When Bollywood and jazz came together

American jazz quartet Paul Beaudry and Pathways, who are on their Indian tour, decided to mesmerise their fans in the capital by playing'Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge'from'Sholay'during a concert here.

The jazz group, on their'Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad'tour, started off with Brazilian and Mexican songs but decided to follow it up with one of the hit numbers of 1975 action-adventure film.


"An Indian in one of the concerts met me and mailed me three songs, when we heard this song, we got the idea that yes we can play this song and that's jazz. We wanted to play something which everybody already know because we wanted to connect with the audience,"said Bennett Paster, the keyboard player in the group.

And they are not averse to composing music in the Hindi film industry."Bollywood is fantastic, its celebrates life with music,"said Beaudry.The musician said he always wanted to perform in India. Beaudry termed his 30-day-tour as a"special journey of his life".

The group had already performed in Kolkata, Banglore, Assam and Hyderabad before coming to the capital for the Delhi International Arts Festival.They count Indian flute master Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar as great inspiration."One thing that I have learnt from Indian music is the power of simple melody and how each note in scale can be so important.