Bradley Shope

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

African American musicians and the popular
music terrain in late colonial India

Arriving in India in the mid-1930s seeking performance opportunities and an improved

quality of life, African American jazz musicians were active in expanding the presentation
and consumption of jazz and Western popular music. Finding appeal in the power and
success that African American musicians commanded, Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians
also performed jazz in cosmopolitan centres throughout India. In Bombay, Goan musicians
integrated Western popular music into local live performances in cabarets, and eventually
into some early film songs. This article outlines the role of African American musicians in
increasing the terrain of Western popular music in India beginning in the 1930s, and
concludes by speculating on the artists influence on early Bombay cabaret songs and the
hybrid music of the early film industry.
African American jazz pianist Teddy Weatherford, who lived in Calcutta and Bombay
for much of the period between 1936 and 1945, is said to have remarked with a fine
sense of irony that in India They treat us white folks fine.1 African American
saxophonist Roy Butler, who was based in India from 1933 to 1944, wrote to his
family in the United States that living in India was simply a millionaires vacation with
pay and passage.2 Though small in number, African American musicians in the 1930s
and 1940s in India demonstrated that the performance of jazz and popular music could
offer selective links to empowerment strategies and financial success. The authority
that these musicians commanded was seen by some as symbolic of the potential and
possibilities in the performance of popular music. They represented what they
believed to be the emancipatory capacity of Western music, and witnessed their
musical repertoire and cutting-edge performativity become a model for local, Indian
musicians to emulate. This article examines the role African American jazz artists
played in developing and expanding the Western popular music terrain in India in the
1930s and 1940s. I will give special attention to the work of saxophonist Roy Butler
and pianist Teddy Weatherford. The focus of the argument will be on the importance
of jazz as a musical genre that was deemed primitive and yet exotic, wherein the
performers were fetishised for ushering in modernity through modalities of popular
culture.3
In the mid-1930s, African American musicians in India were regarded progressive
and avant-garde. By the early 1940s, their image became somewhat of a novelty,
symbolic of the initial development of jazz, but marginalised as increasingly antiquated.
Such a shift towards antiquarianism created an opportunity for Anglo-Indians and Goans
South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2007, pp. 97-116
ISSN 1474-6689 print/ISSN online ! 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14746680701619503

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to pioneer new styles of jazz-influenced popular music in the domestic public sphere,
especially Bombay cabaret music and early film songs of the 1940s.4 Initially, Western
popular music in the 1930s was viewed as another, sometimes British, or North
American, even African American or Latin American and its concurrent acceptance
among diverse consumers was a product of assigning these different links of
identification. Later, after integration into cabarets and early Indian film songs,
Western popular music functioned as a permissible other, as defined in domestic terms.
To this end, I conclude by suggesting that some of the filmi hybrid music, the
nomenclature often used to describe the presence of Western music in early Indian film
songs, was influenced by domestic popular music practices established in the 1930s in
which African Americans were a pioneering force.5

Commodifying jazz in India

While performing with travelling orchestras in India, many American musicians saw a
potentially profitable market for jazz and chose to remain and start local groups.
Travelling groups such as Joseph Ghisleris Symphonians, Leon Abbey, and Herb
Flemmings International Rhythm Aces brought a number of musicians to India. In
1934, African American musicians Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, Rudy Jackson
and Crickett Smith left Joseph Ghisleris Symphonians in Bombay when bandleader
Joseph Ghislerie returned to Paris. They started Cricketts Symphonians and quickly
learned that performing jazz afforded a lifestyle rarely possible among African
American musicians in the United States and Europe. Pianist Teddy Weatherford later
joined this group, which became Teddy Weatherford and His Band. These musicians
performed in India over the next decade, achieving a high degree of financial stability
and job security.
Why were black musicians such a pioneering force in the consumption of
Western popular music in India? What was it in African American musicianship itself
that was such a strong legitimizing influence? The answers lie partially in the manner
in which jazz was regarded on a global scale. In the 1920s and 1930s, jazz was
perceived by Western audiences as infused with an anthropomorphic power and was
frequently represented in the popular media as a visceral experience, weaving its way
into and overtaking the body. Scott Appelrouth, in Body and Soul: Jazz in the
1920s,6 suggests that during this era jazz was regarded as an agent of transgression, in
effect pushing one beyond the bodys boundaries, especially while dancing. By
reviewing 319 articles about jazz in the national print media in 1930, Appelrouth
concluded that 93% claimed jazz could affect the listeners control of overt
behaviours as well as invoke psychological alterations, changes in emotional states,
and psychological changes involving cognitive states.7 Such perceptions led to linking
early jazz (not coincidentally when performed by African Americans) to primitivist
notions, often laced with overtones of primordial savagery and its potential to incite a
loss of control. Similarly, Paul Laubensteins article JazzDebt and Credit
addressed the popular use of the phrase jazz intoxication,8 claiming that jazz was
often viewed as a benign intoxicant, which was sometimes even regarded as a
tremendous influence for good in the world, as it puts and leaves men more in tune
with the infinite than before the intoxication.9 The paradox was that while jazz often

