Veteran jazz singer Louiz Banks traces the journey to becoming ‘The Jingle King of India’ -Art-and-culture News, Firstpost

In the 1930s, Pushkar Bahadur Budaprithi, armed with his trumpet, headed for the lowlands of Calcutta from Nepal. Calcutta was where the western music scene was seething with glamour, talent and money. There, on the advice of his friends, he adopted the more suave name of George Banks—two large monosyllables. Over the years, with his wife Saraswati, he would father 3 boys, 2 girls – the boys would be called Louiz, Peter and Stephen and the girls, Ganga and Jamuna.

The eldest, Louiz, named after trumpet king Louis Armstrong, learned jazz the way one absorbs the language growing up. When they moved to the winding hills of Darjeeling, he sometimes played with his father’s band at the prim Gymkhana Club, while the shuttlecock and wooden soles on the dance floor warmed up between the cha-cha-cha , foxtrot, waltz, mambo, samba, rumba and tango. He was introduced not only to a specific type of musical performance, but also to a culture in which that performance was embedded. This culture would soon fall into disuse. Louiz, however, swam with the times.

In 2021, when Louiz turns 80, the decades he spent between Darjeeling, Calcutta and Bombay, between fermenting jazz bands, the dollar-fueled world of advertising jingles (‘Humara Bajaj‘, Cadbury, Liril), and thick possibilities of Hindi cinema would be archived in his fan-boy biography, Louis Banks: A Symphony of Love written by Ashis Ghatak.

In the journalistic penchant for grand baptisms, he was called “The Godfather of Indian Jazz”, not only for bringing jazz into the cultural consciousness, but also for marrying it with other art forms – the fusion groups with Carnatic singer Ramamani and later, Shankar Mahadevan; play with Zakir Hussain, Ravi Shankar, Niladri Kumar. It was this fusion that his son, drummer Gino Banks, absorbed from the air, growing up in the 1980s.

For International Jazz Day (April 30), Louiz Banks has been hosting an event at the National Center For Performing Arts (NCPA) for a decade. This year, bands and musicians performed from all over India – the youngest was 17, the oldest, Louiz himself, was over 80. Louiz’s journey over the decades.

Tell me about Oscar Peterson. In your interview with Nasreen Munni Kabeer you talked about listening to it and that’s the moment that made you seriously consider jazz.

Louis: I was already pursuing jazz in my own way, but not very seriously. My dad was a bandleader, and he gave me the chance to play with the band when I was only thirteen, about his age (he laughs, pointing to a young relative strolling backstage, who wrinkle your nose.)

I liked jazz but I wasn’t crazy about it. Then one day my father brought a record by this pianist. When he played it, I was totally blown away. In fact, I asked him: “Who are the two pianists?” He said there was only one guy. Imagine the virtuosity and artistry! This moment was the turning point. I wanted to play like him.

Is that why you switched from trumpet to piano?

Louis: Yes. My father was a trumpeter and he taught me the trumpet. I played both trumpet and piano in the band, and my dad used to swap roles with me sometimes. I didn’t pursue the trumpet because I couldn’t think of the trumpet.

What do you mean?

Louis: When you play, you relate to what you play on the instrument. But to improvise on the trumpet, I thought of the piano. I went from piano to trumpet. I couldn’t think of the trumpet, so I left it.

Gino, did you have an “Oscar Peterson moment”?

Gins: You see, when I was growing up, dad used to play fusion. When dad was growing up, jazz was the popular music of the day. It was dance music. When you grow up in the music of the time, you don’t need to learn it because it’s everywhere. It is a natural influence. Jazz, I had to learn.

The improvisatory nature of jazz is that every time you play the same song, it’s a different experience. But as a jazz player, I guess you have to gain the confidence to then be able to improvise within a structure. When did you have this confidence?

Louis:

Gins: You play a wrong note, and the note you play next makes it right.

Louis: Dissonance is allowed in jazz. You want to confront C and C# – it’s allowed. This is how you play it and connect it to the chords. All of which I found exciting. Because in pop music, I was playing the same thing over and over the same way. People don’t like you playing it differently. When I formed my band in Calcutta at the Blue Fox Restaurant in the early 70s, I only wanted jazz musicians. There, because it was a club and people wanted to dance. So I had to play pop music. But I played it in my own way, I breathed jazz into it by changing the harmonic structure.

