Hot jazz and the Cold War in 1950s Mumbai

One evening in 1958, the pianist Dave Brubeck and his quartet gathered in the home of a jazz-loving industrialist on Mumbai's Malabar Hill to chat with a group of Indian musicians led by the sitar maestro, Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan. Then they picked up their instruments and put their new knowledge to work.

The jam session with Mr. Khan, the American pianist said later, changed the way he approached his art. "His influence made me play in a different way," Mr. Brubeck told Jazz Journal International. "Although Hindu scales, melodies and harmonies are different, we understood each other...The folk origins of music aren't far apart anywhere in the world."

More than 50 years after Brubeck's India tour, fans in Rajkot and Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata, still have warm memories of the quartet's concerts. But in addition to the magical music, they still smile at recollections of Brubeck, the saxophone player Paul Desmond, drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright ambling through town, sitting in with local bands and having long discussions with Indian fans. That's exactly what the U.S. State Department hoped to achieve when it started putting jazz bands on the road in 1956.

In August that year, as the Cold War was growing icier, the U.S. Congress sanctioned funds for the President's Special International Program, an initiative that aimed to showcase the superiority of the American way of life to the world - especially the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa. Jazz quickly became the program's centerpiece. Jazz, after all, was the only home-grown art form the U.S. could boast of. Just as important, it was an African-American art form. At a time when many people in the newly independent world were appalled by the segregation faced by African-Americans in the American South, foregrounding jazz gave Washington the chance to pretend that this discrimination wasn't as harsh as some people imaged it to be.

Interviewed about his India trip on the weekend of his 90th birthday last year, Mr. Brubeck was understandably hazy on specific details. But he had one strong memory. The piano he was supposed to use for his concerts in Mumbai had become warped in the tropical heat, so he went to a music store and tried out several instruments. He eventually found a Bosendorfer that was to his liking. Suddenly, "several porters came in, put the piano on their heads and carried it through the streets" to the venue. They had to march in perfect rhythm because a misstep would cause the instrument to slide to one side and possibly crash to the ground.

The substitute instrument didn't cramp his style. The Times of India's music critic was among those who could not contain his appreciation for Brubeck's concert at the Eros Theatre on April 4, 1958. "Pianist most outstanding," reported the newspaper's review, advising, "If you have not yet heard this fantastic group, pinch your neighbor's ticket if necessary but go and hear it. If you have already heard it, go again. It has the inestimable gift of being able to take the starch out of music snobs - and there are so many of us in this great city."

Over the next few years, other jazz greats followed Mr. Brubeck to India. In 1959, the impeccably coiffed Dixieland trombone player Jack Teagarden was dispatched to the front lines of the battle for hearts and minds. In 1960, Mumbai welcomed the trumpet player Herbie "Red" Nichols. Mr. Nichols had been recording prolifically since the 1920s, but he'd shot to worldwide fame only in 1959 with the release of The Five Pennies a semi-biographical film starring Danny Kaye.
In 1963, the Americans deployed one of the most charming musicians in their arsenal, the dashing Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington. Many of Mr. Ellington's sidemen were stars in their own right, so it was no surprise that they were mobbed by autograph seekers when they arrived in Mumbai.

Mr. Ellington was installed in a split-level honeymoon suite at the Taj Mahal Hotel facing the Arabian Sea. Shortly after he checked in, he rang for room service and asked the waiter what food was available. "I begin by reciting my favorites and get all the way down to chicken but he responds to every item by shaking his head side to side," Ellington wrote in his memoirs.

"Although I am right here on the sea, he shakes his head again when I mention fish. Not knowing any better, I wind up eating lamb curry for four days, after which I discover that shaking the head from side to side means 'Yes.'"

As the 64-year-old Duke realized, cultural exchange was a tricky business.