The sound intern working with me, whom I imported from Kerala, made some magic.
Still young, with goat hair sprouting out on his face, he was subject to my creative tantrums and is always lost and confused. A 2nd grader in Trinity, he is still naive in his playing and needed to find the confidence to make this opportunity work for him.
In Mumbai for a project, we worked late into the night, and I played a small riff, looped it into a 30-minute track, and asked him to play – ‘jazz’.
“I don’t know how to play jazz, sir,” he replied.
I played a Wes Montgomery track for him and told him this is what jazz and blues sound like. I started the session, gave him the cue, and asked him to play, play from his heart. And for the first time in his life, he played like no one else, like no one existed, like music was talking to him, like love was flowing, like a god was in him, and I sat there in awe watching him play. Without realizing it, he played his best ever. He set his benchmark to surge and fly.
That’s what music is about: no rules, no theories, no notations, no mentor, no inhibitions, no fear—‘nothing at all.’
He earned a nice warm hug from me, and the teary starry-eyed boy from the ‘Mallu-land’ is on his way to making ‘real – true – soul’ music. Last night’s magic is just a baby mini-step.