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connoted a sense of modernity, critics also argued that it was an elixir that offered a
temporary respite from the modern world, often in the form of riot, incoordination
[and] incoherence.10 Thus, jazz was categorised as intuitive and appealingly unrefined
in much contemporary discourses, and it was romanticised and commodified, quite
consciously, in marketing strategies.
In a simultaneous strain, jazz was also viewed as a symbol of modernity
throughout much of Asia, albeit emanating from the black body. Andrew Jones (2003)
stresses that in inter-war China, jazz was stylish emblem of Chinas participation in
the culture of global modernity. For Yoo Sun-young (2001), the popularity of jazz
among young people and intellectuals in mid-1930s Korea was linked to an interest in
American modernism. The distinctive patterns, appearances and rhythmic touches to
the body and senses11 that jazz afforded helped Korea inscribe American modernity
on the colonial body of Korea,12 and imagine the emancipatory possibilities of
modernity under Japanese occupation. Notions of primitivism were juxtaposed with
their opposite attributes of order and modernity in much of the discourse on jazz.
These polar ideas also served as effective tools in its popularisation in India.
Shaping and controlling the image of African American musicians was central to
perpetuating their popularity in India, and was often accomplished by referencing
these primitivist notions associated with black musicians. Black musicianship had a
curious appeal and it was held in high regard; the reputation of these musicians in
India was reinforced by their close connection to the American jazz scene. Mr
Sebastian, an elderly Anglo-Indian jazz enthusiast currently living in Lucknow who
helped organize performances in Jamalpur in the 1940s, speaks fondly of the talent of
American musicians. In one story about coloured musicians in India, he verifies the
musical virtuosity of black artists by claiming that orchestras composed mostly of
African Americans used to commence performances using only their voices.13 At a
performance he organized at the Railway Institute in Jamalpur during World War II,
he recalls that the musicians were not playing with a single instrument, they were
mimicking their instruments the people [in the audience] were just dumbfounded .
. . they didnt want to get up they were just looking at [them]. The music was
just unbearable, I couldnt leave.14 This virtuosity was unique to African Americans,
and was perceived as a demonstration of their innate musicality. The audience, largely
composed of Anglo-Indians, was spellbound. Some of the key rhetoric used to
describe jazz in the United States and Europe, including references to a cessation of
normal bodily functions, is echoed in Sebastians story.15
Marketers also consciously promoted and enhanced stereotypical exotic African
American cultural attributes. In the farewell night program booklet for musician
Teddy Weatherford at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay in the early 1940s, the band is
described as the Folks woh is going try ter muse the audience.16 Mr Weatherford is
listed as a wizard and Roy Butler moans on the saxophone and clarinet. Drummer
Luis Perdroso bangs on his drums, and trumpeter Crickett Smith, or Sweet Papa
Dee Da, is the man with posanality a Trumpeter bold, who wobbles as well.17 The
banging and moaning, as well as the awkward walking style of Mr Crickett Smith, are
considered important to point-out in an otherwise formal program booklet.
Photographs and descriptions of others performing at the Taj Mahal Hotel maintain
a certain conservative and refined character. The only group photo of African
Americans in this brochure shows them wearing overalls. Other entertainers are in

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either fancy costume or formal dress. In this example, we see that there was a
deliberate racialising of the music, and an appreciation of African Americans through
exotic cultural traits.
Such deliberate attempts to exoticise music via race resulted in significant social
and cultural power. In India, jazz appeared to create a new modernity that was
produced technologically by African American musicians that exceeded simplistic
power relations with Imperial Britain, suggesting an ideology of exceptionalism that
reinforced the emancipatory potential of Western (or black) popular music. As in the
United States, where the ideology of black rhythmic music was profoundly and
intimately connected to the idea of modernity itself,18 many in India were eager to
associate themselves with this sort of muscular modernity. Active in reconfiguring the
popular music terrain, Goans and Anglo-Indians, who claimed both Indian and
European ancestry, learned to perform jazz and market it towards a wider set of
consumers, including the less affluent audiences. Jazz music served as an effective
means for these two ethnicised communities to empower themselves by
commodifying the value placed on its emancipatory potential as a tool of modernity.
Often the victims of prejudice in India because of their bi-racial status, these musicians
were drawn to jazz as a way to restructure their marginality by appropriating control
over public-domain entertainment markets in cosmopolitan centres throughout India.
According to Dinerstein, exciting changes in modern technology and mass production
in the music industry on a global scale were in a sense coded into American music by
African Americans.19 Seeing potential in the fast-paced development of coded
musical traditions, and hearing the modern world in its performance, many AngloIndians and Goans in India found jazz appealing, and understood the potential to
effectively integrate the non-British and non-colonial West into local musical
production. By the mid-1930s, Anglo-Indians and Goans were performing jazz in
clubs and cafes in many cities throughout India.20
Faye V. Harrison observes in a different context that racial meanings and
hierarchies are unstable, but this instability is constrained by poles of difference that
have remained relatively constant: white supremacy and the black subordination that
demarcates the social bottom.21 Though black, the special status given to African
Americans was re-routed through the syntax of white privilege. Mr Weatherford, in
saying They treat us white folks fine, does not allude to black empowerment, but
rather locates the black body (and its attendant status) on par with whites, who
remain tacitly at the top. The modernity that African Americans symbolized was not
colour-coded, but was linked to Western power, technology, and emancipation.
Racial hierarchies thus become fluid, signifying both authority and resistance.
Redefining difference in such a manoeuvre, African Americans were perhaps given
what Harrison refers to as an honorary white status,22 noting that strict racial
hierarchies can be bridgeable. Anglo-Indians and Goans, existing between other
racially homogenous communities, had a keen interest in these bridges.23

African American musicians in India: Roy Butlers influence

A 1948 article in The Times of India titled Thirty Years of Jazz in India: Our Bands Can
Swing It With The Best24 suggests that the roots of jazz in India were planted in the

