Bradley Shope--They Treat Us White Folks Fine

Bradley Shope

‘THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE’

African American musicians and the popular

music terrain in late colonial India

Arriving in India in the mid-1930s seeking performance opportunities and an improvedquality of life, African American jazz musicians were active in expanding the presentationand consumption of jazz and Western popular music. Finding appeal in the power andsuccess that African American musicians commanded, Anglo-Indian and Goan musiciansalso performed jazz in cosmopolitan centres throughout India. In Bombay, Goan musiciansintegrated Western popular music into local live performances in cabarets, and eventuallyinto some early film songs. This article outlines the role of African American musicians inincreasing the terrain of Western popular music in India beginning in the 1930s, andconcludes by speculating on the artists’ influence on early Bombay cabaret songs and the‘hybrid’ music of the early film industry.

African American jazz pianist Teddy Weatherford, who lived in Calcutta and Bombayfor much of the period between 1936 and 1945, is said to have remarked with a finesense of irony that in India ‘They treat us white folks fine’.1 African Americansaxophonist Roy Butler, who was based in India from 1933 to 1944, wrote to hisfamily in the United States that living in India was ‘simply a millionaire’s vacation withpay and passage.’2 Though small in number, African American musicians in the 1930sand 1940s in India demonstrated that the performance of jazz and popular music couldoffer selective links to empowerment strategies and financial success. The authoritythat these musicians commanded was seen by some as symbolic of the potential andpossibilities in the performance of popular music. They represented what theybelieved to be the emancipatory capacity of Western music, and witnessed theirmusical repertoire and cutting-edge performativity become a model for local, Indianmusicians to emulate. This article examines the role African American jazz artistsplayed in developing and expanding the Western popular music terrain in India in the1930s and 1940s. I will give special attention to the work of saxophonist Roy Butlerand pianist Teddy Weatherford. The focus of the argument will be on the importanceof jazz as a musical genre that was deemed primitive and yet exotic, wherein theperformers were fetishised for ushering in modernity through modalities of popularculture.3

In the mid-1930s, African American musicians in India were regarded progressiveand avant-garde. By the early 1940s, their image became somewhat of a novelty,symbolic of the initial development of jazz, but marginalised as increasingly antiquated.Such a shift towards antiquarianism created an opportunity for Anglo-Indians and Goans

South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2007, pp. 97-116ISSN 1474-6689 print/ISSN online ! 2007 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14746680701619503

to pioneer new styles of jazz-influenced popular music in the domestic public sphere,especially Bombay cabaret music and early film songs of the 1940s.4 Initially, Westernpopular music in the 1930s was viewed as another, sometimes British, or NorthAmerican, even African American or Latin American and its concurrent acceptanceamong diverse consumers was a product of assigning these different links ofidentification. Later, after integration into cabarets and early Indian film songs,Western popular music functioned as a permissible other, as defined in domestic terms.To this end, I conclude by suggesting that some of the filmi ‘hybrid music,’ thenomenclature often used to describe the presence of Western music in early Indian filmsongs, was influenced by domestic popular music practices established in the 1930s inwhich African Americans were a pioneering force.5

Commodifying jazz in India

While performing with travelling orchestras in India, many American musicians saw apotentially profitable market for jazz and chose to remain and start local groups.Travelling groups such as ‘Joseph Ghisleri’s Symphonians’, ‘Leon Abbey’, and ‘HerbFlemming’s International Rhythm Aces’ brought a number of musicians to India. In1934, African American musicians Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, Rudy Jacksonand Crickett Smith left Joseph Ghisleri’s Symphonians in Bombay when bandleaderJoseph Ghislerie returned to Paris. They started Crickett’s Symphonians and quicklylearned that performing jazz afforded a lifestyle rarely possible among AfricanAmerican musicians in the United States and Europe. Pianist Teddy Weatherford laterjoined this group, which became ‘Teddy Weatherford and His Band’. These musiciansperformed in India over the next decade, achieving a high degree of financial stabilityand job security.

Why were black musicians such a pioneering force in the consumption ofWestern popular music in India? What was it in African American musicianship itselfthat was such a strong legitimizing influence? The answers lie partially in the mannerin which jazz was regarded on a global scale. In the 1920s and 1930s, jazz wasperceived by Western audiences as infused with an anthropomorphic power and wasfrequently represented in the popular media as a visceral experience, weaving its wayinto and overtaking the body. Scott Appelrouth, in ‘Body and Soul: Jazz in the1920s’,6 suggests that during this era jazz was regarded as an agent of transgression, ineffect pushing one beyond the body’s boundaries, especially while dancing. Byreviewing 319 articles about jazz in the national print media in 1930, Appelrouthconcluded that 93% claimed jazz could affect ‘the listener’s control of overtbehaviours’ as well as invoke ‘psychological alterations,’ ‘changes in emotional states,’and ‘psychological changes involving cognitive states’.7 Such perceptions led to linkingearly jazz (not coincidentally when performed by African Americans) to primitivistnotions, often laced with overtones of primordial savagery and its potential to incite aloss of control. Similarly, Paul Laubenstein’s article ‘Jazz—Debt and Credit’addressed the popular use of the phrase ‘jazz intoxication’,8 claiming that jazz wasoften viewed as a benign intoxicant, which was sometimes even regarded as ‘atremendous influence for good in the world, as it puts and leaves men more in tunewith the infinite than before the intoxication’.9 The paradox was that while jazz often

98 SOUTH ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

connoted a sense of modernity, critics also argued that it was an elixir that offered atemporary respite from the modern world, often in the form of ‘riot, incoordination[and] incoherence’.10 Thus, jazz was categorised as intuitive and appealingly unrefinedin much contemporary discourses, and it was romanticised and commodified, quiteconsciously, in marketing strategies.

