pianists, and if I just ask 
them, you know, I, like they are, they are, like we just talk about what we have to do 
for our, you know university work and I said you know I gotto, I gotto go transcribe 
this tune, by the way do you guys transcribe, and like they've never transcribed in 
their life,  
Kirtana: my gosh 
Marcus: And if they had to, they know how to do, they could not do 
Kirtana: Right, it's it's like their ear is really weak no, you need to give them sheet 
music all the time.  
Y: Yeah, and like, to play a tune in another key would be like, they would have to 
rewrite the entire thing 
Kirtana: Right 
Marcus: Or something like that 
Kirtana: And here it's like you're expected to know, you know, so many tunes in so 
many different keys and to be able do all of the changes, it's like, aw, love it 
Marcus: Especially when you work singers you know you're gonna get a different key 
Kirtana: Haha, Yeah, hahah, I think it's fair, I think it's fair 



 

 

87 
 

Marcus: I think, I think it's a necessary skill cause learning different keys does so 
much for your ear 
Kirtana: Exactly, absolutely 
Marcus: I mean, I've taken several, several tunes and practiced them in twelve keys 
including Girl For, Girl from Ipanema, I've practiced that in twelve, yeah 
Kirtana: Right, and that's the practice that is expected, I mean at least what is drilled 
all in you, whatever you learn, you learn it is twelve keys, you try attempt to learn it 
in all twelve keys, yeah 
Marcus: Yeah 
Kirtana:  I also feel like you don't improvise the same way in the same key, like, or 
different keys, you know you try different things each time so 
Marcus: Yeah, and you bring ideas from other keys into other keys 
Kirtana: Exactly love 
Marcus: I'm also curious to know about women in jazz in India, how, how is the 
scene 
Kirtana: While most of them are vocalists, there are, I mean, *** I wouldn’t wouldn't 
way many but there are quite a few who are attempting, um, I came across this bass 
player, uh, female, uh, her name is Hari Priya, she's getting into, you know, playing 
jazz bass 
Marcus: Ok, is she from Bangalore or something 
Kirtana: She's from Bangalore yes,  
Marcus: Cause I just saw her somewhere in some video or something, and I send her 
a friend request just two days ago and she accepted so 
Kirtana: Ok ,yeah 
Marcus: Yeah, yeah 
Kirtana: So she's pretty good 
Marcus: There's, there's Mohini, you know, Mohini Dey who gotten a lot of fame but 
then I, I, I think does more fusion, jazz fusion 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: And traditional jazz, but uh, I mean I feel like a lot of people who come out 
of SAM feel like they need to do jazz, even though it might not exactly be their 
calling 
Marcus: aha 
Kirtana: So I think, uh, some of them end up, you know,  spending couple of years 
kind of just maneuvering themselves through that before they decide maybe they 
should get to something else, and they use the skill for something else 
Marcus: Aha, 
Kirtana: But uh, well honestly I haven't seen too many, uh, uh, yeah, I haven't seen 
too many female musicians 
Marcus: Do you wish there was more, or is there a reason for that 
Kirtana: No, I don't really care 
Marcus: Ok, haha, ok, also, I mean I know know you like to have small ba.., uh small 
uh, playing with small bands, like duo or trio or whatever, do you do any work with 
horn players, saxophone trumpet players at all or 
Kirtana: I feel like there's a severe lacking of horn players in, in India 
Marcus: Ok 



 

 