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

years between 19171922 with bands that consisted of piano, violin, cello, string
bass and drums and they played ragtime foxtrots and Viennes waltzes mostly.25 Much
of the repertoire was classical and tempered with the exception of travelling
orchestras that performed on occasion in large cities. In the year 1934, Roy Butler,
Rudy Jackson, Creighton Thompson, Crickett Smith, Cuban Luis Pedroso and later
Teddy Weatherford converged in Bombay to perform at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Over
the next few years, these originary musicians were at the forefront of jazz
performance in India, which solidified the status of African American musicianship as
being an important, legitimizing force. Beginning with these musicians, the notion
that jazz and Western popular music was and could be a part of the development of
mass entertainment and popular music in India became apparent.
Roy Butler was one principal figure among jazz musicians in India. He arrived in
India on 27 December 1933 after spending the previous six months touring Europe
and South America. In Calcutta, he began performing with Herb Flemmings Rhythm
Aces, which included musicians Crickett Smith on trumpet, Herb Flemming on
trombone, Cle Saddler and Roy Butler on saxophone, Caeser Rios on piano, Harold
Kumai on bass and Luis Pedroso on drums.26 A short time later Herb Flemming left
for Shanghai, and Roy Butler moved to Mussoorie on June 13, 1934 to perform with
the Trocadero Rhythm Aces (figure 1). He played regularly at the Trocadero until
29 September 1934 when he left to perform at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. There
he played with Joseph Ghisleries Symphonians and shortly thereafter Crickett
Smiths Symphonians. For the next few years, big-name players established their own

FIGURE 1

The Trocadero Rhythm Aces. Mussoorie, 1934 by Unknown photographer. Roy Butler is

in the centre in the front row. Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy Butler
Collection, Music Information Center.

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FIGURE 2 Roy Butlers Indian Orchestra. Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay, 1942 by Ferenc Berko.
Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy Butler Collection, Music Information Center.
! Ferenc Berko.

jazz bands in India. In 1936, Teddy Weatherford arrived from Singapore to launch
Teddy Weatherford and His Band, in which Butler played saxophone. In 1941
Butler started Roy Butlers Indian Orchestra, which was composed entirely of
Anglo-Indians and Goans (figure 2). He also at times played with Luis Moreno and
His Orchestra and Mario and His Band in Colombo, as well as other orchestras for
short periods.
Roy Butler and the Trocadero Rhythm Aces in Mussoorie is particularly
interesting to note (figure 1). In this photograph, the stage has an art deco sunburst
radiating design as its main thematic element, which was symbolic of contemporary
notions of modernity. The use of the word rhythm here was one of the first
instances when such terms were used to describe modern jazz orchestras in small, hill
resort cities such as Mussoorie. Though there are no recordings of this orchestra at the
time, it is possible to speculate that the instrumentation, the name, and the orchestra
proxemics signalled that this group played standard jazz tunes, and was integrated into
the regular entertainment line-up of the Trocadero. Other photographs of this
orchestra illustrate a standard jazz drum kit, documenting the fact that the percussion
instruments consisted of the usual paraphernalia used by bands in the United States at
the time, including temple blocks, cymbals on stands, and cymbals mounted on a
large bass drum.

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

Mussoorie, as a resort city, is an interesting locale to scrutinize to glimpse one

facet of the flowering of jazz performances in India because it boasted a mixture of
British, European, even a few American citizens, and wealthy Indian princes and their
families, who were cosmopolitan enough to enjoy the summer series of live-band
entertainment. Beside the Roy Butler group, other performers listed in Trocadero
advertisement flyers are vaudeville-style acts, circus routines, impersonators, and
even a Soubrette cabaret performer.27 Cabarets and performances were staged
everyday during the summer of 1934, many of which were thematic events, often
with a dash of humorous exaggeration. One flyer, for example, dated 27 July lists a
Pirate Carnival with special scenery such as the Good Ship Yacka Hicky Doola,
some dance competitions, and two cabarets, one that begins at 5:30 pm boasting
Continental Dancers and another Late Night Cabaret until 3:00 am. There was also
exotic dancing, which was probably Indian classical or folk dance, or interpretations
thereof.28 The performances listed on this flyer were similar to Vaudeville shows and
were likely seen as traditional entertainment. The flyer boasts that the Rhythm Aces
provided the Modern Music.29
Roy Butler, sitting front and centre playing the saxophone, a quintessential jazz
instrument, is described as the Saxophone Devil, wherein the stereotypical
connotations are underscored to suggest that listeners will be overtaken with his
powerful music. As noted above, the double-edged connotation functions to signal
that audiences are being treated to a new kind of jazz performance with no thematic
element and with strong allusions to modernity while simultaneously catering to a
theatricalised, corporeal sensuality. The jazz musicians themselves, poised on a
modern art deco stage performing new music fronted by an African American
saxophonist, were proof of such entertainment. Darke and Gulliver (1977) maintain
that Roy Butler travelled quite a bit to engagements in other cities. . . as well as
playing often in the incredibly affluent sporting clubs, known as Gymkhanas.30 Butler
travelled extensively to various cities, but also did a brief stint with a variation of the
Rhythm Aces in Lucknow. He described these years as his happiest, because the
work was relatively easy, the pay and conditions good, splendid treatment by both
management and clientele, and a way of life that was unique to India under the
British Raj.31
He also performed with the Deep South Boys, a popular quartet of African
American vocalists who sang black spirituals (figure 3). This vocal group, variously
called The Plantation Quartet and The Taj Quartet, were quite popular and active
until the mid-1940s.32 Their very name, which changed over time and between
venues, invoked a stereotyped exotic Southern United States black lifestyle, which
turned out to be an opportune and important marketing strategy. Comprised of
Crickett Smith, Rudy Jackson, Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, and on occasion,
Teddy Weatherford, they often dressed in work clothes on a stage decorated with
scenery of cotton plantations of the Southern United States. They frequently
performed at thematic events or in cabarets with multiple and eclectic acts. On 28
August 1936, for example, they performed at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay under
the name Taj Quartet for the Show Boat Dance.33 The event included a Cossack
Dance by cabaret duo Lanzoff and Svetlanova, and ended with a performance of jazz
by Crickett Smiths Symphonians. Seen as a novelty group, the Taj Quartet
became integrated into the cabarets that were popular at the time, especially in

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FIGURE 3 Deep South Boys. By Unknown photographer. From left to right: Crickett Smith, Teddy
Weatherford, Rudy Jackson, and Roy Butler. Permission granted by the Chicago Public Library, Roy
Butler Collection, Music Information Center.