In a simultaneous strain, jazz was also viewed as a symbol of modernitythroughout much of Asia, albeit emanating from the black body. Andrew Jones (2003)stresses that in inter-war China, jazz was ‘stylish emblem of China’s participation inthe culture of global modernity.’ For Yoo Sun-young (2001), the popularity of jazzamong young people and intellectuals in mid-1930s Korea was linked to an interest inAmerican modernism. The distinctive ‘patterns, appearances and rhythmic touches tothe body and senses’11 that jazz afforded helped Korea inscribe ‘American modernityon the colonial body of Korea’,12 and imagine the emancipatory possibilities ofmodernity under Japanese occupation. Notions of primitivism were juxtaposed withtheir opposite attributes of order and modernity in much of the discourse on jazz.These polar ideas also served as effective tools in its popularisation in India.

Shaping and controlling the image of African American musicians was central toperpetuating their popularity in India, and was often accomplished by referencingthese primitivist notions associated with black musicians. Black musicianship had acurious appeal and it was held in high regard; the reputation of these musicians inIndia was reinforced by their close connection to the American jazz scene. MrSebastian, an elderly Anglo-Indian jazz enthusiast currently living in Lucknow whohelped organize performances in Jamalpur in the 1940s, speaks fondly of the talent ofAmerican musicians. In one story about ‘coloured’ musicians in India, he verifies themusical virtuosity of black artists by claiming that orchestras composed mostly ofAfrican Americans used to commence performances using only their voices.13 At aperformance he organized at the Railway Institute in Jamalpur during World War II,he recalls that the musicians were not playing with ‘a single instrument, they weremimicking their instruments … the people [in the audience] were just dumbfounded .. . they didn’t want to get up … they were just looking at [them]…. The music wasjust unbearable, I couldn’t leave’.14 This virtuosity was unique to African Americans,and was perceived as a demonstration of their innate musicality. The audience, largelycomposed of Anglo-Indians, was spellbound. Some of the key rhetoric used todescribe jazz in the United States and Europe, including references to a cessation ofnormal bodily functions, is echoed in Sebastian’s story.15

Marketers also consciously promoted and enhanced stereotypical exotic AfricanAmerican cultural attributes. In the farewell night program booklet for musicianTeddy Weatherford at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay in the early 1940s, the band isdescribed as the ‘Folks woh is going try ter muse’ the audience.16 Mr Weatherford islisted as a ‘wizard’ and Roy Butler ‘moans’ on the saxophone and clarinet. DrummerLuis Perdroso ‘bangs’ on his drums, and trumpeter Crickett Smith, or ‘Sweet PapaDee Da,’ is the ‘man with posanality a Trumpeter bold, who wobbles as well.’17 Thebanging and moaning, as well as the awkward walking style of Mr Crickett Smith, areconsidered important to point-out in an otherwise formal program booklet.Photographs and descriptions of others performing at the Taj Mahal Hotel maintaina certain conservative and refined character. The only group photo of AfricanAmericans in this brochure shows them wearing overalls. Other entertainers are in

‘THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE’ 99

either fancy costume or formal dress. In this example, we see that there was adeliberate racialising of the music, and an appreciation of African Americans throughexotic cultural traits.

Such deliberate attempts to exoticise music via race resulted in significant socialand cultural power. In India, jazz appeared to create a new modernity that wasproduced technologically by African American musicians that exceeded simplisticpower relations with Imperial Britain, suggesting an ideology of exceptionalism thatreinforced the emancipatory potential of Western (or black) popular music. As in theUnited States, where the ideology of ‘black rhythmic music … was profoundly andintimately connected to the idea of modernity itself’,18 many in India were eager toassociate themselves with this sort of muscular modernity. Active in reconfiguring thepopular music terrain, Goans and Anglo-Indians, who claimed both Indian andEuropean ancestry, learned to perform jazz and market it towards a wider set ofconsumers, including the less affluent audiences. Jazz music served as an effectivemeans for these two ethnicised communities to empower themselves bycommodifying the value placed on its emancipatory potential as a tool of modernity.Often the victims of prejudice in India because of their bi-racial status, these musicianswere drawn to jazz as a way to restructure their marginality by appropriating controlover public-domain entertainment markets in cosmopolitan centres throughout India.According to Dinerstein, exciting changes in modern technology and mass productionin the music industry on a global scale were in a sense coded into American music byAfrican Americans.19 Seeing potential in the fast-paced development of ‘coded’musical traditions, and hearing the modern world in its performance, many Anglo-Indians and Goans in India found jazz appealing, and understood the potential toeffectively integrate the non-British and non-colonial West into local musicalproduction. By the mid-1930s, Anglo-Indians and Goans were performing jazz inclubs and cafes in many cities throughout India.20

Faye V. Harrison observes in a different context that ‘racial meanings andhierarchies are unstable, but this instability is constrained by poles of difference thathave remained relatively constant: white supremacy and the black subordination thatdemarcates the social bottom’.21 Though black, the special status given to AfricanAmericans was re-routed through the syntax of white privilege. Mr Weatherford, insaying ‘They treat us white folks fine,’ does not allude to black empowerment, butrather locates the black body (and its attendant status) on par with whites, whoremain tacitly at the top. The modernity that African Americans symbolized was notcolour-coded, but was linked to Western power, technology, and emancipation.Racial hierarchies thus become fluid, signifying both authority and resistance.Redefining difference in such a manoeuvre, African Americans were perhaps givenwhat Harrison refers to as an ‘honorary white’ status,22 noting that strict racialhierarchies can be bridgeable. Anglo-Indians and Goans, existing between otherracially homogenous communities, had a keen interest in these bridges.23

African American musicians in India: Roy Butler’s influence

A 1948 article in The Times of India titled ‘Thirty Years of Jazz in India: Our Bands CanSwing It With The Best’24 suggests that the roots of jazz in India were planted in the


years between 1917–1922 with ‘bands that consisted of piano, violin, cello, stringbass and drums and they played ragtime foxtrots and Viennes waltzes mostly’.25 Muchof the repertoire was classical and tempered with the exception of travellingorchestras that performed on occasion in large cities. In the year 1934, Roy Butler,Rudy Jackson, Creighton Thompson, Crickett Smith, Cuban Luis Pedroso and laterTeddy Weatherford converged in Bombay to perform at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Overthe next few years, these originary musicians were at the forefront of jazzperformance in India, which solidified the status of African American musicianship asbeing an important, legitimizing force. Beginning with these musicians, the notionthat jazz and Western popular music was and could be a part of the development ofmass entertainment and popular music in India became apparent.

