Asha Puthli

Deepti Datt

Well, you look great. And welcome back.

Asha Puthli

Oh, thank you.

Deepti Datt

It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Asha Puthli

Thank you.

Deepti Datt

So getting into a little bit of your background, I want to start with where the film ended, which is one of your most famous quotes. It says, “I’m spiritually 6,000 years old, I’m mentally 98.”

Asha Puthli

Yes, emotionally five. And you can see that because I got so moved at the sneak preview. I’m very emotional, so that’s the five part, five years old.

Deepti Datt

OK. It’s a curious quote. It’s a curious quote and while...

Asha Puthli

It just came instinctively to me, this was in a quote. The first time I said it was to Philip Oakes in the London Times. And for some odd reason, I forget, they used to always wonder how old I am. And I was a little fed up of explaining to them. So I guess I just said, “Well I’m 6,000 years spiritually. I’m mentally 98.”

But I meant it because in the Hindu culture, to be born... I’m born into a particular family called the Saraswat Brahmins. And that particular community, I was told that to be born a Brahmin you can not be converted into Hinduism as such, and that to be born you had to have at least 6,000 years of existence before.

So I guess subconciously that was in my head and I said, “Well I’m spiritually 6,000 in that case and mentally 98,” because when I was very young I used to read a lot. Things that... I don’t know why, but I did read André Gide, [Harry Graf] Kessler, [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky, you name it. [Jean-Paul] Sartre. Not just European but also Indian literature. But since I went to an English-speaking school, of course my Indian literature was not as deep.

Deepti Datt

So I want to tie this little bit back; so you said you are from a particular type of family. Now when we speak about specifically the Saraswat Brahmins, it’s the Konkan coast, and Maharashtra [state], with the Kula Sangeet tradition. Kula Sangeet has to do with clan or family lineages of music. And you’ve grown up steeped in this.

Asha Puthli

Not really, no.

Deepti Datt

So you were trained in classical music in your Bombay years.

Asha Puthli

My sister was studying Indian classical from... Actually he was called Gandharva. His full title was Guni Gandharva Pandit Laxman Prasad Jaipurwale.

Deepti Datt

Your teacher.

Asha Puthli

My teacher. That was my sister’s teacher and I used to love him and she had the most amazing... She still has the most amazing voice. And so I was inspired by her, really, and that’s how I studied that. And then I was fascinated by opera, so I studied opera from a wonderful woman in [Mumbai suburb] Dadar called Hyacinth Brown, and she had me sit for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Where they come here, as they did in those days; if you sat for your Cambridge exam, they’d come from England to take your exam.

Deepti Datt

So when you spoke about the teacher as a Gandharva: This lineage of Gandharvas, this mythology around Gandharvas and Apsaras has to do with artists who have trained across many lifetimes and rebirths.

Asha Puthli

Yes.

Deepti Datt

So that ties nicely in with how you have somewhat sought a cosmic identity, you’ve looked out to outer space and being a little elevated beyond what would be the human experience. So there’s a foundation around the whole classical arts in India that has very much to do with the artist as a medium to the divine, extending beyond the mortals.

The classical training, whether it was in the Hindustani classical or with the opera, did it give you a foundation? Do you feel it gave you a foundation that let you explore well beyond, into outer space, into the cosmic identity?

Asha Puthli

I think so. I think music is a spiritual experience, no matter what kind of music, it is a spiritual experience. And I think it’s in the Rigveda, where it says... I hope I remember it correctly, but it goes, “If you want to master the art of image making, you have to first master the art of sculpture. And if you want to master the art of sculpture, you have to then master the art of dance.” I mean it goes on, “If you want to master the art of dance, then you’ve got to master the art of music. And if you master the art of music, that’s really the basis.” So it starts from there.

Deepti Datt

You once said, and I’m quoting you, “You’re an artist, normality must have been so challenging for you,” unquote. Do you believe as an artist your differentiation as a person, your personality, do you think it makes you so different as to be out of a context? Is that what was happening to you in Bombay at the time that you were here?

Asha Puthli

Oh absolutely. I think most artists, not just me, but every artist, I think, would probably feel that way. Because they go with a different beat, they go to the beat of a different drummer.

Deepti Datt

You have spoken to being circular instead of geometric and that you march to a different beat, so we know that there is a uniqueness to what you brought. There was a uniqueness in your experience that rendered you able to approach things with a very differentiated engagement.

So we are looking at this uniqueness. There was also a rebellion against what your context was. Women your age, in say 1969, which is when you left and went Stateside, at that time, were mostly being married. It would have been an arranged marriage and you would have been married off into a family. But you chose to do something pretty radical for the times.

Asha Puthli

Most people of my generation, if there are any here, we, usually my sister included, my brother too, we all had arranged marriages. And by the time you were 18, you graduated from college and the next thing was you got married and had children and blah blah blah.

But the rebellion really was because... And I think one of the reasons I got so attracted to jazz was not just the fact that there’s a tremendous similarity between Indian classical and jazz. There’s the whole thing about the improvisation, the minor chords, the freeform, the liberalness about the art, that particular form, which attracted me to jazz. But it was also the fact that it came from a repressed people. Jazz belongs to the black American experience.

So I think, deep down inside, that may have been subconsciously something that attracted me, because I felt women were a suppressed creature here. Suppressed... I’m sorry, sometimes I stumble a little for words. I’m glad we’re doing this now before I get too old. But it’s making you laugh, it’s not making me laugh. [laughter]

Deepti Datt

It’s a very timely statement you made, you said that you related to jazz as a black American experience because yes, it comes from oppression, very much. Yeah, you could have related well to it because of what the feminine experience in India has been.

Asha Puthli

Yeah, the control factor. And especially if you are an artist, we are like wild horses. We are very liberal in our way of thinking and most artists therefore are socialists, or call themselves Democrats, because we’re very liberal in our way of thinking.

Deepti Datt

So did you feel restricted in Bombay, 1969?

Asha Puthli

Absolutely, yes, of course. And I just told you, my parents wanted me to go to a specific college. I wanted to go to Sir JJ School of Art, you all probably know it’s right here, or Sophia College or St. Xavier’s. and my parents said, “Oh no no, you’re getting too wild here.” They sent me to Baroda, to MS University and it was to the home economics department, so that I would learn how to cook and sew I guess, but no, I’m joking. They taught child psychology and nutrition and foods and stuff like that. But that was the underlying thing.

Deepti Datt

So your compulsion was to get out, you wanted to get out.

Asha Puthli

Yes, I did. Once I heard jazz music which was on the Voice of America and it used to come only at a specific time at night. And I said, “Gosh, this is so amazing what they’re doing.” So I said I would love to combine Indian classical with jazz and form a third stream music that was an inspiration from MJQ [Modern Jazz Quartet], who had done that sort of stuff. And so that’s it. What was it? [laughs]

Deepti Datt

To get out. And jazz was your calling, it was jazz that was saying, “Come on out, come on out and play.”

Asha Puthli

You see, I wanted to sing jazz and go there and meet real jazz musicians and stuff like that. I felt I must do that.

Deepti Datt

So this is when this break happened with what was traditional and linear, and home and family. Did you know this is it? If I want to do something, if I want to get out and make music the way I want to make it, it means having to leave all of this behind.

Asha Puthli

It never strikes you when you’re young; and any artist who’s in this crowd, when you have a certain passion and a desire, you have to go for it. And you have to go for it so completely, because with that passion you can manifest anything you want. Anything you want, and I mean that. Because for me, it’s amazing, it was almost like the planets were in conspiracy with my thoughts. Anything I desired came my way.

So what happened was, when I was 18 and after graduation, how I got out is what you want to know, obviously.

Deepti Datt

What happened? How did that happen? How did you make it out?

Asha Puthli

When I was 18 my dad had given me a car and my neighbor, who was much older than I was, and I admired tremendously... And I’d applied to every university at this point. I’ve graduated from Baroda, I’ve applied to Juilliard, Syracuse, all the American universities, Berkeley. And they all wrote back and said, “Sorry, we don’t have scholarships for jazz.” This is 1967, ’66, ’67. I graduated in ’65. And I was so disappointed. I thought, “God, not one university has a scholarship for me, this is terrible.”

And it so happened that my neighbor, who was a stewardess, had said, “Oh, can you drop me to Churchgate?” I used to live in the suburbs, and so I took her in my car. I loved being with her because she always smelled so good and she had these beautiful underwear from trips. [laughs] So I took her to Churchgate, and as we entered, the general manager came up to me and said, “Oh my god, why don’t girls like you come for the interview? We’ve gone through 500 girls, we’re only looking for two girls, we haven’t even found one. But you speak Hindi, you speak Marathi, Gujarati, blah blah blah, and English,” and he said, “Would you like to fly for us?” And I thought it’ll be impossible, my parents will say no because it’s considered being a waitress in the air. Of course, I turned it around, I called it sophisticated hitchhiking.