88 
 

Kirtana: Uh, So I haven't uh, I mean have come across some saxophone players, 
trumpet hardly,  
Marcus: Ok 
K; Some saxophone I have come across but then, I, I feel like they're just about 
getting into, you know understanding, ho to, you know, how to play and what to play, 
and  
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: And really irritates me when I have to work with people who don't know, 
you know,  
Marcus: Haha, yeah 
Kirtana: Haha, I mean, you, you know, you know how it is, so yeah 
Marcus: Yeah, if there were more horn players around would you work with them, 
or... 
Kirtana: Of course, yes, absolutely 
Marcus: Yeah 
Kirtana: Oh Yes, yeah (completely) 
Marcus: Do you know someone called Steve Zerlin? 
Kirtana: Oh yes, yeah, he was my professor, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 
Marcus: Ok, he live like a couple of miles away from me 
Kirtana: Oh really ok, please go and say hello to him, haha 
Marcus: And I've texting him,     
K; Aha 
Marcus: And I'm supposed to interview him as well, just to learn his perspective as a 
teacher's perspective, instructor's perspective on, on jazz education in India, and he 
agreed to do it 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------ 
Marcus: Yeah, I'll say hi to him 
Kirtana: yeah, yeah, do tell him, yeah, tell him I say Hello, he's amazing 
Marcus: He is 
Kirtana: Oh he's a fantastic player, he's a good teacher, he rambles on a bit, but that's 
just because of  his age I think, haha 
Marcus: Oh, is he pretty old, I didn't meet him in person, yeah, like the text I sent 
that, everything text I sent he replied with something really funny like, can I interview 
you, and he was like at your own peril or something,  
Kirtana: yeah exactly, haha 
Marcus: That's him? ok 
Kirtana: That's him, haha 
Marcus:  ok, I see, what else did I want to ask you I completely forgot 
Marcus: Yeah, so, anything else you want to say, about yourself, about jazz, about 
learning jazz, teaching 
Kirtana: Uh, I don't know, I mean, no, not really, I think it's a very comprehensive 
interview and ***, it's some really great questions and it's been so nice talking about 
myself. So, haha, I don't don't get to do that a lot 
Marcus: Uh, of your students are, uh, um, do you teach them to scat, or what do you 
teach them 



 

 

89 
 

Kirtana: At the moment, nobody is ready is ready to, you know, take that on, um, I 
kind of just focus on some technique and how and you know, how to sing, I mean, 
helping them build a repertoire,  
Marcus: Aha, aha 
Kirtana: Uh, but when i was in Bangalore, I used to teach for a thermal school, at that 
time they were a couple of students, that, you know, who, who were very promising, 
and who wanted to get into *** 
Marcus: Was that Takademy,  
Kirtana: yeah, it was Takademy yes,  
Marcus: How was teaching there, was it a good experience, or  
Kirtana: Um, yeah, so by the time I left Takademy I had close to sixty students and it 
was killing me 
Marcus: Wow 
Kirtana: It was killing me because I had no time for myself at all, but uh, I made, I 
made, uh, I made money, uh, but I don't think I ever want to be in that kind of 
environment, teaching that way, like, ok that's not teaching, that's some kind of, I 
don't know what it is, It's impossible to be alert, you know, give yourself like that, my 
god, no  
Marcus: They called me at some point, way back 
Kirtana: Right, right 
Marcus: Might be 2015 or even earlier that than, maybe 2013 they called me then 
Kirtana: Right 
Marcus: But I didn't go, uh so 
Kirtana: Yeah that's good, no that's good, it's not fair, err, it's not a fair system 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: Cause, uh, you know, yeah, yeah, you get 25% and then they keep 75 but... 
Marcus: 25 percent? 
Kirtana: yeah 25% yeah 
Marcus: My goodness, wow 
Kirtana: Yeah, that's not good, yeah, you can, you keep  
Marcus: the highest percentage anyone kept in, I mean I taught in like three music 
schools and the highest anyone kept was fifty percent, so that, that's really unfair 
Kirtana: Yeah, it's really unfair, yeah, I mean you ki.. you  kind of understood by the 
end of it that they didn't really care what you were teaching, they didn't, they didn't 
care what the content was 
Marcus: Ok  
Kirtana: I could have taught them anything, you know, I could've taught them shit 
and it would have been ok, but huh 
Marcus: ok, ok, does anyone, teach jazz there, Takademy, or is it all like 
Kirtana: No, 
Marcus: Rock, ok, ok 
Kirtana: I tried to get my students interested in jazz but they were, you know, also 
not, again, the kind of students that I get were mostly people who were interested in 
singing pop songs *** they just just wanted to do it because they taught it was cool 
thing to do, but amongst all of that, like, amongst all of the students, they were 
maybe, two or three, three girls, who I had to initiate, so speak, into the genre, and by 