Roy Butler was one principal figure among jazz musicians in India. He arrived inIndia on 27 December 1933 after spending the previous six months touring Europeand South America. In Calcutta, he began performing with ‘Herb Flemming’s RhythmAces,’ which included musicians Crickett Smith on trumpet, Herb Flemming ontrombone, Cle Saddler and Roy Butler on saxophone, Caeser Rios on piano, HaroldKumai on bass and Luis Pedroso on drums.26 A short time later Herb Flemming leftfor Shanghai, and Roy Butler moved to Mussoorie on June 13, 1934 to perform withthe ‘Trocadero Rhythm Aces’ (figure 1). He played regularly at the Trocadero until29 September 1934 when he left to perform at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Therehe played with ‘Joseph Ghislerie’s Symphonians’ and shortly thereafter ‘CrickettSmith’s Symphonians.’ For the next few years, big-name players established their own

FIGURE 1 The Trocadero Rhythm Aces. Mussoorie, 1934 by Unknown photographer. Roy Butler is

in the centre in the front row. Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy Butler

Collection, Music Information Center.


jazz bands in India. In 1936, Teddy Weatherford arrived from Singapore to launch‘Teddy Weatherford and His Band,’ in which Butler played saxophone. In 1941Butler started ‘Roy Butler’s Indian Orchestra,’ which was composed entirely ofAnglo-Indians and Goans (figure 2). He also at times played with ‘Luis Moreno andHis Orchestra’ and ‘Mario and His Band’ in Colombo, as well as other orchestras forshort periods.

Roy Butler and the ‘Trocadero Rhythm Aces’ in Mussoorie is particularlyinteresting to note (figure 1). In this photograph, the stage has an art deco sunburstradiating design as its main thematic element, which was symbolic of contemporarynotions of modernity. The use of the word ‘rhythm’ here was one of the firstinstances when such terms were used to describe modern jazz orchestras in small, hillresort cities such as Mussoorie. Though there are no recordings of this orchestra at thetime, it is possible to speculate that the instrumentation, the name, and the orchestraproxemics signalled that this group played standard jazz tunes, and was integrated intothe regular entertainment line-up of the Trocadero. Other photographs of thisorchestra illustrate a standard jazz drum kit, documenting the fact that the percussioninstruments consisted of the usual paraphernalia used by bands in the United States atthe time, including temple blocks, cymbals on stands, and cymbals mounted on alarge bass drum.

FIGURE 2 Roy Butler’s Indian Orchestra. Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay, 1942 by Ferenc Berko.

Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy Butler Collection, Music Information Center.

! Ferenc Berko.


Mussoorie, as a resort city, is an interesting locale to scrutinize to glimpse onefacet of the flowering of jazz performances in India because it boasted a mixture ofBritish, European, even a few American citizens, and wealthy Indian princes and theirfamilies, who were cosmopolitan enough to enjoy the summer series of live-bandentertainment. Beside the Roy Butler group, other performers listed in Trocaderoadvertisement flyers are vaudeville-style acts, circus routines, impersonators, andeven a Soubrette cabaret performer.27 Cabarets and performances were stagedeveryday during the summer of 1934, many of which were thematic events, oftenwith a dash of humorous exaggeration. One flyer, for example, dated 27 July lists a‘Pirate Carnival’ with ‘special scenery’ such as the ‘Good Ship Yacka Hicky Doola,’some dance competitions, and two cabarets, one that begins at 5:30 pm boasting‘Continental Dancers’ and another ‘Late Night Cabaret’ until 3:00 am. There was also‘exotic’ dancing, which was probably Indian classical or folk dance, or interpretationsthereof.28 The performances listed on this flyer were similar to Vaudeville shows andwere likely seen as traditional entertainment. The flyer boasts that the ‘Rhythm Aces’provided the ‘Modern Music.’29

Roy Butler, sitting front and centre playing the saxophone, a quintessential jazzinstrument, is described as the ‘Saxophone Devil,’ wherein the stereotypicalconnotations are underscored to suggest that listeners will be overtaken with hispowerful music. As noted above, the double-edged connotation functions to signalthat audiences are being treated to a new kind of jazz performance with no thematicelement and with strong allusions to modernity while simultaneously catering to atheatricalised, corporeal sensuality. The jazz musicians themselves, poised on amodern art deco stage performing new music fronted by an African Americansaxophonist, were proof of such entertainment. Darke and Gulliver (1977) maintainthat Roy Butler ‘travelled quite a bit to engagements in other cities. . . as well asplaying often in the incredibly affluent sporting clubs, known as Gymkhanas’.30 Butlertravelled extensively to various cities, but also did a brief stint with a variation of the‘Rhythm Aces’ in Lucknow. He described these years as his happiest, because ‘thework was relatively easy, the pay and conditions good, splendid treatment by bothmanagement and clientele, and a way of life that was unique to India under theBritish Raj’.31

He also performed with the ‘Deep South Boys,’ a popular quartet of AfricanAmerican vocalists who sang black spirituals (figure 3). This vocal group, variouslycalled ‘The Plantation Quartet’ and ‘The Taj Quartet,’ were quite popular and activeuntil the mid-1940s.32 Their very name, which changed over time and betweenvenues, invoked a stereotyped exotic Southern United States black lifestyle, whichturned out to be an opportune and important marketing strategy. Comprised ofCrickett Smith, Rudy Jackson, Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, and on occasion,Teddy Weatherford, they often dressed in work clothes on a stage decorated withscenery of cotton plantations of the Southern United States. They frequentlyperformed at thematic events or in cabarets with multiple and eclectic acts. On 28August 1936, for example, they performed at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay underthe name ‘Taj Quartet’ for the ‘Show Boat Dance.’33 The event included a CossackDance by cabaret duo Lanzoff and Svetlanova, and ended with a performance of jazzby ‘Crickett Smith’s Symphonians.’ Seen as a novelty group, the ‘Taj Quartet’became integrated into the cabarets that were popular at the time, especially in


