The Kolachi Quartet’s jazz thing

Gumby has a new look. Gone is the body-hugging straight hair and in place he now has thin braids with strands of hair sticking out from them. The result is definitely dramatic and adds glamour to his already intense persona.

We are at Nabila’s salon and the boys – Emu (Imran Momina/keyboards), Khalid Khan (bass guitar), Abbas Premjee (classical guitar) and Gumby (Luis J. Pinto/drums) – have just gotten new, hip, rock ‘n’ roll-oriented dos from the Queen of Style herself, Nabila. Standing nearby is the designer known for dressing up most of the musicians in the industry: Munib Nawaz. He is responsible for the carefully-tailored, stylish suits the boys are wearing. The occasion? The aforementioned musicians have come together and formed a band, predominantly jazz and improvisation-oriented, with a distinct ethnic flavour to their music. And together, they call themselves The Kolachi Quartet.

“The reason why we call it a quartet is because it’s sort of associated with jazz and improvised music,” says Gumby about their chosen band name, “all of us don’t want to be pressurised into just playing jazz. If you go to a place like South Africa for instance, the jazz music there is very different from the jazz played in the New York music scene.”

“It’s very folk actually”, adds Abbas. Where the rest of the musicians are fairly popular because of their somewhat pop-music presence and appeal, Abbas is a guitar maestro well-known in the music circles and has been at it for quite some time, his area of specialization being the classical guitar.

About the different kinds of jazz music predominant in different areas of the world, Gumby says that “the reason being that they bring their ethnic instruments and rhythmic patterns into it, so it has a very different flavour which you won’t hear anywhere else in the world. That’s the best thing about improvised music and the best improvised form in the western music industry has got to be jazz.

“That’s where this whole eastern element came into being,” he continued, “where Abbas started playing the mohan bina and – which was the icing on the cake – we had someone like Emu who is well-versed in both the western and eastern style of playing and together, you have this great melodic section going. It fits in perfectly because you’ve got two kinds of listeners: rhythmic or melodic, and usually in Pakistan you get a mix of both.”

He of course means to say that he himself, being the drummer, forms the rhythmic section of the band.

Before delving into the technicalities of their music, it’s important to understand how the band was formed in the first place. Roughly around six months back, Abbas and Gumby got together for a little jam session. “I’d just gotten back from tour and I didn’t have anything happening so I met him at Faisal Rafi’s studio”, related Gumby, “I got a bunch of old musicians I was playing with and we rehearsed together and jammed at a local café. That happened for a while but there were a lot of inconsistencies with the other musicians.”

And is that when Gumby suggested they include Emu and Khalid instead? “I’d mentioned Emu and Khalid from day one but the other musicians happened to be available so we played with them.” The recommendation doesn’t come as a surprise since Gumby has been acquainted with Emu and Khalid for years and has also performed with them on several occasions.

Abbas’ exposure to Emu and Khalid’s playing came when he heard them practice for an Alamgir performance held a couple of months back. “He came down to Emu’s studio and heard them and a couple of hours later he called me and asked me to find out whether Emu would be interested in playing in a gig that was happening at the Sindh Club,” said Gumby, continuing the story.

“That was my audition actually,” Emu added with a laugh. Popularity as a musician aside, Emu brings with him several years of music-playing experience, so it sounds somewhat odd that he’d still have to audition to get into a band.

“I’d only heard Emu play stuff with Fuzon, which was very background rolls and coming to the front,” responded Abbas defensively, but Gumby rushed to his defence stating that “no one has really heard Emu play”, implying that there was more to Emu’s keyboard-playing than previously exposed.

Practice is a key element when performing together as a band. It helps bring different elements that each band-member brings with him and (ideally-speaking) it fine-tunes these elements into a perfectly coordinated symphony of sound. “Everyone is a seasoned musician here and we’re all professional,” says Gumby emphasising on the lack of time each can give to practicing for long periods at a stretch. “We just want to perform,” he says continuing that “so we do our homework at home, come together for a few days and do the gig”.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been playing together,” adds Emu, “and as Gumby mentioned: we’re seasoned musicians. So it’s easy to tune into the right wavelength between Gumby, Khalid and myself – we grew up together. And we know about Abbas and how he plays.”

Which brings me to another point: where improvisational music is concerned, it is imperative that there be a good form of communication and understanding between all of the musicians involved. Each has to be familiar with the other musician’s style of playing, enough to know when, where and how a particular musician intends on advancing in a certain composition and keep up and/or play around that. Where Emu, Gumby and Khalid are concerned, their acquaintance with each other goes way back and as mentioned before, they have performed together at different venues on several occasions. So how then, when Abbas steps in, do they end up adapting to a completely new style of music?

“That’s where our experience comes in,” replied Emu, “we’ve been listening to music for a long time. Aap ko adat ho jati hai”.

“You can take two people from across the globe and put them together and ask them to jam”, elaborated Abbas, “music is not like English or any other language that we know of – it is something through which you can communicate. There are instances of jazz musicians coming out here and playing with classical musicians. These are two completely different things, but they work when brought together.” Emu points out that, “one of the best things about this collaboration is that Abbas’ background (in music) is completely different,” and that he brings in the classical guitar element into it. Agreeably so, Abbas’s individual sound is very different from what Emu, Gumby and Khalid sound like when together.

“His playing is very different from most guitar players,” Gumby reinstated, “what I really like is that out here, there is not really a rat-race about who’s the better musician. Our playing is more about picking off vibes, it’s like a dialogue.

“When I’m playing and the reason why I’m looking at him and smiling or laughing,” he added, pointing towards Emu, “is because I know he’s trying to reply back to me (musically) in the same humour that we would normally speak in.”

“Eye contact bohat zaroori hota hai,” added Emu. “If you notice, our set up is done in a way in which we can see each other,” said Gumby.

“And it’s always been like that,” finished Emu for him.

Considering that jazz music, with or without a local flavour in it, isn’t the most popular form of music in Pakistan by any standards, would it be safe to say that this quartet of musicians haven’t gotten into it for commercial purposes? “You see there is the marketing side of things and then you have the creative side of things. That’s where Nabila came into the picture,” replied Gumby, “when she heard us play, she saw it from both aspects. She saw something that’s happening here – which is not happening anywhere else in the country – and she also saw the potential, because she builds images. And like she said, you can only sell something that you believe in, if you don’t, you can’t”.

“This is just a wrapper,” added Nabila about the re-done look and overall appearance of the band, “the product has to be right and it is. It’s not that this kind of music isn’t just happening anywhere in Pakistan, it’s not happening anywhere in the world: because it has a very Karachi feel to it.”

At this point, all I’ve heard is jazz, improvisations, practice sessions and live performances. Do they have plans for recording their music? “Recordings are like photographs, like memories. So it’s important that we do,” said Gumby thoughtfully, “Off course we’re not going to sell as much as somebody like Abrar or Atif, but like I say: if Mc. Donald’s sells the most burgers in the world, that really doesn’t make them the best restaurant. So here, it’s about quality and not quantity.

“That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for a market that will appreciate something like this and will want it. The man on the street will not want to listen to this, he won’t understand it.”

“It’s got to start,” added Abbas, rather strongly, “we’re trying to introduce jazz to the people here as another option of music. This is a culture that should be built around the soul (where music is concerned). Maybe other people will take the initiative and do the same thing.”