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Coming together of genres

Louis Banks is known for jazz and jingles. But these days, he swears by fusion music

KEEN ON COLLABORATION Louis Banks PHOTO: S. THANTHONI

Louis Banks is one of India's well-known jazz pianists as well as a prolific composer of sound tracks for theatre and films. He is also known for his jingles — 7,000 of them to date — corporate anthems, audio-visuals and documentaries. While he continues to do different kinds of music, he is still in touch with the genre he started off with — jazz — albeit in the cover of fusion.

Exciting opportunity

"I am completely into fusion now. And when I do jazz it is under the umbrella of fusion," says Banks, who performed for the first time with the German band, Big Band, and choreographer Terence Lewis, recently to celebrate 50 years of Siemens in India.

Banks was particularly happy that he was performing with Big Band whose music has influenced and impacted on a variety of world music styles from the 1930s. The band comprises 13 of the foremost musicians of Germany.

"This was an opportunity for me to work with jazz musicians from Germany and a big jazz band. I haven't also worked with big bands too much. I have always been working with smaller ones because we simply don't have big jazz bands in India. It was also the first time that I presented my fusion compositions to the Big Band. An exciting, creative opportunity."

He would like to do more such collaborations, though he is conscious of the fact that jazz isn't a big thing in India.

"You can't find 15 horn players to make up a band in a country of a billion people. It's really sad. Yeah, they may be there somewhere, like in the film industry, but to come together to play jazz is next to impossible. It is collaborations like these that we need to encourage."

He warms to the theme: "Jazz is niche music for a niche audience. It certainly isn't popular music. It's like classical music. You enjoy it but if you understand it, you enjoy it better." He is concerned that today's youth don't listen too much to jazz and if they do, it is recordings, not live. Out of an understanding that jazz doesn't get mainstream on its own, he has gone the fusion way. "Fusion is what makes jazz acceptable. Whatever jazz I do, I do it under the umbrella of fusion." He is well aware of the criticism of fusion. "There will always be people who will say that he is not doing pure jazz or pure classical music if there is an element of fusion in it. It is difficult to please everybody."

He thinks fusion is the most frequently bandied-about word and concept — where anything goes. He gives you a well-known line on it. "There is a thin line between fusion and confusion... But my argument against criticism on fusion would be to use the best musicians in the business, musicians who don't play nonsense. Then you are on safe ground. Then there is validity to what you do. People will ask why are serious musicians doing this? There must be reason for them to do it, right? It is only then that there might be acceptance."

He has another argument to get around the fusion criticism. "Music in its traditional form has reached its level. The boundary has already been set at the highest level. How can you play better than Zakir Hussain? So you have to find other ways to take your music forward, other directions, to another level. Fusion affords that."

PRASHANTH G.N.

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