Pop music is simple – simple chords played in a direct manner. Jazz is more complex. But people didn’t realize I was doing that, because for them, they just wanted to hear the pop song. Most of the jazz we played was straight jazz – swing era jazz, not very complex. I couldn’t incorporate that complexity into what we were playing because of the club environment. It only happened when I heard Ramamani, this Carnatic singer from the South. She gave a concert in Bombay with the Karnataka College of Percussion which supported her. I was totally blown away by the improvisation.

Gino Banks

What are the continuities between something as modern as jazz and something like early and classical Indian music? Both have improvisation at their heart.

Louis: But that’s improvisation within a scale in Indian classical music. So if you use a Yaman scale, you stay with that throughout the composition. Jazz is full of different progressions, you can go where you want. But both have a freedom of improvisation. I approached Ramamani and told him that I wanted to combine our music. She was very open-minded and enthusiastic. We got together, I wrote a few tunes, pitched them to her, noting where I wanted her to come in and where the breakthroughs to jazz would happen. It worked so well that we had a European tour. In Europe, they were blown away by us, seeing artists mixing music like that. We were playing hardcore jazz and people who saw this lady in Kanjeevaram sari and big bindi singing in front of the stage didn’t know what they were seeing. We had sold out concerts. This was my foray into fusion, forming Sangam. After that, I formed Silk with Shankar Mahadevan. The caliber of music we were producing with various artists at that time was just awesome.

Can you describe to me how RD Burman discovered you?

He discovered me in Calcutta when I was playing at Blue Fox. Someone came in – I didn’t know who it was then. When I finished, there was applause and a waiter came and said, “This sahib wants to talk to you? I asked the waiter who it was, and he told me it was RD Burman, that famous musical director from Bombay. The name was also not recorded, I was in my own world and knew nothing about the Bombay film world.

RD Burman told me that he happens to be working on a film where the hero plays the piano – Mukti (1977) — and he suddenly had the idea that I should play all the piano pieces. So I moved to Bombay and spent a week recording. He gave me the freedom to play alone after giving me a feel for the vibe. I loved his way of thinking – very open minded. I became a member of his inner circle. Eventually, his music was in decline. Other composers like Bappi Lahiri came and I played for them.

Film music cooled down a bit, until one fine day someone from the world of advertising came to ask me if I could compose a jazzy title for an advertisement. It was something new for me because you have to compose a song for 20-30 seconds but it has to sound complete. I learned the game along the way. I had other gigs and soon I was inundated with offers. I became “The Jingle King”, doing jingles every day, also earning a lot of money. (Laughs)

With RD Burman and his band. Photo credit: Gino Banks/Facebook

Gins: From a session musician to composing jingles, then background scores – this was the transition for Dad. He became a composer on the side of a musician. But there was no computer to compose, so everyone was on top form. No PR, no marketing.

Louis: I made over 10,000 jingles!

Gins: He was doing 2-3 jingles a day. There were days when I didn’t see him. He left at 8 am and arrived at 1-2 am.

Louis: Lesle Lewis was my assistant at the time. He was working on something in another studio while I was finishing another jingle.

Gins: He is the jingle musician tree. Karl Peter was the bassist and Ranjit Barot was the drum programmer. When Lesle left, Ehsaan Noorani joined him. There is another generation playing with him now.

Louis: That’s why they call me the godfather! (Laughs)

What about your relationship to film music? At least as far as jazz is concerned, Bombay Velvet is a cultural touchstone…

Gins: I played on this album. They recorded the whole album in Prague, then (composer) Amit Trivedi called me and thought the jazz drumming was too European. They needed more punch for the Indian audience so I replayed 7 songs.

What do you mean by punch?

Gins: You see, it was authentic in style but it was too artistic and esoteric. Let’s just say that European cuisine is much more bland than Indian cuisine. (Laughs)

Prathyush Parasuraman is a critic and journalist, who writes a weekly culture, literature and film newsletter at prathyush.substack.com.

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