Bombay. None of the programme booklets of their performances lists the songs they
performed, except as Negro Spirituals, which added to their anonymity and
distanced appeal. One can surmise that such a deliberate racialization worked in the
quartets favour, which on the one hand had capitalised on the blending of Western
music into something that came out of the Southern Black United States, and on the
other hand, lent itself to the emancipatory potential of jazz music itself. Furthermore,
the fact that Creighton Thompson was active in performing and recording Black
Spirituals in New York City with the famous James Reese Europe in the late 1910s
provided a layer of authenticity to these diffuse pre-conceptions associated with black
bodies performing jazz.
Butler travelled back-and-forth between Bombay, Calcutta and Colombo. He left
India for short periods to travel to Singapore, Paris, and Holland, but he was based
mostly in Bombay and Calcutta. In the early 1940s, Roy Butler started his own band
in Bombay, which he called Roy Butlers Indian Orchestra (see figure 2), they
performed frequently, but largely on their own at Greens Hotel, where for six nights
a week they were the headlining group, but were not directly involved in the hotels
cabaret events. Interviewed in 1977, Mr Butler maintains that his work as an
orchestra leader in India for these few months was not necessarily a positive
experience.34 He claims that this was largely because he had only Indian musicians to
work with, all the Americans having departed, and the local musicians were not too

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

familiar with jazz at the time.35 Many African American musicians left India,
primarily because work was more difficult to find, but also because the American
consulate was encouraging its citizens to leave India in light of the threat of Japanese
bombing campaigns.36 This group lasted only a few months until 1942, when Roy
Butler again rejoined Teddy Weatherford in Calcutta. Butler was also invited to
perform as a saxophonist with the All India Radio Studio Jazz Orchestra in 1943. He
left India on October 14, 1944 to return to Chicago because the war was in full
swing and the Japs [sic] dropped a few bombs in the harbour around Calcutta and
[he] decided it was [his] time to go home.37

Teddy Weatherford
Between 1936 and 1945 Teddy Weatherford fronted most of the orchestras that were
composed of African American musicians. Originally from Virginia, Weatherford moved
to Chicago where he was an immediate sensation,38 performing with Jimmy Wade and
later with Erskine Tate of the Vendome Theatre Orchestra. The famous Earl Hines was
said to have been heavily influenced by Weatherfords piano style, and at the time was
regarded as the champ of the ivories.39 As an integral part of the blossoming Chicago
scene of the mid-1920s, Weatherford was closely aligned with and active in developing a
new Chicago jazz sound. He travelled to East Asia in the mid- to late-1920s, where he
developed a reputation as a talented ex-patriot jazz musician. He then settled in India in
1936, and like Butler, moved between Calcutta, Bombay and Colombo, with sporadic
trips to other Asian metropoles like Singapore, Shanghai, and Sourabaya. He performed
with the Plantation Quartet on occasion, as well as in many of the same orchestras as
Butler. Records indicate that he also visited some European cities during this span.
Weatherford often hired Goan and Anglo-Indian musicians to perform beginning in
1941, and was keen on hiring female crooners, while holding on to his stable of African
Americans such as Roy Butler, Creighton Thompson, Crickett Smith, Rudy Jackson, as
well as Cuban Luis Pedroso. His interest in creating a mixed-race performance group was
both aesthetic and personal, as he married an Anglo-Indian woman, Lorna Shortland,
who sang vocals in his bands. Between late 1941 and 1945, he spent most of his time in
Calcutta, and his orchestra included notable Anglo-Indian, Burmese and Goan musicians,
including George Banks, Bill McDermott, Pat Blake, Cedric West, Reuben Soloman,
Paul Gonsalves, Rudy Cotton, Tony Gonsalves, and (there is sketchy evidence) George
Leonardi.
Marketing strategies often included allusions to minstrelsy in the advertisements
for his performances.40 For example, the 19381939 season booklets from the Taj
Mahal Hotel in Bombay promote Teddy Weatherford and His Band with Gypsy
Markoff.41 On the front page, Weatherfords head is exaggerated in size and his lips
are accentuated, showing bright white teeth, almost making his face is cartoonish as
was often the custom when promoting minstrel shows. His right hand is white on the
brochure, which signalled the white gloves often worn in minstrels. Although an
accomplished musician, Weatherford was still promoted as an exotic, minstrel
performer, with all the customary, racist trappings. The inside page of this booklet has
a more serious tone, with photos of all the musicians and signers in a collage around
Gypsy Markoff and Lillian Warner, the female crooners.

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These references to minstrelsy continued throughout the tenure of Mr