So when I got it, I said, “Well, I really won’t be able to do it because...” Meanwhile, of course, my parents have told me, “If you’re not going for the arranged marriage, we will... Sit for your master’s and then we’ll send you for your doctorate to America, because that’s where you want to go.” This was their little... Which would take another four years before I got there. And then he said the magic words to me, he said, “We’ll get your passport for you in two weeks and then you go to London for two months of training.” I almost fell on the floor. I said, “Yes, OK. I’m doing it.” Because in those days, those of you who are very young, you have it very easy now if you want to go out, there’s also such a phenomena as the Indian tourist. But when I was young, there was no such category as an Indian tourist because the Indian rupee was not convertible. I’m talking about the ’60s and soon after, we had independence and stuff. So you couldn’t take money out, number one, so no country wanted you. You couldn’t get a visa, you had to get a P Form, a permission to leave. Only then would you get a passport. And so there were all these restraints put on us.

So when he said, “Two weeks passport,” the magic word, I said, “I’m in.” So that’s how I got in, but it was a means to an end for me. And I made it very clear when I had to meet the British part of British Airways, the general manager, and she was right there, and she said, “Why would you like to be a stewardess?” And I said, “It’s not really that I want to be a stewardess, but I like the idea of the juxtaposition of time and space and cultures. And this is one way I’ll be able to learn about it. And that was what got me... I was in, anyway. I mean they’d already taken me in. So that was it. So I got out.

Deepti Datt

So you got out flying.

Asha Puthli

For exactly one year. I got out for one year exactly.

Deepti Datt

Excellent.

Asha Puthli

I mean I traveled for one year as a steward, two months training and another ten months flying, which was a wonderful experience, but at the end of the ten months, I gave in my resignation. And there was a reason I did that of course. In the interim, while I was flying, Martha Graham had come here to do a show and I was so disappointed that there was no university that was giving me a scholarship. Berkeley by the way, started a jazz department around that time, ’69 or ’67, but they had no scholarships.

When I met Martha Graham, I went backstage and I said, “Could I...” Because I’d studied Indian classical dance, and I said, “Look, I’m looking for a scholarship and I haven’t found one for jazz music. But since you do jazz modern dance, and I’ve studied Bharatanatyam and Odissi and blah blah blah, and I’d like to do the same thing and combine movement. Could I do that?” She said yes, but now there was a stumbling block, she said, “You can, but you have to come and audition for me,” the same old thing. So it was like a catch-22 and I said, “Oh my god, how am I going to get there?” So the stewardess thing worked fine, it worked and then I went there a year later. I auditioned and that’s how I got my scholarship and my visa. And I went.

Deepti Datt

So it was a flow, you had to get out by any means possible and you made it out. And in New York, when you did the audition and got into the Martha Graham academy, did you have an idea that dance is what you were going to pursue or was it again a means to an end?

Asha Puthli

No, it was a means to an end. It was music, it was always music.

Deepti Datt

OK. So in New York, what happened after that?

Asha Puthli

But no, in the interim, I must tell you what happened.

Deepti Datt

Yeah, we want to hear this story.

Asha Puthli

Now I’m traveling, and before you leave, they’re always kind enough to say you can have a trip wherever you like. So now they’ve given me this opportunity to choose. Most stewardesses would choose Beirut or Singapore, because that’s where all the good shopping was done. Beirut was the Riviera of the Middle East. And I said OK, I will choose Singapore. And so you get 10 days, so it was cutting it very close to the day that I was retiring from BOAC. In those days, it was called BOAC.

Deepti Datt

So you chose Singapore.

Asha Puthli

Singapore. Now, this is where the planets come in. I’m there, my last trip. I walk into the hotel where all the British Airways stewardesses and staff was put up. And there’s a note for me there, and it’s from a woman, and it was to be held until... and then my name on it. And it said, “EMI Records, please call Daisy Devon.” She was the head of EMI in Singapore.

But now I don’t know who this woman is, so meanwhile, now I’m told one of the musicians that I’d met here in the jazz group called Balsi Balsara had moved there and he called me up he said, “Asha, you’re in the new Asia magazine.” They’ve done a magazine. Don’t ask me why I was in it, because I really didn’t think I should deserve to be in it, but it was five beautiful women of India, photographs by a very well-known photographer, Kishor Parekh. Anyway, so he called me and said, “You’re in Asia magazine.” I said, “Oh, I’ll come and get the copy of it.” Why not? So this is two days before my flight to return back, and then I retire from the airlines and get ready for America. So I said I’ll come. So as I’m going, the stars... So for every bad thing that happens to you, there’s a good thing that happens, so I go there to pick up the magazine, and I get hit by a motorbike. I get hit by a motorbike and I’m limping out, I get the magazine and many other things that happened, which are amazing.

Deepti Datt

We’ll get you back there. In Singapore, we want to hear the Singapore story.

Asha Puthli

Singapore, so now I’m in there with a limp, I go to British Airways, they say, “Oh no, you can’t take this flight, we have to pull you off the flight, we’re going to call in another girl to take the flight.” Now you remember that note that’s there, Daisy Devon. So all this time, I haven’t been able to call her because I said what’s the point? I’m going, whoever she is, it doesn’t matter. Now I have time, so I call her and Daisy Devon says, “We want to put you...” Now I see the connection, the connection is that in that magazine they put my name down as stewardess for British Airways who sings and blah blah blah. So that was the reason. And then I went to see Daisy Devon, she put me into the studio – now I’m supposed to fly the next day – with a group called The Surfers, the album is called Angel Of The Morning. We sing these four songs, it’s an EP. And then I’m deported. The people come to the... They come to the thing, because I didn’t take my flight, because they told me you are going as a passenger, so we’ll get... The other girl will operate.

Deepti Datt

So you recorded in Singapore and they escorted you back out and that was one of the first tracks I heard as well.

Asha Puthli

The next day.

Deepti Datt

So after the Singapore episode, you’ve come back, you’ve gone to New York, done the Martha Graham scholarship, and in New York you have also hit the ground running.

Asha Puthli

Hit the ground running.

Deepti Datt

You started recording and sending out your music to whoever was willing to listen and I know there’s a story that John Hammond, who is the head of Columbia Records at the time?

Asha Puthli

He was actually in an honorary position at the time, because he was as old as I am today at that time, in his ’70s. But he had discovered many famous people like Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, so his career went back to the ’30s and ’40s. Bruce Springsteen later, Bob Dylan. I was like one of the last ones he discovered, so to speak.

But yes, six months, because I only had a year’s visa for the dance thing. So I knew I had to quickly hit the floor and run. I started sending out this little tiny tape that I’d made. In those days, it was small reel-to-reels and it was done with... It was a third stream kind of music, what I was experimenting with, which was Indian classical and jazz. And I kept sending that to the only name I knew, which was John Hammond. This is why I keep talking about the planets being in conjunction and that there is a higher power that guides us.

Deepti Datt

So you had this music you were sending it to John Hammond with the intent that he would hear your music and call you in and discover you.

Asha Puthli

And nobody called, six months had gone by and I was still dancing away. And then I got a call from Ved Mehta, he’s a marvelous writer who wrote a book called Portrait Of India and in that, there is one chapter called “Jazz In Bombay.” That chapter had initially come out in The New Yorker, for whom he worked, and now it’s in like its 58th printing, that book. They teach it in universities, at Yale University, it’s a Yale University Press print.

And it so happened that John Hammond was sitting at the Century Club, which used to be a men only, how things have changed, club, at that time. And Ved happened to walk in and Ved, at the time, probably was the only Indian and he’s also blind. So easy to spot. So when Ved walked in, John went up to him and said, “Mr. Metha, I’m reading your book and I’m fascinated by the girl you’ve written about.” This is all to do with the stars, destiny. So Ved calls me up, he says... Now, of all the people, the one person I’m sending the tapes to, Ved has no idea that I’m there sending tapes to this guy, Ved calls me says, “Asha, please call this man, his name is John Hammond and he’s with CBS and he wants to meet you.” Now isn’t that amazing? So that’s it. So I called him and the secretary, who every time I called, I still remember her name is Elizabeth and every time I called and I’d say, “Did you get my tape?” And I was so polite, I even asked her, “What’s your name?” just to be friendly with her and suck up to her a little bit so she’d give the damn tape to him, and she’d say, “Oh, I will give it to him. He’s very busy now. We’ll call you back.” And it never happened. Six months have rolled by, nobody’s called me. Now, I get the appointment. I call him directly, I don’t even go through... It’s direct, right? I’ve got the number. And he invites me, and when I walked in, I literally almost pulled my hand back. I was going to say, “Na na na na na na,” because I was so upset with her. I mean, really, I was so furious with this... No, the na na na na came later because I won an award for that record. That’s it. Then he called, I met him, and he was an old man. I hope I don’t do what he did to me, which was... No, nothing like that, [laughs] no, nothing like that. No, no.

Deepti Datt

I was like, are you sure we can do this here?

Asha Puthli

No, no, no. No, nothing like that. No, no. So I play my tape of Indian classical and jazz, and here’s this old man, it’s taken me years to get to this point, right? And he hears me and he clutches his chest, and he goes... [makes pained expression] And I think, “Oh, shit, now he’s going to die on me. [laughter] After all this, I’ve gone through all this, and now he’s going to... Oh, no. Not now, please not now. Please, not now.” And then he goes, “Marvelous. Marvelous.” That’s sure itself, because the next thing he said, “Oh, we’d like to record you. Will you come to the studio next Thursday?” So I said, “This is something I have to deal with myself,” and I said, “That’s okay, Mr. Hammond, I’ll see you next Thursday. I will take the permission from her and come.” That’s it.

