“Jazz is dead!” says Frank Dubier quietly and decisively and does not labour the point.
What is obvious to this 84-year-old jazz musician, isn’t to me. So, I ask him to explain his verdict, which strikes me as harsh and discordant particularly because it comes at a time when the city is preparing for a star-studded jazz music festival.
“Show me the hotels that sign up jazz musicians!” says Dubier in a feeble voice that does not match the intensity of the message. That is when I notice he has lost weight since the last time I met him, which was over four years ago. Then, I interviewed him at his daughter’s house. Now, I have to sit at the verandah of a home for the aged to quiz him.’
Dubier has four children, a son living in the United States, another son and a daughter in Australia and another daughter in Bangalore. All his children would love to have him but are unable to do so at this point of time. The children send him money but he longs for their company.
“I feel so lonesome and depressed that I keep smoking cigarette after cigarette. You are with me now, am I smoking? It’s loneliness that drives me to heavy smoking. I’m helpless,” says the saxophonist, teary-eyed, and he looks so broken that I cannot help reaching out and placing a comforting arm around him.
“This is a temporary arrangement. In August, my daughter and son-in-law will come from Australia and take me home. In Sydney, Australia, my son and daughter will take care of me. Harry (MacLure) got me to do the medicals so that I would get the all-clear to go to Australia. I have cleared medical tests before — I have gone to Australia eight times.”
Harry MacLure, editor of Anglos In The Wind , is Dubier’s nephew and a source of strength to him. Barabara, Dubier’ former wife, is also looking out for the ageing saxophonist, having organised his stay at this home. “Here, everyone is old and retires to bed around 7.30 p.m, after having an early dinner. They are sound asleep by 8 p.m., which is when I used to start for work.”
Dubier is referring to the days when he spent the evenings as a musician at hotels in Madras, often choosing to display his versatility, which includes his ability to play the trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, flute, drums and violin. “I would play at Gaylord’s, which was opposite Spencer Plaza. I have played at Savera and Park Sheraton too. Now, hotels don’t want jazz musicians anymore. They are happy with their DJs.”
Dubier has discovered the malaise is not restricted to Chennai. During a visit, it broke his heart to see jazz pushed to the sidelines in New Delhi, where he had lived and worked as a musician. “For 10 years, I played only jazz at Ashoka Hotel (in Delhi),” he recalls. “There was room for jazz everywhere. A hotel in Bangalore had a dining room called A Pinch of Jazz. I had a Big Band with 15 members, including five saxophonists, three trumpeters and three trombonists. In the early 1980s, this was the biggest jazz band in Madras.”
If you think Dubier has retired, you are mistaken. “I may be 84, but I can still blow music out of a trumpet and a saxophone,” says Dubier, who teaches jazz to two children at a school near the seniors’ home on Ritherdon Road. Jazz isn’t dead, after all.
While waiting for promising young bass guitarist Napier Peter Naveen Kumar at a floor below the studio in Mandaveli where he is practising with a small band of other musicians, I find myself hoping for something positive and cheerful to come out of this interview. My conversation with the famous saxophonist Frank Dubier took place only two hours ago and the image of a jazz musician, ageing, lonely and an empty hall staring at him, is still weighing on my mind.
Napier has barely climbed down a flight of stairs and settled down in a sofa, and I ask him about the jazz scene in Chennai. And his answer surprises me: it is very close to what I heard from Dubier. Napier has learnt jazz performance on the bass at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts and was a member of the Abu Dhabi Big Band (attached to the UAE Philharmonic Orchestra) which had hired him for his ability to read notes. Before these things happened, Napier came to Chennai in 2003 to study sound engineering at SAE. He met with a major road accident then, which left him bed-ridden for a year. Rehabilitation took two more years.
In 2010, Napier realised a lot of music was happening in Chennai, but that did not include jazz. “On any day, the music scene in Chennai is more intense than in Abu Dhabi. There, it is all about DJing. It was in 2010 that Madhav Chari asked me if I would be interested in working with him, after he had seen me in a show. That set me thinking. Moreover, I was constantly shuttling between Abu Dhabi and Chennai,” recalls Napier, 29 now.
He is satisfied with his career as a sessions musician, having worked with music directors like Harris Jeyaraj. “I say jazz is not happening here in Chennai, because there are no musicians who do only jazz. Except for Madhav Chari. His passion to popularise jazz is incredible: he has conducted numerous workshops, almost all of them free, to create an interest in jazz,” says Napier, who is expected to team up with saxophonist Maarten Visser and drummer Jeoraj George for a performance at The Jazz Music Festival.
“Maarten, who is from Holland and has made Chennai his home, and Jeoraj are also session musicians,” says Napier, to further illustrate his point. “Sessions musicians have to be good in everything. They have to be ready with all styles of music, because they can expect to be called on to play anything.”
In this climate, where musicians have to kow-tow to the demands of the market, is there hope for jazz music? Says Napier, “Yes, there is. Interest in jazz can be revived. Because there is YouTube. Access to jazz music was limited earlier because it came with the price of an audio. Now, it can be had free on YouTube.”