Weatherford in India, and even increased, as there was an attempt to promote the
novelty of African Americans in India, as well as integrate orchestras into the popular
cabaret show performances. In another Kabaratt (sic) program from the early- to
mid-1940s, the order of the performance groups are described as Dis are de order
they cumes on.42 There are Russian Tangos, waltzes, Taps in Colours, Reves
dAmour, as well as the Plantation Quartet. Weatherfords wife Lorna Shortland
crooned. A drawing adjacent to the list of songs depicts a minstrel band, complete
with black face and exaggerated lips, a banjo player sitting on a barrel, and all the
musicians are dressed in overalls. Ironically, in emphasizing the stereotypical minstrel
setting, the drawing fails to reflect the instrumentation virtuosity of Teddy
Weatherford and his Band. In fact, there is neither any indication that they dressed
thusly for their performances, nor did they have a banjo player, which was associated
with early minstrel groups, rural folk songs, and very early jazz. Even as we scrutinize
the deliberate minstrel and blackface portrayal of jazz bands in Calcutta and
Bombay, it is worthwhile to stress that these were clever marketing ploys, and not
necessarily an indication of the marginalisation African Americans faced in the United
States.
Weatherford recorded a number of tracks while in India, his first with Crickett
Smith and His Symphonians in the mid-1930s.43 One of the most notable original
pieces was Taj Mahal in 1936 on the Indian Rex Label, with Weatherford
performing on the piano in his busy, straightforward style.44 This track, performed by
Crickett Smith and His Symphonians, included Crickett Smith (trumpet), George
Leonardi (trombone), Rudy Jackson (clarinet, reeds), Roy Butler (Tenor Sax), Teddy
Weatherford (piano), Sterling Conaway (guitar), Luis Pedroso (drums) and Creighton
Tompson (voice). The lyrics directly reference the Taj Mahal in Agra:
Where Dome and Minaret Outline the Sky
In the Shadows of the Golden Hue
There What Love (unintelligible)
As You Hear the Lovers Croon
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal
Indias Mystic Shrine
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal
Filled of Love Divine
In All your Grandeur There
You Stand Alone
Guarding a Secret of Your Own
Oh, Taj Mahal
You Fill us with Amazement
We All Gaze with Wander of You45

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Though this is a standard jazz foxtrot, the lyrics exhibit themes that mirrored some of
the characteristics of gospel music at the time that emphasized the importance and
stability of the African American church as a spiritual centre. Sung by Creighton
Thompson, this song hints at joy, praise, and collective admiration. The lyrics portray
an image of the Taj Mahal standing alone rising against the sky filled with the crooning
lovers, and we celebrate its mysterious divine authority. Gospel pieces at the time
referenced the church in similar terms, such as its blessed power to create a sense of
shared belief and unity among African Americans. As we now gaze across time and
cultures, it is possible to see that the much of the lyric composition lies in the
tradition of gospel music. The Taj Mahal is not a symbol of the divine or a place of
mysticism; it is a love shrine. The slippage lies in the translation of cultural
symbolisms, because the composer misread the Taj Mahal as a monument of divine
authority. In this context, Creighton Thompsons deep and resonant vocal style also
enhanced the gospel mode, influenced by his background singing Black spirituals. To
appeal to an audience outside of India, or to the foreigners staying in the Taj Mahal
hotel, there are also some hints of exoticism. The Taj Mahal is mystic and guards a
secret of its own. To both audiences in India and to foreigners staying in the Taj
Mahal hotel, this collusion of cultural and religious signs resulted in a mixture of
exoticised entertainment.
Because many of the musicians had only been in India for a few months at the
time of the recording, the song was composed in a style that mirrored contemporary
trends in the United States. Furthermore, like Teddy Weatherford, some of the other
musicians who recorded on this track were notable figures in the early development
of jazz. Creighton Thompson was actively recording Black Spirituals with James Reese
Europe in New York City in the years before moving to India. Cricket Smith, who
performed on the trumpet in Taj Mahal, was also a central figure in the early
development of jazz.46 Though some critics like Darke and Gulliver dismiss the
recordings in India in the mid-1930s as unexceptional, documented evidence about
the history of jazz attests to the fact that the work of this set of musicians does exhibit
a style that followed popular trends and artistic influences of pioneers in its early
growth.
Between 1940 and 1941, Teddy Weatherford and His Band performed on
occasion at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, as did Crickett Smith, Roy Butler, and
Luis Pedroso. According to trumpeter and arranger Louis Moreno, they [p]rovided
music for dancing and cabaret acts.47 Weatherford found the music they played
circumscribed and frustrating, as he was expected to play music he little
understood,48 and was keen to move back to Calcutta when offered a bandleader
position at the Grand Hotel in 1941. Upon returning to Calcutta, Weatherford
recorded a number of tracks with Columbia records, and Roy Butler returned to
perform with Weatherford in 1942 where they continued to record until 1944.
Weatherfords band at this time also included Burmese musicians Reuben Soloman
and Cedric West, as well as notables Rudy Cotton, Tony Gonsalves and Pat Blake, all
of whom went on to become popular performers throughout India. Sadly, the
presence of African Americans musicians of this era ended when Teddy Weatherford
died of cholera in 1945. From 1941 to 1945 (especially after Weatherfords death),
the performance of jazz reveals more and more cabaret acts being included in the lineup. Though this move did not parallel the growth of jazz in the United States or

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Europe, and did not include nostalgia for the hot jazz that Weatherford championed,
it marked a moment when African American bands began to decline in popularity as
cabarets came to occupy center-stage status. Part of this rebuff can also be attributed
to a nebulous but persistent perception amongst audiences beginning in the early
1940s that African Americans were not on the cutting-edge of jazz music, but rather,
were part of its initial development in the United States. Remarkably, this ebb of
popularity in public performances led to the creation and appreciation of a new sound
that was considered specifically Indian, and influenced some of the early Hindi film
songs of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially in Bombay.49

