Long before the internet, Google, and the rest, there was a Hindi film called Love in Tokyo (1966) and an even older genré called jazz. Tea Tokieda, aka Trupti Tokieda, is a neat and yet raucous stir-fry of India, Japan and the USA.
The bald-by-choice jazz singer, who has done three albums with her husband Hiroshi Tokieda, is from Maharashtra. She discovered jazz while in the USA and fell in love with both the form and her future husband.
Asked why she took up jazz instead of pop or rock music, Tea told indianexpress.com in an interview, “One of my band members suggested that I look into a certain music college for higher studies when we played in a cover band growing up. I had always wanted to write original music and sought guidance and education, so I concurred and was introduced to the wondrous world of jazz harmony/ chord structure at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA.”
Unlike the imagined plush and affluent surroundings one associates with jazz, Tea insists, “Lineage is not a prerequisite for attempting the style and since it’s a relatively new field compared to the older classical genres, it has fewer boundaries and lots of room for expansion and that tickles my musical palate.”
Her latest release is a Marathi song ‘Googly Googly’ from the film 1234. Composed by Saurabh Bhalerao, the song was part of a romcom about a young couple who are pregnant with quadruplets.
Tea and her husband moved to Tokyo, which, she calls, a “pint-size melting pot”, and she worked on television commercials, dramas, and game music. The “strange but nice girl from India” found a benefactor who helped the husband-wife duo cut their debut album in 2017, Interstellar. That album won the music critics’ attention and bagged the Best New Artist in Japan award from the critics’ club Music Pen Club Japan.
That recognition buoyed Tea and Hiroshi to make their second album, Unknown Places, released on Sony Music in 2019. Then came the coronavirus.
“Covid slowed things down for everybody including us musicians, but we persevered and made two more albums namely Songbird (our third solo album) and Jojouka, a collaborative album of Japanese folk songs in English,” Tea said.
She can’t stop praising the Japanese. “They have been very welcoming and supportive of our music and my peculiar foreign principles. I have grown tremendously as a musician from the experience of performing live at jazz venues and concert halls all over the country.”
Japan, however, did call for some sacrifice on her part. A resolute Maharashtrian vegetarian, she found the first few years in the country challenging. “It took herculean mental and emotional strength to adjust to the culture. People often ask me what Japan is like and I like to say it’s the opposite of India in many ways.
“Food is a significant part of every culture and one can quickly feel isolated if one doesn’t partake in social events involving meals. In my case, it started having adverse effects on my mental as well as my physical health because I stopped eating real food entirely and had to be hospitalised eight months into my interracial and intercultural married life,” she said.
Then she decided to give up her “bullheaded” vegetarianism to experience the more desirable things Japan had to offer, and to make things more easy on Hiroshi.
Asked to describe the music scene in Japan, Tea says the country is home to some of the best musicians in the world when it comes to versatility. “Musicians here take the time to study which makes a huge difference in their understanding of groove and vocabulary. Once you become popular in Japan in the J-pop or J-rock pockets, fans will stay loyal to you for decades and will hop onto the Shinkansen or even an aircraft to go see your concert.”
The jazz scene, she said, is limited to the more affluent circles since it’s rather expensive “to get through the door and a couple of drink orders alongside a main dish are mandatory”.
The mix of hymns at school, Indian classical music at home, and her mother’s love for Marathi folk songs laid the foundations for Tea. “My music instructor at school recognised my aptitude for Western music and insisted that I pursue voice training in Western classical, and my parents obliged while providing a simultaneous introduction to Indian classical music.”
A Hariharan loyalist, she lists Sade, Kishori Amonkar, Shobha Gurtu, Renée Fleming, Joni Mitchell, Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Tori Amos, and Sting as the artists who have influenced her.
Asked how Hiroshi has taken to Indian culture, Tea says he is completely enamoured and enjoys the community aspect. “He is quite enthusiastic about exploring Indian classical music after listening to Kaushiki Chakraborti live on one of our visits to India,” she said.