Bombay. None of the programme booklets of their performances lists the songs theyperformed, except as ‘Negro Spirituals,’ which added to their anonymity anddistanced appeal. One can surmise that such a deliberate racialization worked in thequartet’s favour, which on the one hand had capitalised on the blending of Westernmusic into something that came out of the Southern Black United States, and on theother hand, lent itself to the emancipatory potential of jazz music itself. Furthermore,the fact that Creighton Thompson was active in performing and recording BlackSpirituals in New York City with the famous James Reese Europe in the late 1910sprovided a layer of authenticity to these diffuse pre-conceptions associated with blackbodies performing jazz.

Butler travelled back-and-forth between Bombay, Calcutta and Colombo. He leftIndia for short periods to travel to Singapore, Paris, and Holland, but he was basedmostly in Bombay and Calcutta. In the early 1940s, Roy Butler started his own bandin Bombay, which he called ‘Roy Butler’s Indian Orchestra’ (see figure 2), theyperformed frequently, but largely on their own at Green’s Hotel, where for six nightsa week they were the headlining group, but were not directly involved in the hotel’scabaret events. Interviewed in 1977, Mr Butler maintains that his work as anorchestra leader in India for these few months was not necessarily a positiveexperience.34 He claims that this was largely because he ‘had only Indian musicians towork with, all the Americans having departed, and the local musicians were not too

FIGURE 3 Deep South Boys. By Unknown photographer. From left to right: Crickett Smith, Teddy

Weatherford, Rudy Jackson, and Roy Butler. Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy

Butler Collection, Music Information Center.


familiar with jazz at the time’.35 Many African American musicians left India,primarily because work was more difficult to find, but also because the Americanconsulate was encouraging its citizens to leave India in light of the threat of Japanesebombing campaigns.36 This group lasted only a few months until 1942, when RoyButler again rejoined Teddy Weatherford in Calcutta. Butler was also invited toperform as a saxophonist with the All India Radio Studio Jazz Orchestra in 1943. Heleft India on October 14, 1944 to return to Chicago because ‘the war was in fullswing … and the Japs [sic] dropped a few bombs in the harbour around Calcutta and[he] decided it was [his] time to go home’.37

Teddy Weatherford

Between 1936 and 1945 Teddy Weatherford fronted most of the orchestras that werecomposed of African American musicians. Originally from Virginia, Weatherford movedto Chicago where he was ‘an immediate sensation’,38 performing with Jimmy Wade andlater with Erskine Tate of the ‘Vendome Theatre Orchestra.’ The famous Earl Hines wassaid to have been heavily influenced by Weatherford’s piano style, and at the time wasregarded as the ‘champ of the ivories’.39 As an integral part of the blossoming Chicagoscene of the mid-1920s, Weatherford was closely aligned with and active in developing anew Chicago jazz sound. He travelled to East Asia in the mid- to late-1920s, where hedeveloped a reputation as a talented ex-patriot jazz musician. He then settled in India in1936, and like Butler, moved between Calcutta, Bombay and Colombo, with sporadictrips to other Asian metropoles like Singapore, Shanghai, and Sourabaya. He performedwith the ‘Plantation Quartet’ on occasion, as well as in many of the same orchestras asButler. Records indicate that he also visited some European cities during this span.Weatherford often hired Goan and Anglo-Indian musicians to perform beginning in1941, and was keen on hiring female crooners, while holding on to his stable of AfricanAmericans such as Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, Crickett Smith, Rudy Jackson, aswell as Cuban Luis Pedroso. His interest in creating a mixed-race performance group wasboth aesthetic and personal, as he married an Anglo-Indian woman, Lorna Shortland,who sang vocals in his bands. Between late 1941 and 1945, he spent most of his time inCalcutta, and his orchestra included notable Anglo-Indian, Burmese and Goan musicians,including George Banks, Bill McDermott, Pat Blake, Cedric West, Reuben Soloman,Paul Gonsalves, Rudy Cotton, Tony Gonsalves, and (there is sketchy evidence) GeorgeLeonardi.

Marketing strategies often included allusions to minstrelsy in the advertisementsfor his performances.40 For example, the 1938–1939 season booklets from the TajMahal Hotel in Bombay promote ‘Teddy Weatherford and His Band with GypsyMarkoff’.41 On the front page, Weatherford’s head is exaggerated in size and his lipsare accentuated, showing bright white teeth, almost making his face is cartoonish aswas often the custom when promoting minstrel shows. His right hand is white on thebrochure, which signalled the white gloves often worn in minstrels. Although anaccomplished musician, Weatherford was still promoted as an exotic, minstrelperformer, with all the customary, racist trappings. The inside page of this booklet hasa more serious tone, with photos of all the musicians and signers in a collage aroundGypsy Markoff and Lillian Warner, the female crooners.


These references to minstrelsy continued throughout the tenure of MrWeatherford in India, and even increased, as there was an attempt to promote thenovelty of African Americans in India, as well as integrate orchestras into the popularcabaret show performances. In another ‘Kabaratt’ (sic) program from the early- tomid-1940s, the order of the performance groups are described as ‘Dis are de orderthey cumes on.’42 There are ‘Russian Tangos,’ waltzes, ‘Taps in Colours,’ ‘Revesd’Amour,’ as well as the ‘Plantation Quartet.’ Weatherford’s wife Lorna Shortlandcrooned. A drawing adjacent to the list of songs depicts a minstrel band, completewith black face and exaggerated lips, a banjo player sitting on a barrel, and all themusicians are dressed in overalls. Ironically, in emphasizing the stereotypical minstrelsetting, the drawing fails to reflect the instrumentation virtuosity of TeddyWeatherford and his Band. In fact, there is neither any indication that they dressedthusly for their performances, nor did they have a banjo player, which was associatedwith early minstrel groups, rural folk songs, and very early jazz. Even as we scrutinizethe deliberate minstrel and blackface portrayal of jazz bands in Calcutta andBombay, it is worthwhile to stress that these were clever marketing ploys, and notnecessarily an indication of the marginalisation African Americans faced in the UnitedStates.

