Taj Mahal Foxtrot - The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age
Naresh Fernandes
This book tells a story of India – and especially of the city of Bombay – through the lives of a menagerie of geniuses, strivers and eccentrics, both Indian and American, who helped jazz find a home in the sweaty subcontinent.
Hardback | 8 x 10.5 inches | 192 pp
ISBN 9788174367594
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In 1935, a violinist from Minnesota named Leon Abbey brought the first “all negro” jazz band to Bombay, leaving a legacy that would last three decades. In a decade, swing would find its way to the streets of India as it influenced Hindi film music – the very soundtrack of Indian life. The optimism of jazz became an important element in the tunes that echoed the hopes of newly independent India.
This book tells a story of India – and especially of the city of Bombay – through the lives of a menagerie of geniuses, strivers and eccentrics, both Indian and American, who helped jazz find a home in the sweaty subcontinent.
They include the burly African-American pianist Teddy Weatherford; the Goan trumpet player Frank Fernand, whose epiphanic encounter with Mahatma Gandhi drove him to try to give jazz an Indian voice; Chic Chocolate, who was known as the Louis Armstrong of India; Anthony Gonsalves, who lent his name to one of the most popular Bollywood tunes ever; and many more.
Taj Mahal Foxtrot, at its heart, is a history of Bombay in swing time.
About the author
Naresh Fernandes is a consulting editor at Time Out India. He has previously worked at The Times of India and the Associated Press in Bombay, and The Wall Street Journal in New York. His journalism has also appeared in The Hindustan Times, The New York Times, India Magazine, Outlook Traveller, Seminar, Columbia Journalism Review, Letras Libres and Transition, among other publications.
He is the co-author of Bombay Then and Mumbai Now (Roli, 2009), a photo-led record of the city’s historical and contemporary concerns. In 2003, he was the co-editor, along with Jerry Pinto, of Bombay Meri Jaan (Penguin), an anthology of writing about Bombay. He also contributed pieces to The Greatest Show on Earth (Penguin, 2011), Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change (Routledge, 2011), First Proof (Penguin, 2005), Elsewhere (Penguin, 2000) and When Bombay Burned (UBSPD, 1993).
He is a Poiesis Fellow at the Institute of Public Knowledge at New York University and is on the editorial policy board of the World Policy Journal.
Taj Mahal Foxtrot is his first book.
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