PEOPLE
All that jazz
VIJAY SAI
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Profiling the 1970s jazz queen Asha Puthli.
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SHE recorded vocals for "Science Fiction" by none other than the iconoclast Ornette Coleman. She recorded 10 solo albums and worked with labels like EMI, CBS, Sony and RCA way before many Indian artists did. She pioneered in every genre of music from blues, techno, pop, soul, funk, jazz and disco.
What is the Indian connection between Lionel Hampton, Alice Coltrane, Barry White, Duke Ellington, Tom Jones, The Rolling Stones, the Pointer Sisters? They all shared the stage with Asha Puthli: The uncrowned queen of Indian Jazz.
Browsing through a friend's collection of old LP records, I saw Asha Puthli for the first time on the cover of her old music album "The Devil is Loose". That was over five years ago. It was his grandmother's collection and he had no clue of who this "chick" was.
Swinging tunes
I called another friend whose 70 year-old-grandmother was once called the "social butterfly" of the 1970s party scene. Even before I completed my sentence, the old woman was humming tunes and sounding all excited and bubbly. I told her I had an old album by this singer. She said, "only one? Come over to my house and see." She had all the tapes and she played them one after another while telling me about the wonderful 1970s when everyone swung to Asha Puthli's tunes.
Asha Puthli was born and raised in Bombay. With a strong grounding in Indian classical music, she stepped forward to European opera. She learnt about Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole from "Voice of America" and about Dusty Springfield and Cliff Richard from Radio Ceylon. At 13 she won a competition singing "Malaguena", which encouraged her to improvise with local bands.
Ved Mehta's The Portrait of India has a whole chapter titled "Jazz in Bombay", which describes Asha's four-octave soprano.
Having made her name in India, Asha soon reached New York on a dance scholarship she received from Martha Graham. The impresario of Columbia records, John Hammonds, was intrigued by the way Asha was described in Ved Mehta's book. He introduced her as the "jazz element" in his rock-oriented label. In no time, Asha was recording label after label.
In films
Visiting a friend in Bombay in 1969, Asha was accidentally discovered by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory who were then shooting for "The Guru". Soon Asha was acting in Merchant-Ivory productions like "Savages" and working with directors like Louis Malle and Bruno Corbucci in "The Gangs that Sold America".
She took yet another bold step in modelling and was photographed by legendary photographers Richard Avedon and Andy Warhol.
Known for her outspoken and frank attitude, she once remarked that though her psyche was global and career European, her soul and roots were strictly Indian. When asked how old she was, she said, "I am spiritually 6000, mentally 98, emotionally 5 and chronologically somewhere in between."
Asha Puthli has once again revamped and re-launched herself into public life after a long gap of 25 years. She is performing in New York and will soon tour the world. Hopefully she will remember her old fan following in India.
E-mail: vijaysai.vs@gmail.com
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