Weatherford recorded a number of tracks while in India, his first with ‘CrickettSmith and His Symphonians’ in the mid-1930s.43 One of the most notable originalpieces was ‘Taj Mahal’ in 1936 on the Indian Rex Label, with Weatherfordperforming on the piano in his busy, straightforward style.44 This track, performed by‘Crickett Smith and His Symphonians,’ included Crickett Smith (trumpet), GeorgeLeonardi (trombone), Rudy Jackson (clarinet, reeds), Roy Butler (Tenor Sax), TeddyWeatherford (piano), Sterling Conaway (guitar), Luis Pedroso (drums) and CreightonTompson (voice). The lyrics directly reference the Taj Mahal in Agra:

Where Dome and Minaret Outline the SkyIn the Shadows of the Golden HueThere What Love (unintelligible)

As You Hear the Lovers Croon

Taj MahalTaj MahalIndia’s Mystic Shrine

Taj MahalTaj MahalFilled of Love Divine

In All your Grandeur ThereYou Stand AloneGuarding a Secret of Your Own

Oh, Taj MahalYou Fill us with AmazementWe All Gaze with Wander of You45


Though this is a standard jazz foxtrot, the lyrics exhibit themes that mirrored some ofthe characteristics of gospel music at the time that emphasized the importance andstability of the African American church as a spiritual centre. Sung by CreightonThompson, this song hints at joy, praise, and collective admiration. The lyrics portrayan image of the Taj Mahal standing alone rising against the sky filled with the crooninglovers, and we celebrate its mysterious divine authority. Gospel pieces at the timereferenced the church in similar terms, such as its blessed power to create a sense ofshared belief and unity among African Americans. As we now gaze across time andcultures, it is possible to see that the much of the lyric composition lies in thetradition of gospel music. The Taj Mahal is not a symbol of the divine or a place ofmysticism; it is a love shrine. The slippage lies in the translation of culturalsymbolisms, because the composer misread the Taj Mahal as a monument of divineauthority. In this context, Creighton Thompson’s deep and resonant vocal style alsoenhanced the gospel mode, influenced by his background singing Black spirituals. Toappeal to an audience outside of India, or to the foreigners staying in the Taj Mahalhotel, there are also some hints of exoticism. The Taj Mahal is ‘mystic’ and ‘guards asecret of its own.’ To both audiences in India and to foreigners staying in the TajMahal hotel, this collusion of cultural and religious signs resulted in a mixture ofexoticised entertainment.

Because many of the musicians had only been in India for a few months at thetime of the recording, the song was composed in a style that mirrored contemporarytrends in the United States. Furthermore, like Teddy Weatherford, some of the othermusicians who recorded on this track were notable figures in the early developmentof jazz. Creighton Thompson was actively recording Black Spirituals with James ReeseEurope in New York City in the years before moving to India. Cricket Smith, whoperformed on the trumpet in ‘Taj Mahal,’ was also a central figure in the earlydevelopment of jazz.46 Though some critics like Darke and Gulliver dismiss therecordings in India in the mid-1930s as unexceptional, documented evidence aboutthe history of jazz attests to the fact that the work of this set of musicians does exhibita style that followed popular trends and artistic influences of pioneers in its earlygrowth.

Between 1940 and 1941, ‘Teddy Weatherford and His Band’ performed onoccasion at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, as did Crickett Smith, Roy Butler, andLuis Pedroso. According to trumpeter and arranger Louis Moreno, they ‘[p]rovidedmusic for dancing and cabaret acts.’47 Weatherford found the music they played‘circumscribed and frustrating, as he was expected to play music he littleunderstood’,48 and was keen to move back to Calcutta when offered a bandleaderposition at the Grand Hotel in 1941. Upon returning to Calcutta, Weatherfordrecorded a number of tracks with Columbia records, and Roy Butler returned toperform with Weatherford in 1942 where they continued to record until 1944.Weatherford’s band at this time also included Burmese musicians Reuben Solomanand Cedric West, as well as notables Rudy Cotton, Tony Gonsalves and Pat Blake, allof whom went on to become popular performers throughout India. Sadly, thepresence of African Americans musicians of this era ended when Teddy Weatherforddied of cholera in 1945. From 1941 to 1945 (especially after Weatherford’s death),the performance of jazz reveals more and more cabaret acts being included in the line-up. Though this move did not parallel the growth of jazz in the United States or


Europe, and did not include nostalgia for the ‘hot’ jazz that Weatherford championed,it marked a moment when African American bands began to decline in popularity ascabarets came to occupy center-stage status. Part of this rebuff can also be attributedto a nebulous but persistent perception amongst audiences beginning in the early1940s that African Americans were not on the cutting-edge of jazz music, but rather,were part of its initial development in the United States. Remarkably, this ebb ofpopularity in public performances led to the creation and appreciation of a new soundthat was considered specifically Indian, and influenced some of the early Hindi filmsongs of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially in Bombay.49

