Jazz music in India originated in the 1920s inMumbai (formerly known as Bombay) and inKolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), where African-American jazz musicians performed.^[1] They inspired Goan musicians who then absorbed aspects of jazz into the sounds of India’sHindi film music industry. There has been much interaction between Indian music and jazz music. An active jazz scene exists today in cities likeMumbai (formerly known as Bombay),Pune,Delhi,Goa, and Kolkata.

In India,jazz was probably first performed regularly in the metropolesCalcutta andBombay in the early or middle 1920s.^[2][3] The era from the 1930s to the 1950s is often called as the golden age of jazz in India. It began with jazz musicians likeLeon Abbey, Crickett Smith, Creighton Thompson, Ken Mac, Roy Butler,Teddy Weatherford (who recorded withLouis Armstrong), and Rudy Jackson who toured India to avoid the racial discrimination they faced in the United States.^[4] In the winter of 1935, Leon Abbey, a violinist fromMinnesota brought the first 8-piece band to Bombay.^[5]

In the 1930s, India’s freedom struggle against the British had reached a crucial stage. Bombay was a rising metropolis. There was also a great sense of political freedom, which was being transmitted into the arts. The ballrooms of five-star hotels and in the nightclubs of major Indian cities were jazz centres. As nationalism swept the country, these venues became the refuge of the European and Indian elite, the aristocrats, the moneyed and the public servants. During this period, musicians such asChic Chocolate,Frank Fernand,Micky Correa,^[6] Rudy Cotton, Hal and Henry Green, Josic Menzie, Pamela McCarthy, andChris Perry were at the forefront of the burgeoning jazz scene inBombay, the nerve center of which was at theTaj Mahal hotel ballroom, which became the node of essential transmission of cultural messages between East and West. These musicians often played at five-star hotels, but they were regulars at the second level, at the Ambassador Starlight Roof Gardens, the Bristol Grill, the Dadar Catholic Institute, the Greens Hotel, the Ritz Roof Garden, the West End Hotel Roof Garden and the YMCA. Many of these musicians wereGoans, because Goans learnt western music underPortuguese rule. Most of the Goan jazz musicians alsoworked in the Bollywood film industry and were responsible for the introduction of genres like jazz and swing to Hindi film music. Although jazz in India began as an entertainment for the elite, it made its way to the working class and into Hindi films. Frank Fernand andAnthony Gonsalves not only infused the sound of western music into Bollywood, but were also filled with India's new-found nationalism and developed an authentic foundation to link the world of jazz with that of Indian classical music.^[7] The jazz fraternity was also a melting pot of people of different communities because there were Goans,Anglo-Indians and people from other communities like Rudy Cotton who was aParsi.

Jazz andIndian classical music share some similarities, one of them being that they both involve improvisation. Musicians realised this and collaborations between Indian classical musicians andWestern jazz musicians which had commenced in the 1940s led to the development of a new genre of music calledIndo jazz consisting of jazz, classical and Indian influences.Ravi Shankar,John Coltrane,John Mayer andJohn McLaughlin were some of the pioneers of the fusion of jazz and Indian music.^[8][9] Conversely, Indian classical music has also had a significant impact on a subgenre of jazz music known asfree jazz.^[10][11]

• BBC audio slideshow about the jazz age inBombay and Chic Chocolate

• Bradley Shope.American Popular Music in Britain's Raj. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016ISBN 9781580465489.

• Music of India
• Indian styles of music
• Indian jazz

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