Deepti Datt

And then John Hammond... So John Hammond discovered you through Ved Mehta, “Jazz In Bombay.”

Asha Puthli

The book. The book. A book, a book, a simple book. That’s how you get discovered. A laugh, a book, that’s how I’ve been discovered.

Deepti Datt

Yes, yes. So he brought you into the fold in what was the peripheral edges of a very centrifugal New York music scene.

Asha Puthli

Later, yes.

Deepti Datt

Because he’s the one who took you onto Ornette Coleman.

Asha Puthli

He didn’t take me there.

Deepti Datt

OK, how did it happen?

Asha Puthli

There was a lot of opposition.

Deepti Datt

So he said he needs you here next week to come in and record, and you did?

Asha Puthli

I had ten days. It’s was a Monday. He said, “Not this Thursday, but next Thursday,” to do, he called it “Asha’s thing,” the one that gave him the heart attack, you know that one. Right? Indian classical and jazz. So now I have to deal with things myself, and I’m still saying, “God, you’ve done all this, you’ve opened all these doors for me, every door has opened.” As I mentioned, that’s why I told you the whole background of flying, the this, the that, the coming, OK.

Now, I’ve taken the day off from Martha Graham and as I’m walking, for those of you who have been in New York, it’s 53rd Street and 52nd Street, between that is the big Black Rock. It’s an Eero Saarinen building, it was called the Black Rock. It’s the CBS building. On 53rd Street between 5th and 6th is the Museum of Modern Art, so I walk out and I see a big flag, Claes Oldenburg. I’d never heard the name before and I’m saying, “Oh well, I’ve got the day off, now I better educate myself. Who is this man, Claes Oldenburg?”

I’m about to walk in, and I see this very elegant man. So elegant and so proper. Clean and neat like he jumped out of a page of a book, right? And he’s opening the door for me and he says... And meanwhile I’ve just said in my head, “God you’ve done all this for me, now you have to help me out. Something has to happen.” So the man, he opens the door and he says, “May I help you?” Not that I thought he was God, no. He opened the door, he said, “May I help you,” so I said, “If you really want to help me, you may have to marry me.” So he looked at me and said, “Gosh, you won’t believe it. I’ve been watching you come from 6th Avenue, and I kept wishing you were going to come here. I’ve never seen anyone dressed like you.”

By the way, I was dressed in a pillow case. It was an Indian... You know those Piraji Sagara used to make, these big, huge bolsters, with that Abla work and that mirror work, and all that. So I got the end of the pillow, because I was too poor as a student to buy these fancy clothes, and I pulled myself in the pillow, and I was skinny, so i could get into a pillow. But he loved it, and I had the Saurashtra, you know men wear that Saurashtra thing. So it was different. Nobody used to dress like that.

So we got married. And he’s still, by the way, I consider him my family there, and I just left my puppy with him, he’s babysitting the puppy while I’m here.

Deepti Datt

Yeah. So you went on and got married, you recorded with John Hammond. How did it lead to Ornette Coleman?

Asha Puthli

Yeah. So John Hammond does this esoteric Indian classical and jazz, which obviously is not a commercial thing at all. No one’s going to buy it, right? He calls a man called Clive Davis, who at that time had just started. Today he’s a huge name in the music industry. He just started as president. There’s always corporate hierarchy in these big music operations, and there’s always these machinations that go on, and politics that go on, like any big corporation. John, being more revered, he was like a Magellan of jazz, everybody honored him, the venerable John Hammond. So when John called him, he’s coming down, the president is coming to a man in an honorary position, believe me, so already he hates me before he’s even seen me or heard me, I’m sure, coming from the wrong door. So he plays this, Asha’s thing, to him. I’m sitting there, and he said, “This is jazz. It won’t sell.”

Deepti Datt

So fortune kept following you to connect dots in strange ways. Again, how did you get to Ornette Coleman?

Asha Puthli

So now at this point, why he did not physically take me and introduce me to Ornette is because of this. Clive apparently wanted Genya Ravan, a singer who was then with a group called Ten Wheel Drive to sing this with Ornette. He had already tried different singers, many major singers, and not been happy with it. It was the first time Ornette Coleman was using a vocalist, because his music, for those of you who know his music, he’s the father of free-form jazz, of a totally different kind of jazz. He started his own form of music called harmelodics. So John just said to me, “Go into the studio, I’ve told the producer of the album that I’m sending somebody to sing, to try out.”

Again, as luck would have it, because it’s such an extraordinary session, the first time he’s using a vocal thing, a voice, the people from Rolling Stone were there, DownBeat, they were all backstage behind the engineer’s thing. I didn’t know they were there, I was totally oblivious to this. All I’m doing is going there to try to see if anything will come out of this. And this is all free-form jazz, but it’s all very improvised. It’s right then and there, it’s all done in one take. It’s not like when you do pop music we stop, we punch in, we can edit it, we can do all kinds of things, but not with that jazz music. It has to be straight on, everybody’s playing. And the one thing I learned from working with Ornette is democracy in music. Especially in that kind of music, because when you play that kind of jazz, you are holding your own strength and your own creativity in your own pocket but still you’re sharing and you’re blending with everyone else. You have to be so cohesive with everybody.

So anyway, coming back to this, that’s what happened. I went in, I tried it, he loved it, they heard it backstage, they couldn’t believe it, so I got rave, rave, rave after that when they wrote about it. I got rave, rave reviews. And then on the strength of those two tracks, that’s it. Only two tracks that I sang in 1971, I got nominated for a jazz vocalist, the best jazz vocals of 1972 in the polls, and much to my surprise I was in a tie-in with somebody I absolutely... My idol, Ella Fitzgerald. There I was, in one breath, Asha Puthli, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Ella Fitzgerald, That was...

Deepti Datt

So a magical trajectory.

Asha Puthli

A magical.

Deepti Datt

This deportation in Singapore, you’ve recorded there, you got to New York, Martha Graham, John Hammond, you’re recording with Ornette Coleman, and for those of you who may not know, the album was called Science Fiction, and it’s now legendary. It’s like a mark point in the history of music that this album came about...

Asha Puthli

Yes. Yes, that’s right.

Deepti Datt

... With Ornette Coleman himself, like you said, took a complete radical break from what had been jazz’s trajectory up til then.

Asha Puthli

His jazz, yeah.

Deepti Datt

And here comes what then became known as the “disco mystic from India.” Later on you were referred to as the disco mystic from India. But this inkling had begun because you came with your classical training, and your four-octave vocal range, with this artist who is breaking from the past, and you guys put together, made something, like I said, is now an epoch, a marker in music history with Science Fiction.

Asha Puthli

Yes, it is. It is. Ornette himself is like an icon. Yeah, yeah.

Deepti Datt

In jazz.

Asha Puthli

In jazz.

Deepti Datt

And it set a benchmark for what then happened afterwards.

Asha Puthli

Right.

Deepti Datt

The question I was going to ask you is, do you think your, again, training in classical Hindustani, laid a foundation for this, in that jazz can take from classical Hindustani. It’s not matching music as it were, and classical Hindustani also follows the Taal and the Sur, it’s also... It’s not a matching, it’s not a melodic trajectory. You have to work with the other musicians, again, on instinct, right?

Asha Puthli

No, it’s different though. But yeah, but it’s different. You do have a format, you do have certain scales in the raga that you go on. It’s much more disciplined in that sense. This is literally haywire. I mean you can see it’s haywire. And you’ve got to make sense out of it. I think if somebody, I don’t know, perhaps let’s say someone has autism or Asperger, or something like that. One of these mental illnesses, right? And the chords come tumbling in, boom, boom, boom, boom. They’re all tumbling in and you don’t know how to make sense of it. That’s what it’s like with this music. It’s like you’ve got to be quick and go, “Ah, there’s a hole. Let’s put it in there quick, or let’s hit that note, quick! Don’t miss it!” It’s like that almost. I don’t know how to describe it.

Deepti Datt

So how much of a break from the past was Science Fiction? Why is it considered a classic? Why do we look at Science Fiction as a benchmark in the jazz industry?

Asha Puthli

They consider it a benchmark, the jazz critics do, because it was the first time Ornette, as I mentioned, had used voice.

Deepti Datt

OK. And also, in the way that the compositions were approached. It was completely something new.

Asha Puthli

The way the compositions... yes. Totally. Yes.

Deepti Datt

And there you were, right at the epoch of it, doing something.

Asha Puthli

Yeah, I was very fortunate and blessed that I got this opportunity.

Deepti Datt

And then Coleman is credited with inventing you as a future disco icon. This is also something else that...

Asha Puthli

I don’t know why that man... I have no idea where it’s coming from, but I don’t know. People write things sometimes to me, I mean that’s what they see it as.

Deepti Datt

So if I can read you a quick quote, this is what comes from David Keenan’s very expansive essay for RBMA as well. One of the quotes says, “Disco was the right vehicle for her combination of classical Indian modulation, sci-fi, sex-kitten eroticism, and Kate Bush-esque performance style. She took Coleman’s Science Fiction out into the wild.” This is what had been written of what you did with Ornette Coleman and then the work that you did since. So there seems like there was a key that was unlocked...