Expansion of Western popular music in Bombay

One of the central reasons for such a shift can be assigned to the role that Anglo-Indian and Goan artists played in Indian film music. The presence of AfricanAmericans in India profoundly influenced some Anglo-Indian and Goan musicianswho, because of their bi-racial status, were deemed marginalised during British rule.Their experiences of discrimination established a cultural and musical affinity withAfrican Americans in India. By the early 1940s, more Goan musicians accompaniedmany of the orchestras, and the African American-led bands performed on their own,often in venues or during time-slots that did not have cabarets booked. Unfortunately,there was some tension between African American musicians who wanted to performcurrent jazz tunes and an audience who demanded stylized cabaret pieces, which ledto the marginalisation of some orchestras. In this climate of mixed audience reception,talented Goan musicians coming to Bombay were able to crossover into cabaretsperformance genres, which made them more successful and eventually created adistinct style that paralleled some of the dance and music sequences in early films.Moreover, local musicians also adapted characteristics of Latin popular music in theirrenditions. At this time many Goans were able to support themselves in Bombay byperforming daily in numerous venues such as the Dadar Catholic Institute, the RitzRoof Garden, the Ambassador Starlight Roof Garden, the Bristol Grill Ltd, the Timesof Indian Sports Club, the West End Hotel Roof Garden, Green’s Hotel, the TajMahal Hotel, the YMCA, and the Rainbow Room of the Grand Hotel. Goantrumpeter Chic Chocolate is often credited as being an important figure in this localBombay music scene, and performed in many of the same venues as Butler andWeatherford. Judging from the large number of advertisements in the Bombay editionof The Times of India, Chocolate was both popular and in high demand. He routinelyperformed in thematic cabarets, which were in vogue and increasingly included magicand novelty acts, circus style routines, and large dance orchestras that were moreeclectic and multi-generic by the 1940s. He also introduced Indian music and danceattributes during his live performances.

While it is not fully accurate to claim that African American musicians were thesole source of the growth and development of jazz-cabaret genres, they were, withouta doubt, a key component in creating the sense that performing live popular musicwas a pragmatic and profitable endeavour. Writing about some of the early Goan jazzmusicians in Bombay, Peter Kvetko observes that ‘[b]ecause of their social position asoutsiders, many of the Goan jazz musicians were keenly aware of the black roots of


jazz in the US … it was considered to be a compliment to say someone ‘played like aNegro’’.50 This sense of pride of the blackening of the Goan body is a hauntinginversion of Weatherford’s words that ‘They treat us white folks fine’.51 Thoughactive in a much larger popular music terrain in Bombay, Goans continued to idealizeAfrican American musicians. Chic Chocolate, as an example, consciously constructedhimself to mirror Louis Armstrong. His posture, demeanor and physical appearancewere said to have followed those of Armstrong’s.52 Chocolate ‘watched movies likeHigh Society, Hello Dolly and Five Pennies and imitated Louis Armstrong’s playing andsinging as closely as possible’.53 Before performances, he would even pack his casewith white handkerchiefs so that he could ‘mop his brow in true Armstrong style’.54

The 1940s was a specific time in Hindi films when the popularity of songs wasvital to the successful promotion of a film.55 Gramophone disks made under the labelHis Master’s Voice, as well as Radio Ceylon and to a lesser extent All India Radio(AIR) helped enhance this popularity. Audiences responded positively to hearing newstylized songs that drew from Western music (including Latin rhythms), andproducers were increasingly ‘introducing sequences in Western-type night clubs, suchas cater to foreigners in Bombay and Calcutta’.56 The film Albela (1951), for example,features Chocolate and his band in a sequence that showcases this inclusion of cabaretfantasies. The score was written by C. Ramachandra, with Chocolate and his orchestraperforming the song/dance sequence Deewana Yeh Parwana using unique Latin jazzorchestra ensembles dressed in Latin-esque costumes with Western instruments suchas a trumpet with a mute and clarinets, as well as some instruments associated withLatin popular music such as the shekere, the shaker, and the bongos. These costumesproved to be popular, and they were often seen in dance sequences in Hindi filmsmade at the time.57 The song/dance sequence Dil Dhadke Nazar Sharmaye went so faras to incorporate an implied 3/2 clave, a rhythmic characteristic found in stereotypedLatin popular music.

The style of this dance segment in Albela co-mingled with contemporary Bombaycabarets. Amateur dance competitions in 1951 at the YMCA in Bombay lists LatinAmerican dances as one required style.58 The famous cabaret duo of the time ‘Mirabaiand Severyn’ included Latin elements into their choreographed routines in high-endhotels and cafes.59 For example, at the West End Hotel on 9 November, Mirabaiperformed a cabaret-style show that portrayed Carmen Miranda, the famous Braziliansinger/dancer, who was in a number of Hollywood films. At this evening event, theaudience was also invited to ‘impersonate Carmen Miranda better than Mirabai,’ forwhich an attractive prize was awarded to anyone successful.60 Some dance sequencesin Albela performed by the heroine Geeta Bali closely mirror some of the dance stylesof Carmen Miranda, including distinct hand/elbow and hip movements that Mirandapopularized. The song/dance sequence Deewana Yeh Parwana is perhaps the moststriking example. The notion of hybridity here is not a surrender to the temptation ofotherness, but rather a renewal of musical identity in the public sphere and in filmsong/dance sequences. In many films, Western music was used to broaden the appealamong the audience and achieve what Vasudevan refers to as a ‘mobility to thespectator’s imaginary identity’.61 In this sense, jazz, cabarets, Latin American andWestern music were re-contextualized in the film song industry and influenced by theoverlap of cultural and economic forces in the emerging film conglomerate. Goans, as


proponents of Western popular music, were in a unique position to pioneer theperformance of many such songs.

