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No
one taught Trilok Gurtu how to hold the sticks, but today he's the best jazz drummer in
the world !! I remeber the day when I heard the name Trilok Gurtu while discussing music with my friend. I was surprised to hear this name as it sounded familiar, the immediate question being "Is he somehow related to Shobha Gurtu, the renowned Thumri Singer??" Wow !! Later on when I read a Modern Drummer Magazine issue, did I realise that he had been nominated the best drummer/percussionist in the world for consecutive 5 years !!!! Can u imagine ....what a feat !!! Yes ! Trilok Gurtu is no doubt the Best Jazz Drummer in th World, and the thing thatmakes me proud is his roots are in India. On stage Trilok Gurtu is a cross between an alchemist intent on his test-tubes and an impresario intent on milking the crowd for its last scream of delight. At home, he's a quiet, humble musician who wants nothing more than to be left alone with his tablas. |
(Excerpts from an interview)He's learnt the hard way. He touched his first tabla when he was five and found himself trapped. But that didn't mean he was recognised as a musician right away. Not when your grandfather is Narayan Nath Gurtu, a musicologist. Not when your mother is the nearly legendary Shobha Gurtu, and you hear her practising every morning. Not when Kishori Amonkar, Moghubai Kurdikar and Sultan Khan Sahib frequent the mehfils your family holds on a regular basis. And certainly not when you go to a Catholic school. |
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| "I went to a convent school where the tabla was considered a down-market instrument. The Catholic boys felt they knew all about drumming because jazz was their domain and the drums were the instrument for them," he says with a slight smile. To his credit he doesn't smirk. When Downbeat, the international jazz magazine that also serves as its Holy Writ, has named you the Best Jazz Drummer for three consecutive years, you have the right to a full-fledged smirk. |
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| "No one taught me how to play the drums," he reminisces. "No one even encouraged me. I even broke a thumb because I didn't know how to hold the sticks correctly. When I played with the jazz band Waterfront in clubs, in gyms, wherever, I could hear the Goan Catholics say, 'Kitem vaazoitha' (a comment equivalent to 'How badly he's playing'). I shut my mouth and listened because at that time they were probably right." |  |
| But that
didn't stop him. He continued his affair with the tabla, learning from Manikrao Popatkar,
and then Abdul Karim ("He would pay me Rs 11 if I had played well and take me for
wrestling matches.") and Tirakhwa Khan Sahib. He was a seeded table tennis player
("It helped me with the footwork necessary for the drums."). In short, he did whatever he could and played wherever he could, even in Hindi films. Although he didn't approve of many of the things that were happening there, he was still enough of a favourite to be taken to the USA with R D Burman and Asha Bhosale. Not that it was his first trip abroad. He had been to Europe with Waterfront and stayed on for two years in Italy. This time, he ended up in Hamburg. He doesn't know how. |
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| "God
knows, man," he says," I didn't resist and next thing I know I'm in Hamburg. And
I'm still there." Has that changed anything for him? "Distance brings objectivity. You can see things better. Here I was just complaining about India. But I miss the sounds of India. I miss Lata Mangeshkar and the sounds of my mother's riyaz." |
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| Does that mean the influences have dulled a bit? "Eventually all your influences wear off. What is left is your sound, a sound that cannot be replicated by any other person, a sound that arises out of the synthesis of those influences. But once you get to a certain stage, you realise that it's not important how people see you. I still don't want to be seen as a jazz musician, just as a musician. There is a moment when you get a glimpse of the whole, a cosmic whole. That's when it doesn't matter where you came from and what they call you. That's when it's enough." | |
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