Last week, after accidentally landing in Kathmandu, New York vibraphonist and composer Ted Piltzecker found himself performing at a cozy jazz concert at the Patan Museum with an Austrian jazz band–Triple Ace.

Two months ago, when Piltzecker, a professor of composition on a sabbatical, packed his bags to travel places he had never been to before, with music as his one way ticket; Nepal was not on his list among other countries like Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Turkey and India. With a playful wink, Piltzecker confesses, “Although I knew Nepal is a country of mountains, I didn’t know any better, and hence it was not in my plans. But, when the Indian immigration office didn’t entertain my one-way-ticket venture, I bought an outbound ticket to Kathmandu. Ever since I landed here out of the blue, I have found myself on a phenomenal musical adventure.”

In the short two weeks he has been here, Kathmandu has inspired Piltzecker so much that he is giving back to the city with an accidental, final concert in Asia, dubbed Ted Piltzecker and his Nepalese Adventures Ensemble, this Sunday. For the occasion, he has put together an ensemble of local and international musicians featuring Spanish composer Mariano Abello on saxophone, and local musicians Rajat Rai on guitar, Patrick Baniya on bass and Mark Rani on drums.

In between training musicians at the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory (KJC) and offering a series of workshops in composition, Piltzecker has noticed that Nepal is still very much at the foundational phase when it comes to jazz.

One of the most hybrid forms of music in the world, jazz emerged as an independent musical style in African American communities of New Orleans during the late 19th century. The genre then insidiously spread around the world, drawing on different musical cultures, taking on many distinctive styles and branching off into different sub-genres—including cool jazz, free jazz, hard bop, and smooth jazz. It was not until the late 80s–approximately a century after the genre’s inception–that Nepal witnessed its first homegrown jazz artists. A decade later the country would see its first ever jazz club.

“Originally, Jazz Upstairs wasn’t so much about jazz as it was about replica momos and aloodum from Darjeeling,”Rajat Rai, the guitarist of Cadenza–Nepal’s first local jazz band– spills the beans. The founding members of the band started hanging out at Upstairs mostly for food before they decided to start experimenting with jazz in 1998 and collaborated with Jojo, the proprietor of Upstairs, to convert the venue into a full-fledged jazz club–Jazz Upstairs.

Rai, who started playing for Cadenza only in 2005, recalls how he switched to jazz from rock and blues. When he first arrived in Kathmandu from Darjeeling in 2000, he was a 17-year-old on a holiday with absolutely no plans of building a musical career in Nepal. While here, he got an opportunity to play for Abhaya and Steam Injuns and dove headlong into the then-burgeoning rock scene. Soon, he would come across other original, local artists of the time. Then, when he first saw Cadenza performing at the Jazzmandu Festival; he was completely awestruck by Pravin Chhetri, Navin Chhetri and Jigme Sherpa among others. “I just knew I had to learn jazz. I am still learning jazz”, Rai confesses. 

Rai fell in love with jazz mostly because of its spontaneous and ever evolving nature, “Jazz is fresh and new every single time. You can never have or know enough of it. It just keeps pushing you to do more, learn more, and experiment more,” 10 years down, he is still as excited about the genre as he once was. Today, he is also a mentor at KJC.

In the 10 years of his jazz career, Rai reckons the genre as ‘definitely growing’ but reiterates that it might always struggle to boom in a way rock, or even metal, has in Nepal. “If you come to Jazz Upstairs or attend the annual Jazzmandu festival, you will notice that they are always houseful. But, jazz will always be a low-profile genre that caters to a niche audience. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea,” Rai shared. 

The number of Nepali jazz enthusiasts, however, is growing steadily, if slowly. According to Rai, as of now, less than a quarter of the total audience that fills up jazz gigs across the country is Nepali, the rest still includes tourists, expats and travelling musicians.  

Subash Jung Pande–popularly known by his stage-name Jacko Wacko—a 29-year-old multi-instrumental jazz musician, claims, “But there are not many local jazz artists either.”For Pande, jazz has been the love of his life. Just 14 years old when he was first introduced to jazz, he started playing professionally by the time he was 19.

Since then, he has embraced multiple styles of jazz and played as a bassist, trumpeter and composer for several bands such as Inner Groove, Herbal People, Mad Jazz Quartet and now the eminent 1974 AD. 

Having immersed himself in Kathmandu’s jazz scene for a decade, Pande has seen artists come and go without leaving behind a legacy. “Perhaps, it’s because, one, jazz is difficult to master; and two, it does not give an artist easy access to audiences, fame, and money here in Nepal. It breaks my heart to see that there are only few musicians that are invested in the genre,” he adds, “While jazz resonates with freedom, it also demands practice, perseverance and passion.” Even today, Pande spends two to five hours practicing music when he is not rehearsing or composing. Pande looks at jazz as an ever evolving process; every performance and rhythmic variation is more often than not, different from the last one and a lesson in itself.

Pande wishes there were more than just couple of annual festivals and at least a couple more institutions like KJC that expose people to a musical world as rich as jazz. “Musical education is very important; even if people don’t turn out to be musicians, they at least, learn to listen and appreciate the sounds,” says Pande. He believes that learning jazz has opened up his ears. 

As a mentor at KJC, Rai shares how there are students who want to pursue jazz, but that modern technology has made the new generation slightly lazy. In his hey-day, he transcribed music with his ears; relentlessly destroying cassette tapes as he played and paused until he finally figured out the notes. Today, students transcribe with their eyes, watching videos on YouTube. While it might be twice as efficient, it is not half as good when it comes to internalising the music. And in turn, even as there are aspiring jazz artists, Rai fears that they might fail to understand the depth that the genre intends.

Talking about teaching and learning jazz; Piltzecker shares a lesson worth his five-decade long musical career, “Learning jazz is like learning a new language: if you want to be fluent, you just have to surround yourself with people who speak and understand the language; all the time. You have to go out there and communicate in the language.”

He adds, “Jazz is like a dialect; sure, it varies across countries, cultures and generations, and the tools are different, the styles are different; but the commonality lies not in what is communicated but how it is communicated. The commonality lies in how the performer and the audience connect to one another and become whole as they immerse into the music.” 

Piltzecker, Rai, and Pande come from different cultures and different generations; but they all hold a common belief that jazz can evolve in a society only if the artists let their passion overcome their hunger for fame, and develop their craft to connect and communicate. “Today, music is my ticket to the world, but I struggled for 25 years before I had a stable job in music that paid my bills. Passion is important,” shares Piltzecker.  “Jazz is about getting out of the box: it’s about freeing yourself and running after money is just going to tie you up.”

For Rai and Pande; it looks to be a while before Nepali music lovers develop an ear for their music. But, they don’t see themselves as ‘struggling’ or ‘lesser’ musicians compared to rock and pop stars. In Rai’s words “when the music you make brings you happiness; you don’t struggle, you just grow.” Hungry for good audience that reciprocates their music where they can perform at a meditative level; these jazz artists believe that fame will come and go, but jazz is here to stay.