Jazz found a welcome home in Bollywood: American guitarist

Tracing back India's connection with jazz music to the 1920s, American guitarist Stanley Jordan says the musical genre "found a welcome home in Bollywood".

The musician is in the Capital to perform at the Jazz Utsav here today.

"There is a long history of jazz in India going back to the 1920s. Many African-American jazz musicians toured to India to be free from the racial discrimination in the US at the time. The audiences here identified with the theme of freedom in the music as it validated their own aspirations to be free of colonialism.

"Jazz also found a welcome home in Bollywood as it did in Hollywood. Besides that, both jazz and Indian classical music feature improvisation, so I think there was a common resonance in the cultural traditions as well," Jordon, an ardent fan of Pandit Ravi Shankar and L Shankar, told

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)