Asha Puthli

There was. I think what happened was, my sensibilities, not necessarily just Indian music, my sensibilities of pop music played heavily, because I remember The Village Voice writing, Gary Giddins again, very respected critic, writing that it is the pop music of the future. That’s what he wrote. So it’s possible that David Keenan has read that article and therefore this analysis that he’s given.

Deepti Datt

A future disco icon. It’s something that’s occurred across many mediums, where they say Science Fiction was the point at which...

Asha Puthli

Was the turning point.

Deepti Datt

... You departed into becoming who you became, which was a disco icon.

Asha Puthli

Well...

Deepti Datt

You don’t agree.

Asha Puthli

No.

Deepti Datt

How would you [describe] your history, then? How would you say what happened there?

Asha Puthli

My history is, artists keep reinventing themselves. The minute you have success in any one form, most people want to stick to it. They do a certain kind of music and they say, “Oh, we’ve got a big hit, now let’s stick with R&B. Or let’s stick with jazz, or let’s stick with whatever genre.” And in those days they used to put people in pockets. You had to have a genre of music.

When I recorded this initially, it’s now in the jazz, avant-garde jazz box. Now you’re stuck. Once you’re in that box, forget it. It’s not like this black box, it’s even tighter, smaller. You cannot get out of it because most record labels will say, “Oh, it’s not commercial. We don’t want to lose our money. We’re not investing.” Nobody wants to sign a solo avant-garde jazz artist.

Deepti Datt

From India.

Asha Puthli

From India. At this point yeah, it’s understood I’m from India, yeah.

Deepti Datt

Nobody wanted to sign someone who fit that kind of description, but yet you took it.

Asha Puthli

No, no, I was talking about artists and how we are all... Real artists I’m talking about. There are some artists who want to play it very safe and they’ll stick to... They have success, they’ll stay with it. They will not venture out of that area. My career has been, if you look at the trajectory of my career, it’s always been a different genre. Jazz, fine. Nobody in America wanted to sign me, and I mean nobody, except John Hammond, who saw me as something unique and called the Washington Post and said, “I found a genius.” But that is John Hammond, who is one in a million. The rest of the millions didn’t want me.

Deepti Datt

New at the time, and what was happening.

Asha Puthli

Yeah, so to get a solo album deal, actually, as a single, then I went... And also remember I’m new to America. I’d never heard R&B, really. I hadn’t heard a lot of the other black stuff that was going on, so I really got turned on to all the R&B singers, and I liked it and I said, “Well that’s the kind of music I’d love to do.” As a creative person, your passions keep changing. You want to experiment with other forms of music, yeah.

Deepti Datt

And you had no reason to play it safe. It was all so new, you could literally go...

Asha Puthli

Choose anything.

Deepti Datt

... Anywhere with it.

Asha Puthli

Right.

Deepti Datt

So your music, after this episode in New York, and this time with Martha Graham, and the recordings you did, seemed to get a better reception in Europe.

Asha Puthli

Yes.

Deepti Datt

You couldn’t find anyone to sign you in the US, and then what happened? What was the next phase, because what we were looking at is...

Asha Puthli

Because what happened, they all thought of me as a serious jazz artist, so they didn’t want to sign. They said, “No, no, no, it’s not commercial.” What happened was, well, first of all, even though I make all these funny faces when I hear these pop... Believe me, at the time I enjoyed doing it, because remember I’m young, I’m in my 20s, I’m experimenting, I’m trying... You know. So it’s okay. But now in retrospect, I say, “Oh god. Did I really do that?” But yeah, sorry. Your question was?

Deepti Datt

No worries. So this was the beginning of what we were looking at, or at least the ’70s, into somewhat of a futurism with music, with commercial, with media as a whole: Advertising, film. There was a certain futurism that began to be looked at. We were coming out of the civil rights movements and everything that was happening in the US. Everybody was looking towards the future, even with music. And enter what we call a little bit of disco mysticism. Like I said to you before, you’ve been called that before, the disco mystic from India. So disco mysticism was a look with disco as the first electronic genre that actually looked to elevate beyond the human experience. I’m taking this back to this mythology of the Gandharvas, where the artist in India is the medium to the divine for mortals.

So when we come into this phase that we’re talking about, disco mysticism, you’ve been with Ornette Coleman, you’ve set your benchmark there as well. Again, what is it that we’re exploring? Where were you going with the music then? You said you were young, you were also just having fun looking at stuff. Where was that exploration going?

Asha Puthli

Ideally, what I really did want to explore... now I’m going to go into areas which you all might consider me crazy, so I’m not sure if I want to talk about it. Well, in a way I guess it’s to do with music. I had an out-of-body experience. [Deepti laughs] No, you see?

Deepti Datt

I believe it. I told you I believe it.

Asha Puthli

Anyway, let’s not go there.

Deepti Datt

No, go there. Go there, please. As you do with your art, you do with your music.

Asha Puthli

But, anyway, I realized that what I wanted to do was make functional music. Now, that is what I love about Indian music, but I’ve not really pursued in that direction, and neither have I pursued in another direction, which I will not talk about, but it’s to do with spirituality. Maybe the time wasn’t right. I was young, I wanted to experiment with different kinds of music. Your question?

Deepti Datt

What were you exploring that then led you into this realm that became known as disco, which was electronic music? Experimenting with electronic as a first genre, disco as a first electronic genre.

Asha Puthli

Well, first of all I called myself a space cadet, OK? That could be one, because that’s why I mentioned the out-of-body experience, and certain other experiences which made me feel that there has to be a function to music, where you can maybe use it as a healing process, maybe use it for defense. Now, in Indian classical music there are such things, like when we hear stories about dancing, breaking glass with his voice, right? There’s an erudite man sitting there in the audience, a doctor of music, and so many other things that music can do, from healing, not just to entertain, but that’s also a form of healing.

Deepti Datt

Well, like the classical ragas here, there are certain times they are to be sung, there are certain seasons which you sing them, because each has a different effect on the body, on the system, and what it’s meant to do for you. So I’m trying to lay a premise which says that the fact that you became a disco icon in the ’70s, is not that far removed from the fact that you had trained in India, you had been brought up in a culture that looked at the color, as...

Asha Puthli

But that connection has not yet happened, because people see only the peripheral. They only see the outer casings. They don’t see what’s deeper, sometimes. I’m talking about people who are in the music industry who are merchandising, and marketing. They don’t see the deeper thing. But that is the connection. That’s why I mentioned earlier about Ornette and yoga, and things like that. But yes, it led to disco eventually, and every day, not as a deeper issue but on a very superficial level.

I went to London to do a television show, and the television show came about again by some quirk of fate, I guess. I’d done a movie, which was running at the Curzon, and the team that I did it with wanted to send another actor called Sam Waterston, who is in the movie, who is now very famous for Law & Order, and a very fine actor, while I’m not a fine actor. But anyway, he was a really good actor. It was called the Russell Harty Plus, the show. They said, “Look, we want one of your actors to come but you have to pay the airfare and we will pay for the hotel.” The team said “Absolutely not, no way. We are a small indie film company, we cannot afford to pay.” So a few weeks went by, and suddenly, this is when I just won the DownBeat award, and they heard that I’m in the movie, and I won the DownBeat, so they said, “You know what? After the movie stops running, because we’re not going to help and push that movie at all, we are going to bring this singer down to sing for us, and we’ll show the clips of the movie after it’s finished its run.” I mean, they were getting back at them. That’s why I got my first TV show, which was a one on one, and it really, to this day, is probably one of the best television interviews I’ve had because it was quick banter, it was very fast, it was quick, it was funny. And I sang a jazz song which sounded very pop. The next morning I got five... Literally, when you talk about making it overnight, this is called making it overnight, that turning point. That was the turning point. And it was not because... In a way obliquely, it was because of Ornette winning the DownBeat [magazine award]. But that’s not what I was singing. It was not accessible music. I was singing something very accessible. I sang a song, an old jazz/pop standard, which Streisand had also recorded, called “My Man.” [sings: “Oh my man I love him so”] That one. But I did it very pop. The next day I had EMI, Polygram, CBS, everyone bidding. It was like a bidding war, and London Times called, “Oh, we want a double spread with David Bailey taking the pictures.” Literally overnight I got, with very little effort, I got a record deal.

Deepti Datt

Did you know that moment was the moment that you... Did you know in that moment as it was happening, this is it? This is it for me? After everything...

Asha Puthli

I thought it was it, but it ended up not being it. I thought it was it because initially they said, “Oh, we want a five-year deal, escalating royalties, escalating percentages. Oh, even The Beatles don’t ask for that much.” You know percentage royalties, right? But then they said, “Oh, The Beatles get that much.” It was 14 percent, in case you wanted to know what The Beatles got at the time. “We’re willing to go up to 14 percent in royalties.” So this was all this stuff going on.

