Charu Suri and Joe Lastie bring the ‘Spirit of New Orleans Jazz’ to India
- Art Featured Lifestyle
Zara Flavia Dmello- 10 minutes read
“I usually hate coming to these things alone,” I confide to Charu Suri next to the kiosk where she hands out signed posters of her album Rags & Ragas— “But somehow I’m having so much fun here!”. “That’s just the spirit of jazz!” she beams, “We come together as strangers, and leave as one big family.”
Her words, so earnestly spoken, were a fitting prelude to the evening’s grand finale when the audience sprung off their seats and danced around to the ever-infectious When the Saints Go Marchin’ In. Stripped of its stage lights and baroque grandeur, the Royal Opera House theatre in these final moments of the concert last Friday, really did compare uncannily to an annual family Christmas parties.
Infused with the same cozy, communal soul of such a gathering, I imagine if I’d photoshopped everyone—pianists, singers, jivers, and all— on to a background of my own living room on a chilly December evening, that they’d fit right in.
View this post on Instagram
Charu Suri herself had a warmth and tenderness with which she spoke to her audience. Though she was technically the star of the night, she happily shared her spotlight with her sister, Sharmi who brought in tow, the spice to Charu’s sugar. Accompanying them, straight from the heartland, was Joe Lastie, a sensational drummer and stalwart of the Preservation Hall scene in New Orleans.
In their exploration of the jazz form, both performers simultaneously chartered a journey through their own distinct personal histories. These histories have informed their encounters with jazz and how they choose to mould the genre’s conventions. As a result, Lastie and Suri represent strikingly contrasting relationships with jazz, each contributing their own imagination of what it can become.
When Suri announced that she would be playing Basin Street Blues, Lastie exclaimed, “Hey! That’s where I live!’. Having grown up in New Orleans, a city so synonymous with jazz that its very streets have inspired countless songs, Lastie’s connection to the music is almost autobiographical, as it would be with any New Orleanian.
Watching him clamour and holler with excitement during climactic moments in these songs intrinsically referential of a city he so clearly adores, it is hard to tell where the music ends and his real life begins. Lastie’s early immersion in the traditional style of jazz in a space that lives and breathes this music, imbues his playing with an intimacy, nostalgia and unbridled joy almost impossible to find in non native jazz artists.
In contrast, Charu Suri’s journey into jazz was one of invigorating discovery. As a classically trained pianist from India, she only recently stumbled upon jazz during a visit to Preservation Hall in New Orleans when she felt inexplicably drawn to explore the style. Unlike Lastie’s deeply ingrained cultural connection, Charu approaches jazz as a canvas for blending her classical Indian roots with new influences.
Her ‘raga jazz’ style intertwines the melodic and rhythmic traditions of Indian raags and taals, with the harmonic interlay of jazz. She has been recognised greatly for this by the global music industry and even made history as the first Indian jazz artist to perform four times at Carnegie Hall. Her use of a cross-cultural blend has allowed her to create pieces of multimedia artwork, mixing existing elements to create, as Suri put it, “its own different world”.
This is not to say that her music is not personal. How could it not be? As she rightly pointed out when asked about her composing process, “Bill Evans said, “jazz is a feeling” and for me that emotional connection is the core of any piece.” When she played Verona Waltz, a song dedicated to her late father which won her Best Jazz Song in North America last year, the entire theatre went silent. It was a fresh sound, none of us had ever heard before, and yet endearingly relaxed and self-composed.
Fusion here, wasn’t for fusion’s sake, but for the hope to arrive at the sound of her own feelings, in this case, perhaps grief. You could sense that it was purposeful—her use of neither genre felt gimmicky. Only if you research well and listen close can you hear the raga or jazz in her ‘raga jazz’. It is because of this, its innate subtlety, that her music cannot be for everybody.
Almost acknowledging this, Suri also did deliver classic sing-along-ables to keep her audience entertained and bopping along, a respectable endeavour in its own right. Her stirring ‘raga jazz’ pieces were sandwiched between these popular hits, namely Pops’.
When the piano sounded When You’re Smiling, an elderly gentleman in the row before me put his hand out to his wife in the seat next to him and the two of them twirled around by the side of the stage.