Conclusion

Initially, African American musicians performing in India were considered to be onthe cutting-edge in terms of creativity in musicianship, and they were imitated asexotic others, who had the power to initiate artistic change within the establishedmusic culture of India. In projecting as sense of freedom from Imperial rule in theinclusion of African American jazz in the space of the popular imaginary, some Indianaudiences, without articulating it as such, felt that popular music blurred boundariesand differences of class, race, or ethnicity. The compelling influence that AfricanAmerican musicians exerted early-on was testament to the potential of popular musicto reconstruct notions of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and the power relations between polarisedcommunities. Though African American musicians in India were eventually seen asantiquated, they helped establish the notion that fresh sites of difference introducedinto the popular terrain was indeed emancipatory. A renewed vision of racialisedpolitics became available to Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians when AfricanAmericans emerged as atypical examples of success. Ultimately, Anglo-Indians andGoans championed this new and potent aesthetic, effectively participating in thecreation of localised popular music as a political and economic strategy ofempowerment, which influenced the early growth of ‘hybrid’ Hindi film song.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Gita Rajan and Vinay Lal for their thoughtful comments on earlierversions of this essay. I am also grateful to Mirte Berko Mallory of Berko Photographyfor allowing me to reprint the photograph of Roy Butler and His Indian Orchestra.

Notes

1 Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 185.2 The quote is taken from a postcard sent by Roy Butler from India to the United

States. Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago PublicLibrary.

3 The performance and consumption of jazz and Western popular music were largelyconfined to the British, Americans during World War II, ex-patriots, Anglo-Indians, Goans, and other wealthy individuals. While it had a limited popularityamongst the masses, it was appreciated by people who had financial and politicalpower.

4 My definition of Anglo-Indian follows Lionel Caplan, who claims that theirancestral history stems from a ‘diversity of European forebears on the paternal sideand . . . from an even greater heterogeneity of Indian antecedents on the maternalside’ (Caplan 746). Owing to their dichotomous identity, many Goans used to


claim that they are Anglo-Indian, but there is now a growing preference to be calledGoan (Caplan 749).

5 For more complete discussions of ‘hybrid’ music in the early film industry, seeBarnouw and Krishnaswamy; Chakravarty; Chandravarkar 66–75; Skillman 133–144.

6 Appelrouth 1496–1509.7 Appelrouth 1502.8 Laubenstein 618.9 Laubenstein 619.

10 Laubenstein 622.11 Sun-young 428.12 Sun-young 423.13 Interview with James Sebastian (name changed), Lucknow, 2001.14 Ibid.15 James Perry, who performed jazz on the guitar in Lucknow beginning in World

War II, also asserts that African Americans have a heightened capacity for musicalexpression (interview with Perry at Lucknow, 2001a; b). He underscores the placeof Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and other major African American musicians asthe primary innovators. Luis Moreno, a Spanish trumpeter working in India in the1940s, asserts that ‘[w]hen these coloured men took over they had a style and asmile … they were ‘soul people’’ (Gulliver 4), implying that African Americanswere a legitimizing force in the music world in India, and were crucial in makingjazz a popular form of entertainment.

16 ‘The folks who are going to try and amuse the audience’. From the Roy G. ButlerCollection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.

17 Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.18 Radano and Bohlman 462.19 Dinerstein 6.20 Lucknow was one such example. The Mayfair Cinema and Ballroom was

constructed there in 1939 in stunning art deco style. This venue had formal danceswith full orchestras and a resident Master of Ceremonies. Another, the AmbassadorBallroom, was known as the American club during the last years of World War IIbecause it was often frequented by United State military personnel who werestationed there. The Railway Institute and the Lucknow Club had performances thatcatered largely to Anglo-Indian patrons. Other public venues supporting jazzperformances in the area were the Blue Haven cafe, Melrose, the Soldier’s Club,The Silver Snow cafe, and The Royal Cafe. Other exclusive clubs such as TheMohammad Bagh Club and the United Services Club in the Chattar Manzil werealso booking jazz orchestras on occasion, and musicians were generally paid best inthese venues, which helped support a circuit of professional local musicians. JamesPerry, who was performing jazz on the guitar in World War II Lucknow, stressesthat the sense of cosmopolitanism that jazz afforded was connected to the artisticand avant-garde spirit of colonial Lucknow, closely integrating popular music withthe intellectual and cultural innovations characteristic of the history of the city(interview with Perry at Lucknow, 2001a). Amaresh Misra links this sensibilitylargely to young Anglo-Indians who were active in establishing a ‘non-colonial’West (Misra 230) in Lucknow. Presenting a ‘cultural challenge’ to the British,Anglo-Indians were ‘caroused to the beat of the swing and the jive, playing outlatest jazz numbers’ (Misra 229). In this instance jazz helped circulate the notion


that a segment of the city was alive with an enlightened renaissancetransnationalism. Mr Perry reminisces with nostalgia that he used to listen tojazz as a young man, and his father did not like it (interview with Perry at Lucknow,2001a).

21 Harrison 58–59.22 Harrison 59.23 There was some exchange of ideological orientations and empowerment strategies

between African Americans and Indians beginning in the 1930s in outside of music.In 1935, Howard Thurman went to India at the invitation of the YMCA andYWCA, while there he set out to explore the relevancy of Gandhi’s methods in theUnited States (Chabot 24–25), and returned with fresh ideas, especially withreference to non-violent direct action. There was also much advocacy ofanticolonialism among Black intellectuals and activists in the United States, andthere was even a rally for Indian Independence on 2 September 1940 at theManhattan Center for a free India sponsored by the Council on African Affairs.Gandhi was also sensitive to the cause of African Americans in the United States,and emphasized the double standard of calling the United States a democracybecause of the treatment of blacks (Von Eschen 32). Most of the discourse on theAfro-Asian exchange highlights this movement from India to the West, where Indiais often observed as a centre of intellectual and religious illumination. Indeed, afterhis trip to India, Thurman ‘set out to develop an alternative Christian discourse thatdid focus on removing worldwide colour lines’ (Chabot 27, emphasis in original).

