Jazzy Cabarets

INTRODUCTION
Feb 19, 1966, at the long-shuttered Bhulabhai Desai Auditorium, near the head office of the Life Insurance Corporation of India in Nariman Point, ended a phase of Indian history that could only be revived at Blue Frog on March 7, 2009, the day when four old school boys decided to ‘take up arms’ again. The four boys were Mike Kirby, Malcolm Mazumdar, Suresh Bhojwani and Napoleon Braganza with their ‘arms’ - a lead guitar, a rhythm guitar, vocals , and a set of drums respectively. They are the Jets- the pioneers of rock & roll in India. Formed in 1964, The Jets are widely regarded as Bombay’s first beat group. . The band was best known for their covers of hits by groups such as The Shadows, The Ventures and the Beatles. The Jets

The jazzy cabarets appealed to a selective type of audience and groups started to get formed in order to replicate that sound to capture the market. But what followed was truly remarkable. Local talent – Hindi film song composers and arrangers, C, Ramachandran, Shankar-Jaikishan, O.P. Nayyar and Naushad Ali created a fusion of the Indian music and Latin American music and produced what I would call as ‘truly globalized songs’.
It all started with live venue Cabarets in Mumbai becoming a trend and boasting Carioca dancing for months after the initial screening of ‘Flying down to Rio’, led by local Jazz orchestras and travelling troupes from cruise ships. The Alpha school of dancing in Mumbai further boosted the trend by teaching the dance to the people. The ballroom of the Taj Mahal Palace became the home of Joseph Ghisleri’s Symphonians, who regularly performed the Carioca at the place. “The Carioca tune from “Flying down to Rio” is extremely intriguing. It has a rhythm peculiarly it’s (sic) own. One trace of the little of the tango, a little of the rumba and more than a spice of the Brazilian maxixe. The mixture makes it fascinating, so much so that Jos(eph) Ghisleri has already included it in the repertoire of the Symphonians.” (Gregory D. Booth,

Rock & roll music thus was born in America, the music that would take over the world for the next 2 and a half decades. The rock & roll music quickly became a global phenomenon and came to be known as many names in various countries. In UK and India the media called it the ‘beat music’, referring to the guitar bands as the ‘beat groups’. The Indian rock n roll scene was mostly dominated by the beat groups and flourished in different places such as Bangalore, Mumbai, Shimla,