Yes. We had a five-year deal. So that was my first contract, deal. But the reason my albums changed in their genre, so to speak, or in their complexion, I was going to say, is because this was [CBS England] that signed me. When London CBS signed me, that record became a hit in Germany. But sometimes, again, you might have good luck and then there are times where the stars go against you. And now, this is 1973, ’74, when the whole Idi Amin influx of Asians comes into place. A lot of Asians are coming into Britain. The work permit issue became a big thing. Again, you see that’s the trouble with any young Indian artist now. I don’t know things have changed, but when a person from another country wants to go to a foreign place and do their music there, you have all these social, political, geo-political events that shape your life, that change your life, that obstruct your ambition constantly. So it’s even more challenging for, let’s say a young Indian might want to go abroad, they have to have all these bases covered. Of course, at that time it was a different world. I mean, I hope there’s never another Idi Amin so it won’t happen, but... John Denver and I had done a TV show called Rolf Harris Plus. Now, I’d been signed to CBS. CBS had presumed that I’m British because there were a lot of Indians living in Britain at the time who spoke like I do. So they just presumed, “Oh, she’s British.” They never took a work permit, nothing, they just signed me to this five-year deal. We did the Rolf Harris, the same thing. This is when we got into trouble. Suddenly the home office sent a letter to John Denver’s manager and CBS, and said, “Your artist is not allowed to work in Britain. You’ll have broken the rules.” So even though I didn’t get deported, like before, this time it’s something else.

So now, CBS is sort of in a quandary. “Oh my god, what are we going to do now? We’ve got this artist, escalating royalties, escalating advances. What the hell. How are we going to get out of this one?” Now, they were lucky that I got pregnant. And I was even luckier that I got pregnant, because I have the most adorable son, who’s here today. I was so thrilled I went to tell Dick Asher the chair[man], the president of CBS England. I said, “You know, I’m pregnant.” He must have thought this is manna from heaven. At this point they hadn’t told me about the home office letter. So he said, first his reaction was, “Oh my god! What have you done? Are you ready to ruin your life.” You know, and all this. He didn’t know it’s the lawyers that are up to mischief. So now they had a loop hole, because in those days... This is pre women’s rights to work during maternity. In 1977 there was legislation made, when a women... So there are all these things, not just being an Indian, but being a woman and in the music business, since I know I’m addressing a lot of woman in the music business. I don’t know what the rules are here. I’m presuming they’re the same as in the States now, where you’re given maternity leave. But at that time, in 1974, there was no maternity leave. So they had ground to stand on, they had a loop hole to get me out of giving me escalating royalties, escalating... But, now they could tell the home office, “OK, we’re not working. We’re sending her back.”

And that’s how the second album took three countries to complete. A year and a half, while I’m suspended. And I always tell everyone, my son, and three producers, wrote that album. Took three producers, three countries, a year and a half and it was shelved at the end of it because I was suspended, because if they picked up the contract they would have had to pay me. So it was a catch... Again, another thing. My son only took one producer and seven and a half months. [laughs] So anyway, that shit happened.

Deepti Datt

So to give everybody a little bit of a background here. I’ve said this a couple of times, that you’ve been called the disco mystic and the women who fell to Earth. In 2009, the Goonhilly British Satellite Earth Station transmitted a track. One of your most epic tracks into deep space to mark the 50th year anniversary of the moon landing. And from science...

Asha Puthli

40th. 40th.

Deepti Datt

Was it the 40th year or the 50th.

Asha Puthli

That was the 40th year.

Deepti Datt

Damn, my whole installation was incorrect then. I said 50th year of moon landing. So, from Science Fiction onwards your work references... Again we’re coming back to the extraterrestrial, outerspace persona, akin to George Clinton’s Parliament, and Mothership Connection. And stuff that Erykah Badu also...

Asha Puthli

There was a lot of that.

Deepti Datt

... Looks to in her work.

Asha Puthli

But that’s later.

Deepti Datt

That was much later. There was nobody doing this.

Asha Puthli

Yeah. It’s later. All that is later.

Deepti Datt

Except you. So I’m going to read another quote here. Which speaks about your work. Again, quote, “Puthli, under the spell of Coleman’s break with the past, minted a form of free-floating, ultra-sexualized intergalactic disco that matched hyperventilating time with erotic electronics and surreal sonic environments. Puthli has gone so far out that she has space walked into inner space. Wandering on the floor of the amniotic ocean inside the time of the body itself. This are ragas for the cities of the red night. Pure body music. No longer for the stations of the sun and the stars. Reality in the world of Asha Puthli and the music of Ornette Coleman and what happened thereafter is for people who can’t handle disco’s fictions.

Asha Puthli

Oh my god, I must meet this wonderful man. I must meet him. You must introduce me to him.

Deepti Datt

Well this was to give you an indication of... You know the music is impactful. You’re being studied in universities. I found out about you in a university course.

Asha Puthli

That’s true. They do. I don’t know what they’re studying. There’s not much to study. I’m an open book.

Deepti Datt

It’s like they said, that you have gone so far out that you’ve space-walked out of anything known. We’re looking at a western milieu.

Asha Puthli

He knows I’m an alien. It’s as simple as that. I’m an alien.

Deepti Datt

Do you believe that? Do you really think that? That’s what Gandharvas are right?

Asha Puthli

Oh yeah. I believe I’m an alien. But anyway, I was going to tell you about what he has written. When you read it, I realized why he’s saying it. “Space Talk” was done, that whole beat and that feeling, which was done. And that whole, pre that album, 1973. You know the soft quality of the voice, that comes from Indian music, by the way. That high soft. Because I remember Pundit Ji used to teach me, the Jaipur[-Atrauli] Gharana style is very closed. It’s not an open khulla galla [open throated] kind of singing. It’s a little bit more subdued voice. And I remember when I was studying, I mentioned earlier, my early training, Hyacinth Brown, opera. They’re two very different techniques of singing. One is from here, [points to throat] the Jaipur Gharana, while opera always comes from the back and it goes in and you’re projecting a sound into your head and it’s a whole different way to project out. I won’t do it now because I don’t want to break the mic. But it’s loud. That’s why they don’t use mics in opera. Now they do maybe. I remember my teacher Hyacinth Brown telling me, “You could be such a great opera singer but you have to stop singing Indian classical.” The minute she said I have to stop singing something, which meant again, another restraint, I said, “You know what? My Pundit Ji never tells me to stop singing opera.” Right? “I’m going to stop learning opera,” I said. Because if it’s restrictive I’m not going to do opera. But coming back to why the softness, the soft caliber of the voice, I think it comes from that initial soft approach. Coming back to what you were saying about going into disco music. OK. When the first album, the ’73 album came out in Germany, as I mentioned, because I wasn’t allowed to now work in England. They were now sending me off to Germany and again, like they had compared me to The Beatles with the royalties, they now were saying, “Oh you know, but The Beatles too went to Hamburg.” I mean, “OK, alright. I’ll do it, I’ll go.”

So I went to Germany and those albums had all that soft quality of singing, including The Devil is Loose. A lot of people say that this album and the other album are templates that later on Donna Summer, Pete Bellotte, Giorgio Moroder all ripped off from my sound. Now remember I’ve mentioned to you that I was suspended because I was pregnant. So at that time was when they jumped on the bandwagon, apparently, this is what I’m told by people in Germany, in the industry. Because when they call me up they said, “We want to work with the real McCoy.” The dress I wore, she had come backstage and asked me where I got the dress. And I’d said, “Oh, it’s Bill Gibb from London. He designed it for me.” That dress is an iconic dress. It’s in many books. It’s in the Mick Rock [Blood and] Glitter book. It’s in Glam!, I forget all the names but David Bowie did the foreword. It’s in many many books, this particular dress. But it’s with a gown on top, so you don’t see what’s inside. But she had seen me in the television show. I had worn it without the thing and with the gown on top. She’d come back and asked me where I got it. The minute I was suspended, my friend Bill Gibb, who designed that, called me up and said, “There’s a young singer from Germany who came here and she wanted the same dress you wanted. And I told her, you’re my good friend, I would never do that to you. I would never design for her some... I’ve told her to go and buy it off the rack at Harrods.”

Deepti Datt

I mean, to be sure this is Donna Summer we’re talking about.

Asha Puthli

Yeah. She did!

Deepti Datt

We’re talking about Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder.

Asha Puthli

Yes! And she did go and buy it on the rack. Because when you see the first cover of “Love To Love You Baby,” which, according to them was inspired by “I Dig Love.” Which means the same, I love to love. But it was a style, so what happened was, suddenly a women who was belting out songs, suddenly is singing this soft thing. What is known as, according to this man, the slinky sensual intergalactic sound. Spaced-out disco sound. That’s what happened.

Deepti Datt

I mean I’ve seen the pre-exposure to your [sound] Donna Summer footage as well as audio. And then I’ve seen the post-exposure to you and, yeah, there’s no doubt, the costume, the way of performance, even the pose, the way you performed on the German television show. Yeah.

Asha Puthli

So that happened. So that is why they say it’s a precursor to the Munich sound. Because that came to be known as the Munich sound in disco. So that was the precursor.

Deepti Datt

And Germany’s been the lead in electronic music from then on. And onwards. So I’m actually going to go in here to say that you were globalizing before the word even existed. Because you were recording in Germany, you were shooting in Italy, you were signed to a European label, but doing work in America. So there was definitely a globalization occurring before we even knew what the word meant.

Asha Puthli

I think before even mp3s, the internet, none of that had started yet. This was done... It was recorded in ’77, ’78, and according to NYU, Dr. Jason King, who started the Clive Davis, ironically, the Clive Davis [Institute of Recorded] Music, was one of the people. And he mentioned, he said, “You were one of the first artists of globalization, who did globalization.” Because that album you just heard, that track from that album, was for an Italian company, that’s why you see the [appearance on Italian TV series] Stryx . Done by a Belgian producer called Jean Van Loo. He did “Born To Be Alive.” In fact there’s a documentary coming out on him. I’m in the documentary. It’s coming out actually this month or next month in France and Belgium. It’s coming out as a movie, which is an aside.

