Anyone
who lives in Dhaka can tell you how hectic it is. How the restless
energy of spirited people living in close proximity threatens to
overwhelm all sense of structure. And how success is a matter of
grooving to the city's rhythm while also knowing when to march to your
own beat. So it's perhaps no surprise that Dhaka has developed a small
but exciting jazz scene.
After all, New Orleans, the birthplace
of jazz, was another restive collage of peoples, traditions and
influences. This is reflected in the genre's extensive borrowing from
blues and ragtime, which in turn drew from church spirituals and West
African musical traditions. As it developed over the past century, jazz
also appropriated and incorporated newer genres, including funk and
rock.
I personally turned to jazz in my early twenties while
feeling disconnected from more popular genres of music. As a musician I
only dabbled at playing standards, songs that are widely known and
performed by jazz musicians, but slowly developed an ear that
appreciated the aesthetics of the form. From witnessing live acts I
learned that the same standards could be played by the same musicians
hundreds of times, but sound different on each occasion.
I came
across Dhaka's own strain of jazz when I attended a performance by the
Imran Ahmed Trio at a café in Gulshan. An air of enthusiasm and
curiosity pervaded the audience and was met with a cheerfully exalted
performance by the band. Their sound was an interesting concoction,
producing the laidback atmosphere of modern ambient jazz, but cut
through with the clean and faintly overdriven tone of Imran's guitar.
The trio calls their music 'Jazz Fusion from Bangladesh' and they've
been able to take this developing style to gigs abroad in Malaysia,
Germany and Poland.
Many local musicians in Dhaka play heavy
metal, which has a large following among young people and those who grew
up in the late '80s and '90s. Though metal is challenging on a
technical level, those who pursue jazz are looking for something a bit
different. "If anything, I would say it's the curiosity regarding our
instruments and the determination to improve and grow as musicians that
led us to jazz," says the bass player of the Imran Ahmed Trio.
The
bringing together of different instruments and the interactions between
them is one of the defining features of jazz. Through improvisation and
ingenuity, musicians breathe new life to old standards each night.
Robert Russell, who leads his own jazz trio, compares his band's
performances to a chat. This improvisation is the key to jazz and
separates the genre from most other forms of western music. It is the
result of a combination of fleeting artistry and technical mastery, and
leads to a back and forth, give and take dynamic between band members
sharing the stage and telling their own stories through their music.
Another
important aspect of jazz is hybridization. Pioneers of the genre showed
remarkable skill in fusing opposing ideas and achieving balance and
coordination, thereby allowing the genre to grow. "Our approach to
playing our instruments is more jazz than the music we play." says the
drummer of Lettuce Experiment. Lettuce Experiment maintains a jam band
ethos. A group of dedicated musicians with an experimental mindset, they
improvise extensively and boast a wide range of influences, from hip
hop to electronica.
This freedom makes jazz an expansive art form
that can accommodate a variety of styles and ideas. Jazz from a hundred
years ago is vastly different from that which is popular now. It has
altered and transformed, branching out into many different sub genres
and changing with the times. It is now wide enough to incorporate the
dynamism of Big Band, the impressionism of Cool Jazz and the futurism of
Acid Jazz.
The Seesaw Quartet's music has a playful vitality.
Their songs are carefully structured, with a riff introduced by one
instrument eventually taken up and expanded by another in turn. It has
the easy familiarity and teasing spirit of the banter among a group of
long-time friends. Though each band has a unique sound, all of them
share a passion for musicianship. This, along with commonalities in
taste, ambition and talent bring them together. And it is this comradery
that has materialized into Dhaka's small jazz scene.
"Dhaka's
jazz scene is still in its infancy. But we have a feeling that there is a
growing interest among both the listeners and the musicians towards
this kind of music," says saxophonist Raihan. I have not heard Lettuce
Experiment or The Seesaw Quartet perform live, but I have familiarized
myself with their music and I know that they will not disappoint.
Living
in a vibrant metropolis like Dhaka, gives people the chance to see
small peculiarities like this flower and come into their own. The
melting pot of the city is much like the alchemy of jazz, which mixes
tradition and originality, and sees different musicians and instruments
coming together. I am excited to see these bands release more of their
intriguing music, and to hear other takes on this up-and-coming variety
of jazz.
The writer is an aspiring music critic and a jazz aficionado