Jazz in Nepal: A fan’s history
Jazz comes to historic Basantapur, Jazzmandu 2006.
Credit: Jazzmandu
By Roman Gautam
In early August 2012, as part of Kathmandu’s chaotic road-widening drive, bulldozers rolled worked their way down the main street through the neighbourhood of Lazimpat, ripping down walls as they went. Among the buildings they destroyed was a nondescript two-storey house which they effectively cut in half, sparing only what was behind the stipulated line of the expanded road.
For Kathmandu’s small clutch of jazz fans it was a sad sight. The building’s second floor and rooftop, accessible via a narrow staircase at the back of the house, had for many years housed Jazz Upstairs, Kathmandu’s iconic little jazz club where, as a foreign friend of mine once marvelled, you could ‘listen to jazz with your shoes off.’ It had been many years since the signboard announcing the establishment to passersby had been taken down, but Upstairs didn’t need it. The place often filled up for the regular Wednesday and Saturday night gigs even without any overt publicity. It was disarmingly casual – cement floors, low wooden benches, cushions on the floor, a cheerful barman, a broken beer bottle covering the lightbulb hanging right over the small stage. But the best part was the music. Scores of Kathmandu musicians had shared the stage over the years, cycling through the jazz standards made famous by the iconic musicians whose posters looked down from the walls. Foreign musicians travelling through Kathmandu were welcome to play – Sting joined in unannounced one night many years ago, as did many other able amateurs and professionals. On rare occasions, like during the Kathmandu Jazz Festival – ‘Jazzmandu’ – in 2011, the place was so packed that fans tried to climb in through the windows.
The story of jazz in Kathmandu cannot be told without the story of Jazz Upstairs, and the story of Jazz Upstairs cannot be told without the story Cadenza. Founded in 1998, Cadenza began experimenting with jazz and playing regular gigs around Kathmandu valley. At the time, Kathmandu’s live-music scene consisted of a handful of rock groups, most of them playing covers at bars in Thamel, the city’s popular tourist area. Cadenza broke the mould and won some enthusiastic and curious fans, but was not very popular. It was hard to make it as a professional musician at the time, recalls Navin Chettri, one of Cadenza’s founders, and the band members mostly earned their livings as music teachers, not performers.
When Jazz Upstairs began business in 1999, it was a shot in the dark. Upstairs became the only jazz club in a city with only one jazz band. A partnership between the two seemed natural. Cadenza began playing at Upstairs every Saturday night, and broke new ground again by becoming the first band to charge cover in Kathmandu. The takings were small, but it was a vital step to the professionalization of music performance in Nepal. Within a year, with Chettri leading the music and Cheddup Bomzan ably managing the business, Upstairs had established itself.
Cadenza’s first break came in 2000 when the band was invited to play at the Palmer Street Jazz Festival in Townsville, Australia. Though the trip was short, it was hugely influential for the young band. Cadenza had tasted the camaraderie and excitement of the jazz scene beyond Nepal’s borders, and they came back inspired to try and bring international jazz to Kathmandu. Navin Chettri became the driving force behind the idea, and set about putting the pieces in place.
The following year, Cadenza and Friends played the first ‘Jazz at Patan’ event, combining jazz and Nepali classical music in the courtyard of Patan’s historical palace. The show was a big success, and Chettri walked away even more convinced that Kathmandu could and should have its own jazz festival. The show at Patan was also released in 2002 as Cadenza’s first record, titled Jazz at Patan, and was quickly followed that same year by Don’t Mind if We Do Again!, a record combining jazz and funk styles.
In 2002, Chettri and Bomzan organised Kathmandu’s first international jazz festival, which soon became popularly known as ‘Jazzmandu’. In addition to local musicians, the festival’s first edition brought to Kathmandu the renowned Australian jazz and swing musician Don Burrows, UK singer Natalie Williams, and Australian Jazz/Funk outfit Afro Dizzi Act, whose love for the festival has brought them back to Jazzmandu several times in subsequent years.
Kathmandu loved the festival, and many asked the organisers to make the festival a regular annual event. Jazzmandu built admirably on that starting momentum. In 2003, the festival was headlined by legendary Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu, earning Jazzmandu greater international exposure and recognition. In the decade since, Jazzmandu has continued to grow, with more shows, ever larger audiences, and a greater variety of artists and styles from all over the world, including such renowned jazz artists as drummer Ari Hoenig, who played at the festival in 2010. In 2012, Jazzmandu commemorated a decade of its existence with a week-long celebration of music.