Expansion of Western popular music in Bombay

One of the central reasons for such a shift can be assigned to the role that AngloIndian and Goan artists played in Indian film music. The presence of African
Americans in India profoundly influenced some Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians
who, because of their bi-racial status, were deemed marginalised during British rule.
Their experiences of discrimination established a cultural and musical affinity with
African Americans in India. By the early 1940s, more Goan musicians accompanied
many of the orchestras, and the African American-led bands performed on their own,
often in venues or during time-slots that did not have cabarets booked. Unfortunately,
there was some tension between African American musicians who wanted to perform
current jazz tunes and an audience who demanded stylized cabaret pieces, which led
to the marginalisation of some orchestras. In this climate of mixed audience reception,
talented Goan musicians coming to Bombay were able to crossover into cabarets
performance genres, which made them more successful and eventually created a
distinct style that paralleled some of the dance and music sequences in early films.
Moreover, local musicians also adapted characteristics of Latin popular music in their
renditions. At this time many Goans were able to support themselves in Bombay by
performing daily in numerous venues such as the Dadar Catholic Institute, the Ritz
Roof Garden, the Ambassador Starlight Roof Garden, the Bristol Grill Ltd, the Times
of Indian Sports Club, the West End Hotel Roof Garden, Greens Hotel, the Taj
Mahal Hotel, the YMCA, and the Rainbow Room of the Grand Hotel. Goan
trumpeter Chic Chocolate is often credited as being an important figure in this local
Bombay music scene, and performed in many of the same venues as Butler and
Weatherford. Judging from the large number of advertisements in the Bombay edition
of The Times of India, Chocolate was both popular and in high demand. He routinely
performed in thematic cabarets, which were in vogue and increasingly included magic
and novelty acts, circus style routines, and large dance orchestras that were more
eclectic and multi-generic by the 1940s. He also introduced Indian music and dance
attributes during his live performances.
While it is not fully accurate to claim that African American musicians were the
sole source of the growth and development of jazz-cabaret genres, they were, without
a doubt, a key component in creating the sense that performing live popular music
was a pragmatic and profitable endeavour. Writing about some of the early Goan jazz
musicians in Bombay, Peter Kvetko observes that [b]ecause of their social position as
outsiders, many of the Goan jazz musicians were keenly aware of the black roots of

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

jazz in the US it was considered to be a compliment to say someone played like a

Negro.50 This sense of pride of the blackening of the Goan body is a haunting
inversion of Weatherfords words that They treat us white folks fine.51 Though
active in a much larger popular music terrain in Bombay, Goans continued to idealize
African American musicians. Chic Chocolate, as an example, consciously constructed
himself to mirror Louis Armstrong. His posture, demeanor and physical appearance
were said to have followed those of Armstrongs.52 Chocolate watched movies like
High Society, Hello Dolly and Five Pennies and imitated Louis Armstrongs playing and
singing as closely as possible.53 Before performances, he would even pack his case
with white handkerchiefs so that he could mop his brow in true Armstrong style.54
The 1940s was a specific time in Hindi films when the popularity of songs was
vital to the successful promotion of a film.55 Gramophone disks made under the label
His Masters Voice, as well as Radio Ceylon and to a lesser extent All India Radio
(AIR) helped enhance this popularity. Audiences responded positively to hearing new
stylized songs that drew from Western music (including Latin rhythms), and
producers were increasingly introducing sequences in Western-type night clubs, such
as cater to foreigners in Bombay and Calcutta.56 The film Albela (1951), for example,
features Chocolate and his band in a sequence that showcases this inclusion of cabaret
fantasies. The score was written by C. Ramachandra, with Chocolate and his orchestra
performing the song/dance sequence Deewana Yeh Parwana using unique Latin jazz
orchestra ensembles dressed in Latin-esque costumes with Western instruments such
as a trumpet with a mute and clarinets, as well as some instruments associated with
Latin popular music such as the shekere, the shaker, and the bongos. These costumes
proved to be popular, and they were often seen in dance sequences in Hindi films
made at the time.57 The song/dance sequence Dil Dhadke Nazar Sharmaye went so far
as to incorporate an implied 3/2 clave, a rhythmic characteristic found in stereotyped
Latin popular music.
The style of this dance segment in Albela co-mingled with contemporary Bombay
cabarets. Amateur dance competitions in 1951 at the YMCA in Bombay lists Latin
American dances as one required style.58 The famous cabaret duo of the time Mirabai
and Severyn included Latin elements into their choreographed routines in high-end
hotels and cafes.59 For example, at the West End Hotel on 9 November, Mirabai
performed a cabaret-style show that portrayed Carmen Miranda, the famous Brazilian
singer/dancer, who was in a number of Hollywood films. At this evening event, the
audience was also invited to impersonate Carmen Miranda better than Mirabai, for
which an attractive prize was awarded to anyone successful.60 Some dance sequences
in Albela performed by the heroine Geeta Bali closely mirror some of the dance styles
of Carmen Miranda, including distinct hand/elbow and hip movements that Miranda
popularized. The song/dance sequence Deewana Yeh Parwana is perhaps the most
striking example. The notion of hybridity here is not a surrender to the temptation of
otherness, but rather a renewal of musical identity in the public sphere and in film
song/dance sequences. In many films, Western music was used to broaden the appeal
among the audience and achieve what Vasudevan refers to as a mobility to the
spectators imaginary identity.61 In this sense, jazz, cabarets, Latin American and
Western music were re-contextualized in the film song industry and influenced by the
overlap of cultural and economic forces in the emerging film conglomerate. Goans, as

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SOUTH ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

proponents of Western popular music, were in a unique position to pioneer the

performance of many such songs.

Conclusion
Initially, African American musicians performing in India were considered to be on
the cutting-edge in terms of creativity in musicianship, and they were imitated as
exotic others, who had the power to initiate artistic change within the established
music culture of India. In projecting as sense of freedom from Imperial rule in the
inclusion of African American jazz in the space of the popular imaginary, some Indian
audiences, without articulating it as such, felt that popular music blurred boundaries
and differences of class, race, or ethnicity. The compelling influence that African
American musicians exerted early-on was testament to the potential of popular music
to reconstruct notions of us and them, and the power relations between polarised
communities. Though African American musicians in India were eventually seen as
antiquated, they helped establish the notion that fresh sites of difference introduced
into the popular terrain was indeed emancipatory. A renewed vision of racialised
politics became available to Anglo-Indian and Goan musicians when African
Americans emerged as atypical examples of success. Ultimately, Anglo-Indians and
Goans championed this new and potent aesthetic, effectively participating in the
creation of localised popular music as a political and economic strategy of
empowerment, which influenced the early growth of hybrid Hindi film song.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Gita Rajan and Vinay Lal for their thoughtful comments on earlier
versions of this essay. I am also grateful to Mirte Berko Mallory of Berko Photography
for allowing me to reprint the photograph of Roy Butler and His Indian Orchestra.

