#LifeIsMusic: How Ranjit Barot became the man behind the drums

A chance moment in class led Ranjit Barot on a musical journey he had not anticipated. Barot was 13 when he raised his hand to play the drums for a school competition. While he says he "played like complete crap", it wasn't long before he was hooked to the instrument, yearning to learn more. 

Barot grew up with both eastern and western influences of music. His mother, the Kathak queen Sitara Devi, bought him his first set of drums after making him perform for her in the music store. Growing up watching his mother rehearse, he had the chance to watch some of the greatest Hindustani classical musicians play. 

A turning point in Barot's journey was his audition for jazz maestro Louiz Banks in 1980. The audition led to experiences that opened up the world of music for him.

Here is an excerpt of how the audition went-

Niranjan Jhaveri, a Jazz aficionado who in the 1950s founded and edited the first Indian Jazz periodical called ‘Blue Rhythm’, along with Godfather of Jazz in India Louiz Banks was auditioning for setting up a Jazz sextet to play at the Jazz Yatra festival of 1980. A young Barot, who had long been a fan of Banks’s work, landed up.

“He looked like an actor; handsome, long hair. I remember I had picked a very complex composition of mine for the audition. It was a piece called City Life, it was our tour de force of the band. It was a 30 minute-long piece, with different, odd time signature that was certainly not easy to play,” Banks reminisces.

“You see, the audition piece was in 10-and-a-half beat. For Waterfront, I had composed a piece in 21 beats, half of which was 10-and-a-half,” Barot says, with an infectious smile on his face.

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