The new jazz age

With new cool cats on the scene, jazz is giving musicians and listeners all the feels. Here's where you can begin again

- Karishma Kuenzang

Of course, jazz is changing. It's in its very nature to improvise, stay fluid. The genre has been around for more than a century. It's been playing in India for about as long too - in colonial Bombay and Calcutta, in 1950s hotel lounges, in Bollywood hits from practically every decade, in packed jazz festivals held since 1978, at posh Y2K parties and hip clubs that followed.

Much of it is familiar. Musicians still feed off each other, each instrumentalist playing their own rendition of a song, building on what they're hearing.

But across the country, younger musicians are bringing their love for their genre, and their training in other kinds of music, to create new sounds for new listeners.

In Delhi, Arjun Sagar Gupta is opening his third bar focussed on the genre. In Mumbai, drummer Gino Banks has launched monthly jazz sessions at Prithvi Theatre. In Bengaluru, Aditi Ramesh is incorporating her Carnatic roots into unusual jazz endeavours. In Kolkata, pianist Pradyumna Manot, aka Paddy, has introduced Latin Jazz to India with his ensemble.

Spend this weekend, and International Jazz Day (April 30), with the OG improv form. No one knows what's coming next, but it's a smooth ride, kind of like jazz itself.

Setting the stage Arjun Sagar Gupta

When he was about 14, Arjun Sagar Gupta heard Tony Bennett's I Love Being Here With You, on TV. Then, his brother gave him a Louis Armstrong CD, which changed his life. Gupta, 38, runs The Piano Man in Delhi and Gurugram, with a third jazz club coming up in Malviya Nagar, Delhi.

He's also managed a near-impossible feat: Getting Indian audiences to pay full attention to live music. At both clubs, which play two gigs every day, the venue has a Silent Song initiative. When a song is playing, everything else stops. The bar is shut, audiences are requested to maintain silence, the music gets all the attention.