24 Collet.25 Hal Green, who performed in a number of jazz groups in Bombay, claimed that

tours of nationally-recognised dance bands in India in the 1920s inspired localbands, including ‘Franklin with his Crimson Wranglers, Vincent and KennethCumines and Everst Gallyot in Bangalore’ (Collet). Green himself directed ‘TheElite Band’ that ‘took Bombay by storm in 1933–1934’ (Ibid.). Ken Mac is anothermusician credited as being one of the earliest jazz leaders in India. There is noindication that these groups performed the popular ‘hot’ music, which emphasisedhigh-energy performance. Judging by band names such as ‘Elite,’ jazz musicianslikely resorted to a repertoire that was classic and tempered. Travelling orchestras,however, were exceptions. Lequime’s Grand Hotel Orchestra, fronted by CanadianJimmy Lequime on trumpet, was hired by the Grand Hotel in Calcutta for a shortperiod, where they recorded two foxtrots, Soho-Blues and The House Where TheShutters are Green with HMV India (P-7094) in 1926. For Rainer E. Lotz, these tworecordings were ‘far above the usual doo-wacka-doo displayed by other hotel bandsof the period, even when compared to those in the United States,’ whose stylereflects and mirrors contemporary jazz arrangements (Lotz).

26 Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 7.27 A Soubrette is a comical, maidservant character who is mischievous and light

hearted.28 Advertisements for Indian music and dance that I found in other English-language

publications are often described as ‘exotic.’29 For more, see advertisements for the Trocadero, Roy G. Butler Collection, Music

Information Center, Chicago Public Library.30 Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 8.31 Ibid.


32 Much of the timeline during this period is unknown because of conflictinginformation from a number of primary and secondary sources. The material here isfrom the Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago PublicLibrary.

33 From the Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago PublicLibrary.

34 Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 8.35 Ibid.36 The Roy G. Butler Collection at the Music Information Center of the Chicago

Public Library contains a ‘Strictly Confidential’ document dated 6 July 1942 fromthe American Consul in Bombay to US citizens in India that ‘invites all Americans inIndia, particularly women and children and those having no urgent or compellingreason for remaining in India, to return to the United States while there stillremains an opportunity for them to do so.’

37 Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 189.38 Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 176.39 Travis 83.40 The history of blackface minstrelsy weighed significantly on black performers in

India, and accounted for part of their attraction. Racism and musical virtuosity inIndia were not mutually exclusive categories.

41 Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.42 Ibid.43 The earliest recording of jazz in India was by the Lequime’s Grand Hotel Orchestra

in Calcutta in 1926. Jimmy Lequime led this orchestra and recorded the ‘Soho-Blues,’ a foxtrot, and ‘House Where the Shutters are Green’ (HMV India P-7094)with the well-known banjo player A. Bowlly, who was travelling in India withEdgar Adeler and his Syncopaters.

44 Beginning in 1941, he recorded more extensively. Most of the tracks are standardHollywood songs. Some of the recordings in 1944 and 1945 were made with thepopular American crooner Bob Lee, who was stationed with the United States AirForce in Calcutta.

45 Rex ME 7994-A. Recorded in Bombay.46 See Badger (48–67) for a list of some of Thompson’s recordings with James Reece

Europe in 1919 and a discussion of Smith’s role in the early development of jazz.47 Darke and Gulliver 184. Dorothy Baker, who sang with Mario and His Band at the

same time in Sri Lanka, tells a story in Storyville 65 (1976): ‘[o]nce we got Teddy toplay a Viennese waltz; that was the first we had together and to introduce him wesaid ‘come on, you play with us.’ It was the Blue Danube and it was the only time wesaw Teddy fall on flat on his face; he couldn’t handle it … [h]e was fascinated by itbut acknowledged it was tricky.’ Weatherford’s wife Lorna Shortland crooned onmany of the songs, and many of the pieces were rumbas and classical jazz, includingmusic by Hoagy Carmichael and George Gershwin.

48 Ibid.49 An early example of this was Reuben Soloman’s ‘Jive Boys,’ a 14-piece band that

included many of Weatherford’s members. They recorded about 24 tracks withColombia records.

50 Kvetko 61. See also Fernandes.51 Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 185.52 Fernandes; Kvetko 61; Pinckney 37.


53 Fernandes.54 Ibid.55 The late 1930s and early 1940s saw a transformation and reorganization of the film

music industry (Barnouw and Krishnaswamy). With the advent of the microphoneand other sound technologies, the popular playback system became more standard,characterised by actors lip synchronising songs recorded by vocalists in studios(Skillman 135). Musicians were increasingly hired to perform on foreigninstruments, adding new character to regional styles highlighted in many films.In an effort to appeal to a larger and more lucrative market, foreign elements wereused as a common denominator in a linguistically, musically, politically, andeconomically diverse country.

56 Barnouw and Krishnaswamy 148. An increase in the number of films in the 1940sand 1950s that appealed to larger audiences offered the potential for composers topioneer a wider diversity of musical styles (Arnold 182). The first music directorswere largely theatre musicians who brought their own regional styles with them tothe industry. When Hindi film production started to increase rapidly, morecomposers and musicians throughout India arrived in Bombay and Madras to profitfrom its lucrative yields, which lead to a ‘multiplication of the sources from which[musicians and composers] drew inspiration’ (Arnold 186). According to PeterManuel, since the 1940s many of the folk forms that were important in theproduction of film music were ‘‘modernised’ with the addition of pre-composedorchestral accompaniment, employing Western and/or Indian instruments’(Manuel 164). The avant-garde, modern, and transnationalist sensibility thatIndian film often afforded was appealing to the cosmopolitan music aesthetic ofGoans, and was perhaps one important element in attracting many to the film songindustry.

57 Many of these elements of Latin music were drawn from stereotypes found inHollywood films.

58 Times of India, Bombay Edition, 2 November 1951.59 From descriptions of their performances in the Times of India and program brochures

from the Chicago Public Library, Roy G. Butler Collection, Music InformationCenter.

60 Times of India, Bombay Edition, 9 November 1951.61 Vasudevan 99.

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Discography

Jazz and Hot Dance in India-1926–1944, LP, Harlequin (HQ 2013), 1984.Taj Mahal-Foxtrot, Rex (ME 7994-A), 1936.

Bradley Shope Department of Fine Arts, St John’s University, Queens, NY 11439, USA.

[email: [email protected]]


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Bradley Shope--They Treat Us White Folks Fine