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Shantanu Datta

Journalist, author from Calcutta, India. I write on music, books, film, arts and ideas.

About Me

My Jazz Story

I love jazz because it touches my heart. I was first exposed to jazz as a student in college. I met [John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Jean Luc Ponty] when they came to India to perform at various points of time. The best show I ever attended was when I heard Dizzy Gillespie live in Calcutta in the 80s. The first jazz record I bought was John McLalughlin's Belo Horizonte My advice to new listeners: Keep listening, a new world opens up ever so often.

My House Concert Story

My earliest memory of “jazz” is the word itself, seeing it written with gold dust in elegant calligraphy, on specially crafted cloth-bound wooden music stands, the ones used by musicians to place their book of notations while playing. These were lying around on the south side of La Martiniere For Boys. They were there, grouped together on one side of the steps leading to the field. On one long weekend, our school grounds would be the venue for JazzYatra, an annual concert of musicians from India and abroad that used to be a fairly regular affair well into the early 80s in Calcutta before lack of sponsors forced it to fade out and come alive occasionally in Bombay or Pune or Delhi. What is this jazz? Oh, music. Then I must listen. For, the word has a cool ring to it. Can we come for the concerts? No. It’s music for grownups. That was school. While in college, AUC Jazz Club became our tutor. It was easy to get hooked. And then Dizzy Gillespie happened. Dalhousie Institute. Louiz Banks was on piano. Midway into the concert, strains of Azaan came floating in from the nearby mosque. Dizzy smiled. He listened for a while, picked up his signature bent trumpet and played along; joining, instinctively as it were, the call to prayer. We were blessed. That night they also played A Night in Tunisia. Dizzy’s horn was soaring, in technicolour; exploring the outer reaches of brilliance and beyond. It was magical, but real. Excerpted from my book 'Calling Elvis: Conversations with Some of Music's Greatest, A Personal History"