<img title="Heather Andrews" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2017/sep/Heather-Andrews.jpg" alt="Heather Andrews" /> Heather Andrews
We meet Anthony Cammarota for the first time at a gig in Andheri on Thursday night. He is from southern California and, these days, teaches guitar at True School of Music (TSM) in Lower Parel. Cammarota's first visit to India was for a holiday in 2015. Then, in 2016, his friends Zoya Akhtar and the late Karan Joseph convinced him while they were in the US to pack his bags and shift to Mumbai, which is where he's based now.
<img title="Anthony Cammarota at Juhu beach" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2017/sep/Anthony-Cammarota.jpg" alt="Anthony Cammarota at Juhu beach" /> Anthony Cammarota at Juhu beach
Jazz musician D Wood's love affair with the city began a lot earlier, in 1984. He's also originally from California. But India keeps calling him back. "It spits me out and then pulls me back with a better deal. I have a crazy relationship with this country," he says.
<img title="Ramon Ibrahim" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2017/sep/Ramon-Weekender.jpg" alt="Ramon Ibrahim" /> Ramon Ibrahim
So, it seems, does Ramon Ibrahim, a music director and instrumentalist who also works on Bollywood projects. He landed here from the UK in 2011 and never went back. Why? "I could see progress happening in Bombay. My whole life is a day-to-day thing, in that I see how this month is going and how the next one is looking, and at no point has there been an unreasonable dip here. If someone told me, 'Come to New York, I'll hook you up with work,' why wouldn't I go? But that hasn't happened, and so I've stuck around."
Heather Andrews, however, has returned to her native London for a few months to evaluate her prospects. She, too, was coaxed by friends in 2014 to forge a career in Mumbai, and is coming back in January next year. "The collaborations and performances I had were beyond anything I had dreamt of back in London. I'm also a novelty [in India], being a foreigner and female. Sadly, I think this gives me opportunities Indian musicians would not have been offered," she confesses.
The common thread between these people, then, is that they are not short of work, and this reflects how the western music industry has taken shape in India. Think of the '80s. Back then, Rock Machine was the only Indian band coming up with anything original. Schools like TSM were unheard of and if youngsters proposed picking up the guitar as a profession, parents were likely to point them towards an engineering book. But now, cross-border cultural exchanges are so common that even Indian bands are playing in festivals abroad.
This gives the community of expatriate musicians in the city a place under the sun that, possibly, they might not have found back home. Wood runs Bandra Base, a jazz club in the city, and says, "In the US, you are a second-class citizen if you don't own a car. But here, I can live happily with a lower carbon footprint and lower down on the food chain, even though we get invited to classy corporate gigs and make tons of money just to play jazz."
Ibrahim adds, "I feel a lot of hope, it's a flourishing scene now. People are taking it a lot more seriously than before."
Nonetheless, Cammarota points out that his provenance does pose certain barriers. "I am an alien here. People are alien to me as I am to them, and it's crazy. But you break those boundaries as a person, as a human being, because there's honesty, and that's what it comes down to," he signs off.

Mumbai's expat musicians tell us what brought them here, and made them stay on

Meet Mumbai's expat musicians and be a part of their musical journeys 

Let your kids enjoy an interactive retelling of the Ramayana in Mumbai

Mumbai's expat musicians tell us what brought them here, and made them stay on

Meet Mumbai's expat musicians and be a part of their musical journeys

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Home / Lifestyle / Culture / Article / Meet Mumbai's expat musicians and be a part of their musical journeys

Meet Mumbai's expat musicians and be a part of their musical journeys

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast