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For freedom in music
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Dutch saxaphone player Maarten Visser enthralled the audience at Our Place with his mesmerising jazz performance.
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CAPTIVE AUDIENCE: It was a feast for jazz lovers.
HAVING ARRIVED in Chennai in October 1998, with the singular purpose of learning Carnatic music, Dutch saxophone player, Maarten Visser, stayed on. But in the process, learnt much more (perhaps a lot else) than simply the grammar of Carnatic music. Maarten has since produced an album on Jazz music, called MadraZ, with Keith Peters and Paul Jacob - a recording of their first performance together - "which was rather raw" (he claims). Besides, he has been busy working on music compositions for the dance productions of the critically acclaimed modern dancer Padmini Chettur in Chennai. A Bharatanatyam dancer by training, Padmini was in Chandralekha's group, and later branched out on her own. She is a modern dancer of formidable presence in Chennai. Maarten has also given performances - both solo and with groups - at few places in India and abroad. He has teamed up with musicians such as Keith Peters, Karthick (ghatam), Paul Jacob, Kadri Gopalnath (saxophone) and others, basically concentrating on Jazz and Blues.
Maarten Visser was in Hyderabad, enthralling lovers of Jazz as part of the Fourth Anniversary celebration of the restaurant Our Place, in Banjara Hills on March 20. Accompanied by Neil on the guitar, Maarten played some soul stirring and enchanting Jazz, amidst a set of confirmed Jazz buffs, under a clear starry night sky and elegant breeze, irrespective of all that ado about cricket.
"I was five years old when I first heard the Saxophone," he informs. "I loved the instrument instantly; when I was fifteen I knew I wanted to learn it and began training. It clicked. After finishing school (I studied psychology) I went to a conservatory in Holland to continue my music training." Maarten came to Chennai in 1998, "to learn Carnatic music, essentially, which I had heard at a concert in Holland, and liked. I was looking for some kind of subtlety in form, which I thought Carnatic music had. My family did not take my desire to visit Chennai seriously then. Later, they supported me." But the search was not as fruitful as he would have wanted it to be. He says, "I realised I was not getting too far with learning Carnatic music - perhaps I met the wrong people; either it was the high fees I was expected to pay because I was a white man, or they decided I could not pick up the nuances, it was difficult to interact with the Carnatic musicians. I didn't know their language. It was an enormous struggle. I had an idea to write music for Carnatic musicians to play. And hence I needed to learn the technique, not the form. The technique of the gamakam, for instance; not the stylised structure of the composition. It was impossible to find people willing to question these givens."
BLOWING HOT: Maarten Visser feels jazz is good tool to learn music. — Photo: P.V. Sivakumar
He initially banked on a fellowship, which stopped mid way, and thereafter, played at various joints to earn a living, including working with film music - he has been part of the team with some of the leading and popular film music composers in both Tamil and Telugu cinema, but he is very clear that "it was purely for survival." Since 2000, Maarten has been collaborating with Padmini in her productions. "The work I do for dance takes an enormous amount of time; but it is also one of my main reasons to stay in Chennai. It is an experiment wherein one is forced to find new ways.
Music has its own story, and one has to amplify movement - in dance - without killing it. It is both difficult and challenging."
Speaking of fusion music, he says, "when people like Vikku Vinayakaram dabbled with the idea - with Shakti - in the 1970s, it was very fresh. I have done some fusion stuff with Kadri Gopalnath. But I felt it was not musically valid. They compromised on their form due to influence from popular music (films and so on). I found there was not enough knowledge of western music to do that kind of fusion. It was the same with me, with regard to Carnatic." For Maarten , Jazz "is a good tool for anyone to learn music. It is about freedom with musical vocabulary, and harmony. Everyone should learn it. There is freedom with the instrument and the (musical/compositional) material. To sound like you, is important in music."
With Padmini Chettur, Maarten has toured many festivals abroad, including Theatre Denneville in Paris, the Berlin Theatre, and last year, the production, Fragility (which was performed earlier in Chennai at the Other Festival, in the year 2001), toured Germany and was performed at the Dusseldorf theatre. The same will be staged at the Spring Dance in Holland in April this year. Maarten is busy with another group production for June this year, titled Three Solos and is currently working on a solo saxophone production, which might take him a year to complete. As for the audiences, Maarten believes even in a place like Chennai those that qualify as serious listeners are in a minority. But for him, Chennai is a place where music is still very much alive, and good to live in. However, home is still back in Holland, where he keeps shuttling to and fro, and would ultimately go back to. And Hyderabad, he would love to come back to, he says, seeing the applause and admiration for his performance at Our Place, and provided, serious music lovers invite him back again.
R. UMA MAHESHWARI
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