 

 

90 
 

the end of my time with them they were getting into, you wanting to understand how 
to scat, or getting into listening some old school jazz, so I think I did my job well, 
haha 
Marcus: Did you start scatting af..., only after going to SAM or,  
Kirtana: yeah, yeah, I started scatting *** after going to SAM 
Marcus: What was that process like? You starting to scat 
Kirtana: Oh uh, I will never forget it, um, haha, um, it was during one of our, one of 
the classes and I had my vo... My voice teacher Magos and she was teaching us minor 
blues  
Marcus: ok 
Kirtana: We were doing John Coltrane's Equinox actually, we were doing that tune 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: and, and she was sitting at the piano and she said ok, so now if I had to 
improvise over this this is how I would go about it, and it was the first time that I was 
hearing it happening in front of me live, I think I just, I, I fell in love with it 
immediately, because it sounded so, I mean maybe it was the note choice of what she 
was using, or the chords, or I don't know what it was it just like, drew me in and from 
then from then I want to know, ok, I need to know how the hell to do that, haha 
Marcus: Oh really,  
Kirtana: Yeah, haha 
Marcus: Is that the first you ever heard scatting  
Kirtana: Non, no, I had course, I'd, I'd heard it before, I'd heard, I'd heard Ella and 
*** you know, whatever *** records, *** in like whoever, you know, *** 
Marcus: I mean in real life 
Kirtana: Yeah but 
Marcus: ok, ok 
Kirtana: uh, it's such, I mean again, in real life I had heard it before yes, *** I have 
been familiar with the concept itself, I mean scatting, but then I thin k at that moment 
when she did it, and maybe, I don't know, from when she did it I just wanted to know 
how to go ahead and do it.  
Marcus: Was it difficult to get to scat to  
Kirtana: yeah, yeah, because, um, uh, yeah it was very difficult 
Marcus: Was it hard to go along with the changes, or did it 
Kirtana: Uh, it wasn't so much the changes, uh, that bothered me as much as you 
know, I mean it's the same as with improvising on any instrument like the rules are 
that, you know, you got..., you gotta breathe, you gotto take space, you have to have 
ideas that make sense, you know, like start slowly, build up, all of those things the 
how to make uh, a solid uh solo, because of your solo right,  
Marcus: Yeah 
Kirtana: So how, how to have in terms of dynamics, in terms of rhythm, all of those 
things, to really understand it, to get into it, that took a while, cause initially you just, 
you know, you went with it and you, you saw... you hoped it would take you 
somewhere, but uh, that's not, it's not appealing 
Marcus: Ok 
Kirtana: I think today, I would, I would be able to do a good job of it, but I when I 
was just started off, obviously not 



 

 

91 
 

Marcus: I see, wow, great, yeah, wow, ok great, uh, appreciate you, uh, being willing 
to be interviewed,  
Kirtana: Thank you so much, it's been so much fun 
Marcus: Ok, I look forward to writing 
Kirtana: I look forward to your results, haha 
Marcus: Ok, sure  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------ 
Kirtana: Thank you so much, it's been an absolute pleasure 
Marcus: Thank you, same here  
Kirtana: And I wish you all the best, I wish you all the best 
Marcus: Thank you wish you all the best too, I have a lot of work ahead of me right 
now 
Kirtana: Haha 
Marcus: I gotto be done by December if I wanna graduate, but, yeah 
Kirtana: Well, I'm sure you'll get to it 
Marcus: Ok sure, ok yeah, ok, thanks so much and 
Kirtana: No problem 
Marcus: *** it's pretty late out there too right 
Kirtana: Yeah, it's 11:20 
Marcus: Ok, yeah, ok, thanks for staying up *** 
Kirtana: No problem, no problem 
Marcus: Yeah 
Kirtana: good night then,  
Marcus: Alright, thanks yeah, alright, have a good night, alright, bye, bye bye 
Kirtana: Bye, bye 

  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

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