Notes
1
2
3

Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 185.

The quote is taken from a postcard sent by Roy Butler from India to the United
States. Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public
Library.
The performance and consumption of jazz and Western popular music were largely
confined to the British, Americans during World War II, ex-patriots, AngloIndians, Goans, and other wealthy individuals. While it had a limited popularity
amongst the masses, it was appreciated by people who had financial and political
power.
My definition of Anglo-Indian follows Lionel Caplan, who claims that their
ancestral history stems from a diversity of European forebears on the paternal side
and . . . from an even greater heterogeneity of Indian antecedents on the maternal
side (Caplan 746). Owing to their dichotomous identity, many Goans used to

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

16
17
18
19
20

claim that they are Anglo-Indian, but there is now a growing preference to be called
Goan (Caplan 749).
For more complete discussions of hybrid music in the early film industry, see
Barnouw and Krishnaswamy; Chakravarty; Chandravarkar 6675; Skillman 133
144.
Appelrouth 14961509.
Appelrouth 1502.
Laubenstein 618.
Laubenstein 619.
Laubenstein 622.
Sun-young 428.
Sun-young 423.
Interview with James Sebastian (name changed), Lucknow, 2001.
Ibid.
James Perry, who performed jazz on the guitar in Lucknow beginning in World
War II, also asserts that African Americans have a heightened capacity for musical
expression (interview with Perry at Lucknow, 2001a; b). He underscores the place
of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and other major African American musicians as
the primary innovators. Luis Moreno, a Spanish trumpeter working in India in the
1940s, asserts that [w]hen these coloured men took over they had a style and a
smile they were soul people (Gulliver 4), implying that African Americans
were a legitimizing force in the music world in India, and were crucial in making
jazz a popular form of entertainment.
The folks who are going to try and amuse the audience. From the Roy G. Butler
Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.
Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.
Radano and Bohlman 462.
Dinerstein 6.
Lucknow was one such example. The Mayfair Cinema and Ballroom was
constructed there in 1939 in stunning art deco style. This venue had formal dances
with full orchestras and a resident Master of Ceremonies. Another, the Ambassador
Ballroom, was known as the American club during the last years of World War II
because it was often frequented by United State military personnel who were
stationed there. The Railway Institute and the Lucknow Club had performances that
catered largely to Anglo-Indian patrons. Other public venues supporting jazz
performances in the area were the Blue Haven cafe, Melrose, the Soldiers Club,
The Silver Snow cafe, and The Royal Cafe. Other exclusive clubs such as The
Mohammad Bagh Club and the United Services Club in the Chattar Manzil were
also booking jazz orchestras on occasion, and musicians were generally paid best in
these venues, which helped support a circuit of professional local musicians. James
Perry, who was performing jazz on the guitar in World War II Lucknow, stresses
that the sense of cosmopolitanism that jazz afforded was connected to the artistic
and avant-garde spirit of colonial Lucknow, closely integrating popular music with
the intellectual and cultural innovations characteristic of the history of the city
(interview with Perry at Lucknow, 2001a). Amaresh Misra links this sensibility
largely to young Anglo-Indians who were active in establishing a non-colonial
West (Misra 230) in Lucknow. Presenting a cultural challenge to the British,
Anglo-Indians were caroused to the beat of the swing and the jive, playing out
latest jazz numbers (Misra 229). In this instance jazz helped circulate the notion

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SOUTH ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

21
22
23

24
25

26
27
28
29
30
31

that a segment of the city was alive with an enlightened renaissance

transnationalism. Mr Perry reminisces with nostalgia that he used to listen to
jazz as a young man, and his father did not like it (interview with Perry at Lucknow,
2001a).
Harrison 5859.
Harrison 59.
There was some exchange of ideological orientations and empowerment strategies
between African Americans and Indians beginning in the 1930s in outside of music.
In 1935, Howard Thurman went to India at the invitation of the YMCA and
YWCA, while there he set out to explore the relevancy of Gandhis methods in the
United States (Chabot 2425), and returned with fresh ideas, especially with
reference to non-violent direct action. There was also much advocacy of
anticolonialism among Black intellectuals and activists in the United States, and
there was even a rally for Indian Independence on 2 September 1940 at the
Manhattan Center for a free India sponsored by the Council on African Affairs.
Gandhi was also sensitive to the cause of African Americans in the United States,
and emphasized the double standard of calling the United States a democracy
because of the treatment of blacks (Von Eschen 32). Most of the discourse on the
Afro-Asian exchange highlights this movement from India to the West, where India
is often observed as a centre of intellectual and religious illumination. Indeed, after
his trip to India, Thurman set out to develop an alternative Christian discourse that
did focus on removing worldwide colour lines (Chabot 27, emphasis in original).
Collet.
Hal Green, who performed in a number of jazz groups in Bombay, claimed that
tours of nationally-recognised dance bands in India in the 1920s inspired local
bands, including Franklin with his Crimson Wranglers, Vincent and Kenneth
Cumines and Everst Gallyot in Bangalore (Collet). Green himself directed The
Elite Band that took Bombay by storm in 19331934 (Ibid.). Ken Mac is another
musician credited as being one of the earliest jazz leaders in India. There is no
indication that these groups performed the popular hot music, which emphasised
high-energy performance. Judging by band names such as Elite, jazz musicians
likely resorted to a repertoire that was classic and tempered. Travelling orchestras,
however, were exceptions. Lequimes Grand Hotel Orchestra, fronted by Canadian
Jimmy Lequime on trumpet, was hired by the Grand Hotel in Calcutta for a short
period, where they recorded two foxtrots, Soho-Blues and The House Where The
Shutters are Green with HMV India (P-7094) in 1926. For Rainer E. Lotz, these two
recordings were far above the usual doo-wacka-doo displayed by other hotel bands
of the period, even when compared to those in the United States, whose style
reflects and mirrors contemporary jazz arrangements (Lotz).
Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 7.
A Soubrette is a comical, maidservant character who is mischievous and light
hearted.
Advertisements for Indian music and dance that I found in other English-language
publications are often described as exotic.
For more, see advertisements for the Trocadero, Roy G. Butler Collection, Music
Information Center, Chicago Public Library.
Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 8.
Ibid.