But coming back to this. So he was Belgian; Italian label; the tracks were done in France; I was recording in Philadelphia at Sigma Sound, with the Sweethearts of Sigma they’re called, the backup vocalists. So that was the first globalized recording. Yes, The Rolling Stones would go to Jamaica and record, but then they were one British group going to Jamaica, the whole thing. But not where tracks were going here and different people from different countries were involved. So he calls this one of the first premiere albums in that area of globalization. That album.

Deepti Datt

So we can say you were one of the firsts of what we now call a crossover artist.

Asha Puthli

Definitely.

Deepti Datt

You were one of the first pioneering, before we knew the concept existed. More what you were is an artist who very easily incorporated what was the swinging ’70s in the West, and with being the only young Indian woman, a Bombay girl out on the international platform at a time when there was nobody else except Freddie Mercury.

Asha Puthli

Yes, that’s right.

Deepti Datt

Queen was the only, I mean, he was the only person who was from India, Bombay.

Asha Puthli

Number one, he was there a little earlier. Because he left I think in ’67. I think, I could be wrong. And he was 15 or 16 when he went to school there. So he was much more anglicized than I was. I was really steeped in Indian culture, in the sense that I studied Indian classical dance, I studied Indian classical music. He was not that Indian, and he didn’t see himself as Indian. He saw himself as a Persian. He always said that in the press, and nobody knew he was Indian until after his death almost. Now there’s a movie of course coming out. I don’t know how that pans out, but...

I was going to tell you something and I forgot. Oh yeah, about being Indian. We did a train tour long ago in 1969 I think it was. Freddie Mercury was with a group called Slash or Stash. I was with Bernie Taupin, who wrote music with Elton John. And we were going to do a show called the John Peel Show and I was doing a thing on dance, not music. This is when I had just gone, you know with the airlines, and we used to get days there. So I did this whole thing of iconographic mythology through Indian mudras, through the hand gestures. So I wasn’t going there as a singer, but when I saw a young Parsi man. I sort of went up and said, “Oh, you’re Indian.” I’m just in my Indian dance costume, you know. He said, “No, I’m Persian.” He probably got so scared, I’m going to... But also remember, Queen had the umbrella, number one, a boyband group, which was on top of the rung in the hierarchy of music in the ’70s. Rock & roll bands were number one. They’re the first ones to get signed. Then the solo male artists, then the three part female singers. Like The Three Degrees, The Supremes. And the solo female singer was really at the bottom of the rung. Always it was like that. It was the preference of signing artists.

So comparatively, I think Freddie, I mean he’s an amazing musician. I mean brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Just amazing. They had it a little easier because they had the umbrella of the group. And he was right. He changed his name from Farrokh Bulsara to Freddie Mercury, which is very good. It’s a good thing he did. Otherwise he would have stuck out like a thumb, or whatever it’s called, the saying. I forget what it is. So he changed it and so it was easier for him because of that. Often people say, “Why didn’t you change you name when CBS insisted you change your name?” And then they call you a difficult artist. And I said, “No. Because that is my connection to India. And it’s not a level playing field. We are just as westernized or just as good in American music as anyone here. And it’s not a level playing field. So just because of my name or the color of my skin, you cannot close the doors on us.

So that was really the challenge. Perhaps, as I mentioned to the writer in the meeting, I said, if I had changed my name, perhaps CBS would have been happy and the trajectory of my career would have been totally different. And of course, my family would have been much happier. They would have said, “Thank god we don’t have to put up with her shenanigans.” [laughs]

Deepti Datt

So they had asked you to change your name I believe. I remember you saying they wanted Asha Puthli to become Anne Powers. [laughter] And you think it would have made a difference who you would have become out there?

Asha Puthli

It would have made a big difference. Oh yeah, of course. Yes, because in marketing, as I mentioned in the interview, that was the number one thing. And there’s marketing cognitive dissonance. When you hear Asha Puthli what do you think of? Sitar, tabla, temple bells, you know. Things like that.

Deepti Datt

You mean there. That’s what they think.

Asha Puthli

In the West. So you already have a challenge. And they say, “How are we going to promote this artist when she’s singing mainstream American music, but she’s not changing her name. It sounds like we’re marketing somebody who’s, you know...”

Deepti Datt

You’re the only other person I know who wore mini saris besides... You’re the only person I know, you just were taking India and putting it in a whole other combo.

Asha Puthli

Another context. Yeah, but to change perceptions takes many, many years. It’s also... Think about, for example, the second generation of Indians who live in America. They are ready. So if Indians now go there to start a career it would be much easier. Because there is a market, there is a public that’s going to buy their product.

Deepti Datt

Of course, of course. We’re one of every seven people on the planet, or two of every seven people on the planet. Now it’s like... Game over. Anyways back then when they heard Asha Puthli they didn’t... You thought they’d think sitar and tablas.

Asha Puthli

No I didn’t think. They told me, there’s cognitive dissonance in marketing. We cannot market you. They didn’t spell it out to me and I was too young to understand. Initially I thought they were being racist. My initial impact was they’re being racist.

Deepti Datt

They were.

Asha Puthli

No, they weren’t. They were just looking at the bottom line. They were not being racist and I don’t see it as a racist thing. They were just looking at their bottom line. “Can we make money? Are we going to lose money.” What they used to say is, "The blacks are not going to buy you, the whites are not going to buy you and we’ve done a group focus study and Indians don’t buy western music.”

Deepti Datt

I’m going to pull you back into a less politicized aspect of it, but really important for where it went as well.

Asha Puthli

Oh, I remember what it was. The reason I called it “Wild Samurai” because most of the people are Sikhs there. And I wanted to bring in that whole international thing of, you know. That whole album has a lot of Japanese titles, like “Hara Kiri Time.” And believe it or not, the record got released not in London where the trouble is happening but in Japan. Just because of the titles I think.

Deepti Datt

So here you’re wearing, on this performance, you’re wearing a plastic raincoat. A paper dress.

Asha Puthli

From my gynecologist. I’d gone to see, I said, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to wear. Oh my god, give me these.”

Deepti Datt

And a rope for a belt and a helmet.

Asha Puthli

It was a concert. The rope was for the “Hara Kiri Time.” Because that song is about suicide. The helmet was probably for another song, I don’t know. But yeah.

Deepti Datt

A paper dress and a plastic... In fact you said you wanted to come do this in a saran wrap. Plastic wrap with a bra and panty and plastic wrap. That was going to be your costume remember?

Asha Puthli

Today? Yeah I didn’t know what to wear.

Deepti Datt

Yeah. I remember you at press. You know Blondie’s Debbie Harry is one amongst those who has cited you as an influence on her fashion, costume, performance and style. Some of the resonance has, let’s say, has been a little bit too close for comfort. The character Vina Apsara, in one of the most famous books, The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie, seems like was almost a straight life of your life. Like identity theft before there was identity theft.

Asha Puthli

Yeah, in a way. But he is known for his style of writing. Which is that magic realism or factional, whatever you call it. People know that he takes real people and builds on it.

Deepti Datt

So can you give us a little background of what happened? Salman Rushdie’s book The Ground Beneath Her Feet came out. People were approaching you saying, “Hey, there’s a book out about you.”

Asha Puthli

No, actually I read it somewhere. Someone from India actually said, “Oh, it looks like it’s similar to Asha Puthli’s life.” Because a girl going from India in the ’60s, the timing. And when people told me I said, “Oh, so it’s probably about a girl who left in the ’60s,” and you know, I didn’t even read the book. I just didn’t read it. And then something strange happened. A few years later I was having dinner, a girlfriend had thrown a dinner for me, she called me, she said, “Oh, the consulate general is here. It’s consulate general David Good. And when I told him I’m your friend and I’m having this dinner he said, ‘Oh please seat me next to her. I want to meet her.’” Of course we were seated next to each other and apparently before he became a consulate general, he was a junior officer based in Calcutta at the time I was young. There used to be a magazine called Junior Statesmen which was big with my generation, and he had read about me in that magazine. And he said, “When I read this...” Now this is a man that I don’t know. He’s an erudite, obviously traveled man. So he’s not somebody who’s trying to, he has nothing to gain by telling me this, whatever. So, I thought it was very strange that a man coming from leftfield is telling me that when he was young he read about me, and just having read what he read about me in Junior Statesman and then reading this book by Salman Rushdie he knew it was me. So, the reason he wanted to sit next to was of course to ask me... His first question was, “Oh, he must have been so much in love with you.” And I said, “Who?” And he said, “Salman.” I said I don’t even know him. I said, “No I’ve never met him.”

Deepti Datt

Just to place a context for this. There are, in the book The Ground Beneath Her Feet there are 91 anecdotes which are an exact replica of...

Asha Puthli

Similarities.

Deepti Datt

... Incidents from your life.

Asha Puthli

Mm-hmm.

Deepti Datt

So it wasn’t just curiosity that made you question what was going on there.

Asha Puthli

No, I didn’t even question it. I didn’t read the book, but after David Good mentioned this, the consulate general here, and I was really going, thinking, ‘Oh, maybe if some of my relatives need a visa it’s good for me to know this man, OK.” I said, “OK, he can sit next to me, I’m coming for the dinner.” It turned out to be... So, anyway, then...

