A career in music

Mathew Joy founder, Jam Music Conservatory, a professional music school, pitches for students to make a life in music

A sudden volley of drum beats pumps up the quiet waiting area of Jam Music Conservatory, where a grand piano sits stately. The unseen drummer is in mood and uses the hi-hat and crash with abandon. Into the silence, punctuated by bursts of drumming, enter and exit students and teachers of music. A tuning of a fiddle and untrained notes from a keyboard float intermittently. Struck by the room’s soundproofing—padded partitions, double glass doors—I wait to meet Mathew Joy, founder of the facility.

A professional music academy, Jam Music Cons

ervatory opened earlier this year to enable budding musicians make a career in music.

With its state-of-the-art facilities, for higher research, teaching and training, this first-of-its-kind institute in Kerala, located at Palarivattom, is drawing students from as far as Finland, Coimbatore, and Goa and in an age group that ranges from five to 73.

Its USP is Joy’s different approach to the learning, enjoyment and dissemination of music.

“Why is it in India, where there is so much talent that we have produced just one AR Rahman and a Ranjit Barot?,” asks Joy, who set up the first exclusive drums training centre, Jam Drum School in Kochi, in 1999.

“There is no proper career oriented music academy in Kerala with individually focused training, no exclusive academy for higher music learning. I have set this up with so much expectations,” he says.

From a host of music schools set up in over 20 years of mentoring —two in Kochi, one in Thiruvanathapuram, two in Bangalore—are his students in 45 bands across India and US, like in Switcheroo, Avial, Easy Wanderlings, Cut-A-Vibe, Black Letters, Athma, Evergreen to name a few. Star performers like Mithun Puthanveetil, of Avial, 16-year-old Floyd Emmanuel Libera who received National Child Award for his percussion prowess, from the President of India last year, and a multi-talented musician with the band Meaxic in New York are some of his notable students.

A drummer himself, Joy was attracted to percussion as a student of Seventh Day Adventist School in Kochi, where he admired his senior, a drummer, Nirmal Antony. As with most families who do not see music as profession, a safe source of livelihood, Joy too faced some opposition from his family. It was not until he found a job in the Indian Defence Band in Bangalore that their outlook towards his love for music and drums was taken seriously. “That changed it,” he says but soon quit the band as he found it not serious enough about their music.

When he set up the first drum school in the city, in 1999, he found to his surprise students coming from as far as Calicut, Munnar and Thiruvananthapuram to study drums. A request from students to open such a facility in Thriuvanathapuram inspired Joy to expand to different cities.

In 2012 he opened two schools in Bangalore and two years later one on Thiruvanathapuram.

Joy who watches the career market consciously, says, “If you have done a course in music from New York, say from the Manhattan school of music, it will cost you a whopping ₹35 lakh for a year (including travel and accommodation). Here the same facility is available at lesser cost and the course will get the musician a placement in any musical venture. My focus and aim is all about learning music meaningfully.”

The conservatory has courses in different kinds of music be it Indian Carnatic or Western instruments. With subjects like Contemporary Western Vocal, Choral Ensemble, Guitars, Keyboards, Piano, Bass, Carnatic and Western Violin, Mridangam, Drums, Song Writing, Audio Engineering, Music Production and Music Programming the choices it offers are vast and classes are not in groups but imparted on one to one basis.

Joy’s idea of music is of it being organic, “of melody and rhythm being able to express a feeling or an image,” hence he transports students to the pre-microphone times and back to the digital present. “Now technology is supporting human creation of music. The students need to create music on their own,” he says.

For the created music the space has a professionally built studio. Here recording and production of all musical instruments, like upright piano and acoustic drums, is done and more sophisticated concords of mixing and mastering are done in collaboration with the Engine Room Audio in New York.

Obviously it is clear that Joy’s tunes are different. In 2009 he conducted the first professional drum clinic in the city and started the first jazz band in Kerala, J Mathew Trio.

His music , when he began, was experimental, ahead of his time. Now as part of an outfit FNYJ, that’s into versatile dynamic music- jazz ,blues, funk - world music -orchestral Joy looks at his singular efforts with satisfaction.

As musician and more a mentor, he says, “ I am happiest when my students do well. They should grow bigger than me. The challenge here is of convincing the public to understand the possibilities and benefit of learning true music, of course from the right place and with right guidance.”