Jazzmandu’s achievement is all the more impressive considering the difficult political times the festival has survived. The festival began in the aftermath of the 2001 Royal Palace Massacre, which set the country on the path to an escalating civil war that claimed, by some estimates, as many 17,000 lives. Perhaps born out of those difficult times, Jazzmandu’s creed states clearly that this is a festival of ‘music for peace and compassion’. Despite the state of emergency that followed, despite the country sometimes being cut off from the rest of the world, and despite Nepal’s continuing political crisis, Jazzmandu has kept going, missing only a single year in 2007. The end of monarchy in 2008 was expected to bring stability and an end to political crises, but today Nepal continues its struggle for peace and democracy; and, though in a small way, so does Jazzmandu.
As the many international artists who have played at Jazzmandu will testify, internationalism is another crucial value at the festival, which emphasizes interaction and collaboration across borders. The ‘Jazz at Patan’ event, which has been a fixture at Jazzmandu from the very start, is a great example of this, with local classical musicians and foreign and local jazz musicians playing together in a format that allows interaction between all the styles on offer in any given year. At this andother gigs, the results of this approach are full of pleasant surprises, and push the musical boundaries of both audiences and musicians. Jazzmandu often embraces music that purists might not consider ‘jazz’, but the spirit of jazz – collaborative, improvisational and innovative – is always on show on Jazzmandu’s stages, and on jazz stages in Kathmandu throughout the year. Perhaps the best proof of Jazzmandu’s success in bringing musicains together across borders is that even as the organisers try to bring new styles and musicians to Kathmandu every year, there is no shortage of past invitees who wish to return.
But even with all these dimensions to the festival, music remains ate the very heart of Jazzmandu’s mission. Just as in 2002 when it first began, the festival’s primary goal is still to promote jazz and music education in Nepal, with initiatives such as the Jazz for the Next Generation program, which invites young local musicians to perform for a panel of international judges, and puts the winning band on the big stage with visiting artists at the festival’s biggest event, the annual Jazz Bazaar. The best local musicians also receive an hour of private music instruction from the visiting musician of their choice.
Today, Jazzmandu has many new allies in its mission to promote jazz education and nurture the talents of young musicians. The Nepal Music Centre, founded in 2006, now offers formal training in both jazz and Nepali classical music to aspiring musicians who, in an earlier generation, would simply not have had such opportunities. The Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory (KJC), which opened only five years ago, is already considered one of the best music education institutions in South Asia, and is still expanding steadily. Both institutions deserve special praise for the scholarship programs they work hard to fund; the KJC, for instance, has supported over 45 aspiring young missions with scholarships, several of whom are now teachers at the conservatory. There is no shortage of musical talent in Nepal, only a shortage of resources.
The story of Abhisek Bhadra, a talented young Nepali pianist, goes to show how far jazz has come in its decade in Nepal, and just how important the influence of Kathmandu’s early jazz musicians has been. Bhadra impressed many established international musicians at Jazzmandu 2011, where he was selected the best young local musician at the Jazz for the Next Generation band competition. Asked how he got started playing jazz, Bhadra recalled a night many years ago when he heard Cadenza playing jazz fusion at a Jazzmandu event. Bhadra remembers that he “did not get the music” at the time, but he was hooked, and soon began his own exploration of jazz. Kathmandu’s music scene had come full circle, as a new crop of musicians learned from and built upon the efforts of those who came before them. As many other jazz musicians of his generation, Bhadra also taught younger enthusiasts in Kathmandu, before heading abroad in 2012 to pursue further formal musical training.
In little more than a decade, jazz has become a crucial part of Kathmandu’s music scene. Other forms of music have also made big strides since then, but Kathmandu’s jazz bands offer fans some of the most innovative and intelligent music in the city. Nepali audiences, both at Jazzmandu and at regular jazz gigs in Kathmandu, have also grown steadily larger and more appreciative over the years, and the NMC and KJC keep attracting more students. The question ‘What is jazz?’, which jazz fans in Kathmandu were asked quite often in the past, is now less frequent. The next big challenge is to take jazz beyond Kathmandu, and to offer opportunities in music to talented musicians across the country – a task that Kathmandu’s music educators already have plans for.
Meanwhile, Jazz Upstairs is being rebuilt in its original location. The good news is that while they wait, Kathmandu’s jazz musicians continue to play at a variety of venues that would not have hosted jazz even a few years ago.
~ Roman Gautam is the editor of this magazine.
हाम्रो Jazz 
great history … thanks pax