THEY TREAT US WHITE FOLKS FINE

32

33
34
35
36

37
38
39
40
41
42
43

44

45
46
47

48
49
50
51
52

Much of the timeline during this period is unknown because of conflicting

information from a number of primary and secondary sources. The material here is
from the Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public
Library.
From the Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public
Library.
Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 8.
Ibid.
The Roy G. Butler Collection at the Music Information Center of the Chicago
Public Library contains a Strictly Confidential document dated 6 July 1942 from
the American Consul in Bombay to US citizens in India that invites all Americans in
India, particularly women and children and those having no urgent or compelling
reason for remaining in India, to return to the United States while there still
remains an opportunity for them to do so.
Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 189.
Darke and Gulliver, 1977, 176.
Travis 83.
The history of blackface minstrelsy weighed significantly on black performers in
India, and accounted for part of their attraction. Racism and musical virtuosity in
India were not mutually exclusive categories.
Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information Center, Chicago Public Library.
Ibid.
The earliest recording of jazz in India was by the Lequimes Grand Hotel Orchestra
in Calcutta in 1926. Jimmy Lequime led this orchestra and recorded the SohoBlues, a foxtrot, and House Where the Shutters are Green (HMV India P-7094)
with the well-known banjo player A. Bowlly, who was travelling in India with
Edgar Adeler and his Syncopaters.
Beginning in 1941, he recorded more extensively. Most of the tracks are standard
Hollywood songs. Some of the recordings in 1944 and 1945 were made with the
popular American crooner Bob Lee, who was stationed with the United States Air
Force in Calcutta.
Rex ME 7994-A. Recorded in Bombay.
See Badger (4867) for a list of some of Thompsons recordings with James Reece
Europe in 1919 and a discussion of Smiths role in the early development of jazz.
Darke and Gulliver 184. Dorothy Baker, who sang with Mario and His Band at the
same time in Sri Lanka, tells a story in Storyville 65 (1976): [o]nce we got Teddy to
play a Viennese waltz; that was the first we had together and to introduce him we
said come on, you play with us. It was the Blue Danube and it was the only time we
saw Teddy fall on flat on his face; he couldnt handle it [h]e was fascinated by it
but acknowledged it was tricky. Weatherfords wife Lorna Shortland crooned on
many of the songs, and many of the pieces were rumbas and classical jazz, including
music by Hoagy Carmichael and George Gershwin.
Ibid.
An early example of this was Reuben Solomans Jive Boys, a 14-piece band that
included many of Weatherfords members. They recorded about 24 tracks with
Colombia records.
Kvetko 61. See also Fernandes.
Darke and Gulliver, 1976, 185.
Fernandes; Kvetko 61; Pinckney 37.

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SOUTH ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

53
54
55

56

57
58
59
60
61

Fernandes.
Ibid.
The late 1930s and early 1940s saw a transformation and reorganization of the film
music industry (Barnouw and Krishnaswamy). With the advent of the microphone
and other sound technologies, the popular playback system became more standard,
characterised by actors lip synchronising songs recorded by vocalists in studios
(Skillman 135). Musicians were increasingly hired to perform on foreign
instruments, adding new character to regional styles highlighted in many films.
In an effort to appeal to a larger and more lucrative market, foreign elements were
used as a common denominator in a linguistically, musically, politically, and
economically diverse country.
Barnouw and Krishnaswamy 148. An increase in the number of films in the 1940s
and 1950s that appealed to larger audiences offered the potential for composers to
pioneer a wider diversity of musical styles (Arnold 182). The first music directors
were largely theatre musicians who brought their own regional styles with them to
the industry. When Hindi film production started to increase rapidly, more
composers and musicians throughout India arrived in Bombay and Madras to profit
from its lucrative yields, which lead to a multiplication of the sources from which
[musicians and composers] drew inspiration (Arnold 186). According to Peter
Manuel, since the 1940s many of the folk forms that were important in the
production of film music were modernised with the addition of pre-composed
orchestral accompaniment, employing Western and/or Indian instruments
(Manuel 164). The avant-garde, modern, and transnationalist sensibility that
Indian film often afforded was appealing to the cosmopolitan music aesthetic of
Goans, and was perhaps one important element in attracting many to the film song
industry.
Many of these elements of Latin music were drawn from stereotypes found in
Hollywood films.
Times of India, Bombay Edition, 2 November 1951.
From descriptions of their performances in the Times of India and program brochures
from the Chicago Public Library, Roy G. Butler Collection, Music Information
Center.
Times of India, Bombay Edition, 9 November 1951.
Vasudevan 99.

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Discography
Jazz and Hot Dance in India-19261944, LP, Harlequin (HQ 2013), 1984.
Taj Mahal-Foxtrot, Rex (ME 7994-A), 1936.

Bradley Shope Department of Fine Arts, St Johns University, Queens, NY 11439, USA.
[email: shopeb@stjohns.edu]