Deepti Datt

You sat next to him and he...

Asha Puthli

That’s it. Oh, yeah.

Deepti Datt

Salman Rushdie just basically knocked off your life.

Asha Puthli

Now, in the interim I’ve read the book and also the young man, the writer, Asjad Nazir from London, who I’ve never met said he’s doing a story on this for the London Times. When he called me he said the same question, “Do you know him? When did you meet him?” I said, “No, I’ve never met him.” I said, “Honestly, I feel I was talked by newspaper clippings.” Because that’s the feeling you get when you read, and if you know your own life, of course you know your own life and then it clicks and you say, “Oh my god! My aunt’s name is here. Why is my aunt’s name here?” And it says she adopted me, and in fact, I did live with that aunt.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

And her name, very clear, the same name. The record. The record that I told you about when I was deported from Singapore, the title of that record is Angel of the Morning. And, the character is named Vina Apsara.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

That generation, my generation at that time who liked English records and was like one of the early or first EPs with English. So that was like starting from then, it goes down, and of course he ends it where this character, Vina Apsara, dies and they make dolls from her. So, the writer who wrote this article said, “Well. Couldn’t be more obvious. Asha Puthli. “Puthli means doll,” he said.

Deepti Datt

Yeah. Yeah.

Asha Puthli

You know. But there were 91 with dates and Andy Warhol being a good friend of that character that he’s created. He’s got Freddie Mercury in it. He’s got himself in it. Now, of course when that article came out, he wrote a very strong letter to the Times. I must say, he has a wonderful style of writing, so he wrote, “Oh, Miss Puthli’s public relations,” or whatever he wrote, “must be chortling with delight.” Now, I remember that “chortling with delight” because it was written so well. Except, I didn’t have any publicist and a PR and I still don’t. So, I was a little sort of... You know.

Deepti Datt

However, so it’s happened. I mentioned these incidents because however it happened, without a publicist or PR, you seem to have made an impact, not just in a place, but globally. Like I said, Deborah Harry, you’ve been an influencer for many others that we haven’t gone over. We haven’t gone over the New York disco years with Studio 54 and Andy Warhol being shot by Avedon, there was that whole subsection that was going on in New York at the time. So yeah, you’ve been sampled by, as you mentioned, by Jay-Z, Diplo, P Diddy, Notorious B.I.G., 50 Cent, like the...

Asha Puthli

50 Cent. Yeah.

Deepti Datt

... The royalty of hip-hop.

Asha Puthli

50 Cent has done the same song. This “Space Talk,” yeah.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

Except he took permission.

Deepti Datt

Direct. Live and direct.

Asha Puthli

Direct.

Deepti Datt

So, it’s a massive trajectory, my god. Ornette Coleman, Science Fiction to disco to electronic to rock & roll to a renaissance in hip-hop.

Asha Puthli

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

And they actually kept my music somewhat alive, I would say. They gave me a renewed life with my music, with all the sampling, remixing. There are a lot of young people who have taken that same song and then remixed and re-mashed it and this and that.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Deepti Datt

Amazing.

Asha Puthli

And, I’m very grateful for that. So I don’t mind if they take it, you know.

Deepti Datt

So, you spoke a little bit about the stem of the music from that time to now. In winding up, I think I want to ask you what do you believe in your experience, what is the most valuable part of the creative process as an artist? What’s the most valuable part of the creative process?

Asha Puthli

To be able to move on.

Deepti Datt

To leave it.

Asha Puthli

To leave what you’ve created and move on. That’s it. [applause] Oh, I’m glad you’re applauding. It means they’re tired. We have to move on now. [laughter] Just saying!

Deepti Datt

To move on.

Asha Puthli

Let’s just move on!

Deepti Datt

But, literally do you mean that? It’s detachment from your work being done and not to be attached to the work?

Asha Puthli

In a way, yes. You have to be detached from your work, absolutely. But, that’s why if you see, a lot of artists will not have their own albums. Quite often people say... You’ll ask me for some high definition pictures. Did I have them? No. Did I have my albums? No. A lot of artists do not even keep their old albums. They can’t find them. They’ve given away the last one thinking that, “Oh, there’s going to be more printed. Don’t worry. Take it.” And then you suddenly realize, “Hey, it’s not being printed again. It’s over.” Analog days are gone. Vinyl’s gone. But I must say thanks to the crate diggers, you know how that evolved, this whole hip-hop thing and all. I must thank the grave diggers... No, not grave! Crate! But, that’s like a grave... It is like a grave because it was lost records and the crate diggers were the first ones who took out the vinyl. Everyone asked me how did P Diddy and all these guys discover you? I can only explain it by saying maybe those crate diggers pulled out some vinyls and they were listening to it and said, “Hey, what’s this? This is good. Let’s take from this one.” Because I don’t know them personally. I’ve never met them.

Deepti Datt

I mean vinyl is huge and I know a friend who’s a designer who was in Sardinia a couple of years, I think I sent you that email, who was crate digging and who pulled out a sealed vinyl of yours that was over the moon at how they found this because the thing itself is a treasure.

Asha Puthli

I had to buy my own records.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

I had to. Honestly.

Deepti Datt

Because they weren’t published.

Asha Puthli

Yeah. I couldn’t find any and for some reason I needed an album and I said, “Oh, my god.” So, I went on eBay and I bought my own records.

Deepti Datt

Wow.

Asha Puthli

Some of them.

Deepti Datt

Honestly, some of the best advice you would give to artists who may be here aspiring, starting out in their careers or heading toward looking to you for inspiration, is this what you would say, that the most valuable part of the creative process as an artist is to let go?

Asha Puthli

I would say if they are looking to me for inspiration I’d say, “God help you!” I don’t know what.

Deepti Datt

Because you’re leaping and bounding out there.

Asha Puthli

Leaping and bounding, yeah. Yeah, I think they would do it naturally. An artist would do it automatically. They would do something and evolve from it to their next experience or the next experience, always.

Deepti Datt

So, what’s next? What are you doing next Asha?

Asha Puthli

In reality?

Deepti Datt

Yeah, what’s next. I don’t mean literally right now. I mean in that overall arching.

Asha Puthli

In overall arching, OK.

Deepti Datt

You’ve done a movie.

Asha Puthli

I finished... Oh yeah, I did.

Deepti Datt

You just finished a movie. Yeah.

Asha Puthli

Two years ago.

Deepti Datt

In the lead, in fact.

Asha Puthli

Yeah. Yeah. They must be pretty sorry. But, anyway. I did a movie and it’s about an older woman. Would you believe it? [laughter] It’s about an older woman and she’s very lonely.

Deepti Datt

You’re not.

Asha Puthli

She’s very lonely and she adopts an orphan, basically, because her children are abroad and da da da da da. But, because it addresses two very important issues. One is the loneliness of old age, being alone and about young, homeless orphans.

Deepti Datt

Yeah.

Asha Puthli

So, finally they got the censorship. It’s called Maiya. We shot it in 2016 and I think it’s coming out eventually. But, it went to Iran for the [International] Film Festival [for Children and Youth]. And then there’s the documentary that’s coming out. But, on a musical thing, yes I have done a tribute to all... Because everyone, based on those two jazz recordings with Ornette Coleman and a couple of other recordings with serious jazz musicians, Henry Threadgill, again one song as a guest artist. Charlie Mariano, one song as a guest artist. But, they’re all jazz. Serious jazz guys. I’m now known as jazz royalty within the jazz... This is their phrase. I keep telling myself, “I’m jazz royalty, but where’s my jazz solo album?” Because I left the jazz world and went into pop and rock and disco, as you know, the whole other genre. So, I’m going back to it, to the jazz thing. I’ve finished an album. I’m looking for the right distribution. But, it’s a tribute to all the great jazz people I met and sang for or recorded with. And it includes Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Cy Coleman, Lionel Hampton. These are some of the... There are roads named after these men, and theaters named after them. They are legends, but I was lucky enough to meet them when I was very young. But, then I didn’t want to sing jazz. Not that I didn’t want to, but I moved on.

Deepti Datt

Well, your voice is out floating in space...

Asha Puthli

Yes!

Deepti Datt

... For perhaps other species...

Asha Puthli

Yes!

Deepti Datt

... In another dimension to find.

Asha Puthli

They’re the only ones...

Deepti Datt

I don’t think anything can top that.

Asha Puthli

... They’re the only ones who will love it.

Deepti Datt

And dance to it.

Asha Puthli

The only ones who will really like it and enjoy it.

Deepti Datt

So, we’ve got space and time with Asha to open it up to you guys if you want to ask her any questions. We’ve got time, I think, for a handful of questions from the audience if anybody would be interested. If you have anything to ask Asha about her experience or her background?

Audience Member

Throughout the journeys of appraising all of your albums through the ’70s and I think up to the ’80s, every time you had a shift with how your mind was perceiving what you want to make out of the music you were making, how would you find these producers? Because I’ve noticed in every album they were like different producers. So, would you go out finding these guys yourself or would the labels decide this for you?

Asha Puthli

Labels. The labels.

Audience Member

Pretty much the labels straight up?

