Although Radha Thomas has been an established vocalist from the 1970s, as part of rock bands such as Human Bondage, jazz has always been her favorite genre. Like any jazz vocalist anywhere in the world, the standards are a key part of a singer’s repertoire. To that end, Thomas counts up to at least 500 jazz songs that she learned to sing across her career, taking her to cities like New York, Warsaw, London and Paris. “
There are 10 jazz standards that she picked for her new album As I Sing, interpreting them in her own way with American jazz guitarists Reg Schwager, Pete McCann, Paul Meyers and Tom Dempsey. With just guitar and vocals, As I Sing is also a homage of sorts to legendary jazz artistes Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass’ duets in Hannover.
Radha says over a phone call, “You may get fed up of a particular song and not sing it for a while. That’s how you increase your repertoire of songs. For this particular album, I actually picked the songs carefully because I wanted each song to have something that I brought to it.”
The way Radha sees it, a vocalist does not have to sing a jazz standard the same way as any other singer. Case in point, ‘Summertime’ is the opening track from As I Sing and one can hear Radha speak and sing the jazz standard in her distinctive vocal style. Understandably, it is the song that is also picked up the most on streaming platforms.
Recorded over a span of about four months even as Radha had a bout of COVID-19 and “other sundry obstacles,” As I Sing was made remotely. One of the empowering skills that Radha speaks about picking up during the making of the album, was learning how to record vocals on her own, without the aid of a recording engineer and sending the tracks over to artistes in the US, as well as their mixing and mastering engineer Yura Romaniv out in Lviv, Ukraine. “Since his country is at war, it was difficult to seize moments of quiet. But working in bits and pieces, from ‘safe’ places, he completed the job.”
Learning vocal recording techniques, Radha is understandably “thrilled” to be able to put her skills to use. “I don’t think I’ll be able to handover this part of my music to an engineer again,” she says, adding she learned this without any tutorials (Radha detests YouTube guides of all sorts) and says technology came to her rescue as a composer and recordist.
Radha Thomas with Aman Mahajan and team | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The album also continues to showcase her penchant for vocalese, the style where singers interpret instrumental jazz songs, adding scat vocals and often, their own lyrics. An instance of that on As I Sing is with ‘Daahoud,’ a song composed by trumpeting legend Clifford Brown. Everything from ‘Autumn Leaves’ to ‘Just Friends’ and ‘Moon Ray’ make it to the album, delivered through Radha’s lens and a little bit of interpretation. As I Sing is one for diehard jazz fans and the veteran artiste pays homage to the greats.
Over time, Thomas says that jazz has become more of an exclusive art form in India. She wonders out loud if anyone would listen to the vocal jazz style that she has championed, but does not necessarily lose hope. She plans to team up again with pianist and producer Aman Mahajan for another album, a follow-up to Bangalore Blues from 2020.
