State bankers’ misfortune is excellent luck for Mumbai music lovers
Rhythm House shut its doors in 2016, bringing an end to the most popular music store in Mumbai. But as an unexpected side effect of India’s largest bank fraud, a revival of the shop may be under way.
Since it opened in 1948, Rhythm House was a key piece of Mumbai’s cultural mosaic. In its racks were records, cassettes and CDs that introduced locals to music from around the world – a blessing at a time before cable television and the internet.
But like music stores around the world, Rhythm House struggled to keep up with the economics of the industry. Few people buy music in physical form any more, said Mehmood Curmally, who owned Rhythm House when it closed.
The shop, with its distinctive navy-blue facade and a delicate iron grill running around the first-floor balcony, was sold last year for 320 million rupees (Dh18m) to Nirav Modi, one of India’s most famous jewellery entrepreneurs.
The site in the heritage neighbourhood of Kala Ghoda in south Mumbai was valuable, and Mr Modi planned to open a showroom in the space.
After he defaulted on more than $2 billion (Dh7.34bn) in loans from state-owned banks, the ground shifted.
Last week, one of the Indian government’s financial investigation agencies seized 21 of Mr Modi’s properties, with plans to auction them to pay back his creditors.
Among them was Rhythm House, which pricked the interest of Anand Mahindra, one of India’s wealthiest industrialists, whose company sponsors Asia’s largest blues festival in Mumbai every year.
“How about a bunch of us in Mumbai collectively acquiring it, restoring it and turning it into a performance venue for rising musicians and a hangout for music lovers?” Mr Mahindra tweeted. “Happy to be part of such a band.”
The tweet ignited such support that he began to put together a loose coalition of donors and volunteers to explore the idea more fully.
Much of the support was driven by the fond nostalgia that Mumbai people still feel for Rhythm House.
“We went to its booths to listen to music before deciding to buy or not,” Salil Tripathi, a writer who grew up in Mumbai, told The National.
“The Curmallys were fairly indulgent towards students like us, who had enough money to probably buy an EP or two or audio cassettes, but who would listen to several records in the booths.
“I must have heard many Beatles songs that way, as well as the Rolling Stones and later Abba. Browsing the tapes and records for hours was almost a religious experience.”
Rhythm House became famous for its wide selection and its owners’ love of music. Salman Rushdie featured a version of it in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, calling it “that rhinestone treasure chest full of antiquated ditties”.
The shop even set up its own record label, releasing albums by “essential but not so prominent performers from the city”, said Naresh Fernandes, the author of Taj Mahal Foxtrot about Mumbai’s jazz culture.
If Rhythm House succumbed to the world of streaming music, Kala Ghoda – home to art galleries, bookstores, stately old buildings and decades-old restaurants – suffered from the global malaise of gentrification, Tripathi said.
Several old favourites have disappeared: the Samovar cafe in the Jehangir Art Gallery, the Wayside Inn, and Strand Book Stall a little farther away.
Esplanade Mansion, which once housed a hotel where the Lumiere Brothers showed the first movies in 1896, has been abandoned because of structural infirmity.
But citizens have been trying hard, with some success, to keep Kala Ghoda’s soul alive. Three years ago, when the state announced a plan to turn the area into Mumbai’s Times Square, complete with electronic billboards and high-end retail, a chorus of protests convinced the government to drop the plan.
The Kala Ghoda Festival, now in its 20th year, preserves the neighbourhood’s focus on art, architecture and literature.
Its organiser, a non-profit called the Kala Ghoda Association, “has made an in-principle decision to contribute up to 2.5m rupees towards Anand Mahindra’s initiative to create a performance space at Rhythm House, as long as it is not-for-profit in its composition”, said the association’s chairman, Maneck Davar.
Others who signed up to Mr Mahindra’s proposal include the politician Milind Deora, Jay Kotak, the son of a prominent Mumbai banker, the musician Vishal Dadlani and the comedian Atul Khatri.
Mr Mahindra suggested crowdsourcing rather than putting Rhythm House into the hands of wealthy patrons.
“This should not be a project for only the rich,” he tweeted. “If we crowdsource you ought to be able to participate at any level you can.”