Asha Puthli

Usually yes, it was the labels. They’d give me a choice. The very first album they gave me a choice. Holland, Dozier and Holland. Rick Perry, he was then busy with [Barbara] Streisand. Depending on who it was, and I chose Del Newman because he was available. Del Newman was a wonderful producer, he worked with, at that time, he worked with Elton John on “Yellow Brick Road” and with... I don’t remember, but it will come to me, but what they do is they present me with options. So, that first album I was given an option. The second album, for which I was shelved, I had no choice on some of the... CBS just thrust a guy called Paul Phillips on me because he was an in-house producer, and this is because at this point they didn’t want to invest anymore, basically. Then, I decided to finish that album in New York with Van McCoy, who became very famous two years later, after we did that album, with “The Hustle.” I don’t know if you ever heard that song, [hums the melody] “Do the hustle!” Do you remember that one? OK. So, he did that. He became very disco, at the start of disco. And Teo Macero, who was a jazz producer, but we had three producers on that. The third album, the producer went to CBS Schallplatten in Germany. I said, “Look, Donna Summer and people have stolen everything.” And they were playing her records throughout the session and saying “Sound like Asha,” telling Donna, “Sound like this. Sound like this. No, do this. No, do this, do this. Stretch the line.” So, the producer went up to CBS and that’s how that third album turned out. So, it depends on which album and it’s all different. The fourth album, again, CBS got the producer.

Audience Member

Then you moved out of CBS after that?

Asha Puthli

Yes, because I’d given them choices. When I first got to spend it for the first five term contract, five year, five album contract, I told the next one the minute that finished I had other offers in New York coming out from people and I was worried that they might sit on me because it had happened to Aretha Franklin when she signed with CBS, they sat on her. It was only after she... And what a great talent, who just passed away last year. And they sat her until Atlantic Records took her under their wing, and that’s when Atlantic decided to produce black artists, black American artists for white audiences. It was very color divided in those days, what they did.

So, when Germany CBS said, the producer Dieter Zimmermann had gone to them and said, “Look, they’ve stolen everything. She could have been the biggest thing and blah blah blah.” The head of CBS Schallplatten called me and said, “CBS London has destroyed your career by doing what they did, by suspending you and not releasing those albums.” So, they said, “We are going to do something.” So, I said, “OK, I’ll give you a choice. You can have me for one year, provided you bring that album out in the States.” They couldn’t. They approached CBS in the States, New York Times gave a whole huge write up. Writing at the bottom, Robert Palmer, who used to write for Rolling Stone, now wrote it in the New York Times, saying CBS is making a major mistake not releasing an artist of this caliber, but CBS wouldn’t budge. So, when that record became a hit in Italy and parts of Europe, Italians said, “We don’t want to let her go. Let us offer a contract quickly before we lose her.” They came up with that fourth CBS album called L’Indiana which was on Italian CBS, at which point I said the same thing, “If CBS does not release this, I’m not signing with you anymore in America.” I knew they were dead set against me, CBS, and I was determined to get it out on CBS. That’s why I signed the very first solo album when I was offered it with EMI, Johnny Franz and CBS, I deliberately chose, when it was a bidding war, I chose CBS for that reason, because I wanted to get on a level playing field with people who are nixing it constantly like Clive Davis who said, “Oh, she won’t sell.” Do you know why... I don’t know if you were here when we talked about it.

Audience Member

Yeah, I heard.

Asha Puthli

Yeah. So, that’s really what happened. Then, I signed with Polygram and even that last album, L’Indiana, when I did it for Italians, they sent it to CBS. CBS said, “No, we are not going to release it, neither do we want you to have it released through anyone else.” At which point CBS Italy said, “They can’t bully us. We’re going to release it.” And they released it with TK Records, which was a disco label. But, that’s why I mention about corporate hierarchy, about the corporate politics that goes on. The artist really gets squished in all this stuff, and when you’re an artist, and if you do business or do the deals yourself, you get further squished because your brain, your left brain is not working anymore, you become so addicted to doing deals that your right brain takes over and the win is so exciting, the fact that you make that deal, that it happened. It’s so exciting that you become less of an artist, actually.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Asha Puthli

Such a long answer.

Audience Member

Also, one more thing I wanted to mention. I think it was after Polygram...

Asha Puthli

You’re probably sorry you asked.

Audience Member

No, no. I could hear you talk forever. But, I think after the Polygram signing, I think that was the... I think after that is when your music actually started coming to India on records.

Asha Puthli

Really? Because it was on Polygram.

Audience Member

Yeah. Because it was on Polygram.

Asha Puthli

I met the man. Shashi Patel was his name, right? He did. He brought out that one record on Polygram India, but there wasn’t an audience for that kind of stuff here. Really. There was no audience. So, CBS had offered me CBS catalog for free in 1976. They said, “Please take this.” And Dick Asher, who was so upset when CBS America said they will not release The Devil Is Loose, which had great reviews and everything, and when they said that he took me down in the building and said, “I’m going to cry. I cannot take this anymore.” The corporate stuff, you know? He used to manage BB King before. He said, “Only twice, twice when I felt like crying is when they did this with BB King and now they’re doing it with you. Both under my wing. You are two artists I had under my wing that I believed in.” So, yeah. Again, I strayed away from your question, but nevermind. [laughs]

Deepti Datt

It had to do again with context. They just didn’t have a context with you. When black American music of the time, there was no way to bring it into the primarily white audience and it was done finally through Elvis. Right? Elvis took black music and became the medium for it to be fed out into a white audience because it would have never been accepted from a black artist.

Asha Puthli

But it was still considered white music when he brought it.

Deepti Datt

Because he was doing it, but we all know he was...

Asha Puthli

Later we found out that he was doing black music.

Deepti Datt

Yeah, of course. I mean for my generation, we all know that Elvis was using black music to feed it out... The companies were using it to feed it out to a white audience and it had to do with context.

Asha Puthli

Yes.

Deepti Datt

Today, we’ve got, as you know an untold number of people. I’ve referenced M.I.A. before who still speaks about not having credit or context or space. She’s having trouble releasing a record even today.

Asha Puthli

Yes. Yes.

Deepti Datt

So I think it has a lot to do with context of the time and space and what sells.

Asha Puthli

I’ll tell you a funny story. Ahmet Ertegun, who made a big name for himself because he started Atlantic Records with Nesuhi Ertegun, his brother. I went up to Ahmet and I said, “Ahmet, I don’t understand it. You all say I’m amazing, I’m fabulous, blah blah blah. Put your money where your mouth is. Now, why don’t you sign me? To Atlantic?” He said, “Asha, but you’re Indian.” He actually spelled it out for me. He said, “But, you’re Indian.” Like, “But! You’re Indian!” I said, “But! Ahmet, you’re Turkish!” I said to him, you know. He said, “Yes, Asha. That’s exactly why I’m sitting where I’m sitting.” Which is, what he meant was, he was behind the desk. He was the chairman of one of the largest corporations in the world, Atlantic Records. But he had started Atlantic Records for black artists to give it to the white audience. So, there was no room, believe me, the whole idea that I was Indian, the face, the look... This blonde hair came later when I got gray haired. [laughs]

Deepti Datt

Anybody else? Anyone have a question? Up there?

Audience Member

Hi. First of all, thank you so much for these fantastic stories. I really love the honesty with which you present the music business. It’s no fluff. My question is kind of ambiguous, but I’m going to try nonetheless. In the last so many, many years that you’ve been involved with the music industry and have made records, you just mentioned that you worked on a new album, I just want to know how has the process of making a record evolved for you? Like going into the studio, turning on the microphone, the board, the music, the artists. How has that experience changed for you?

Asha Puthli

Major change. Major. Because in the old days you got very pampered, as you know. We used to get royalties, big advances, limousines sent to pick us up, the whole thing. Flowers. You have a baby, the whole thing becomes a florist shop. Great amount of generosity from the companies, right? Today, this jazz album, I call it a mattress album. Let me tell you why I call it the mattress album, because these days... And I do sympathize with young people like you who are now trying to make records all over the world. Because it’s a DIY number now. There are no big labels doling out money to make that album. You have to do it all yourself. But on the other hand, you also have the gadgets to do it yourself, which we didn’t have. We were totally reliant on major companies which had those big, big things and those two-inch, and forty-eight tracks and floating whatever it’s called, floors... We don’t need those now. You’re blessed. You’re lucky. You have the ease with which you can make it.

If I can make my album in a mattress. I mean, I call it a mattress because I couldn’t find... It’s jazz. Nobody wanted to put money, right? So, a girlfriend of mine said, “No, no, no, use my apartment. Use my house.” I said, “OK.” We go there and we rented a mic and we rented... And everything else is probably the way you work, on a computer, with all the stuff, the attachments and this and that. Children are screaming outside, this is in Los Angeles. I said, “Oh, my god, what did I get into?” So, we put all the mattresses up against the wall. That’s why I call it the mattress album.

Deepti Datt

Soundproof the room.

Asha Puthli

Yeah.

Audience Member

That is amazing. Thank you so much.

Asha Puthli

But, that’s how it’s changed. Major way.

Audience Member

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Deepti Datt

So, thank you again.

Asha Puthli

Thank you. [applause]

Deepti Datt

Asha, thank you so much. Everybody for coming.

Asha Puthli

Thank you.

Deepti Datt

Thank you.