Lucilla Pacheco

In the 1940s, Lucilla Pacheco was one of the few women on the Bombay jazz scene, playing in the all-star band of Mickey Correa at the Taj Mahal Hotel and with the Anglo-Indian band leader Ken Mac. She later joined the Hindi film industry and performed regularly with the arranger Anthony Gonsalves. But she isn’t remembered merely for being a woman in a man’s world. In the 1960s, she introduced Hindi films to their first electronic instrument: the Solovox.

Soon, she was accompanying films at the Metro theatre and, between shows, worked as a music demonstrator at the Furtado’s music store opposite. In an era when many people bought sheet music to play at home, Pacheco would perform the scores they contemplated purchasing, to show them how good the tunes could sound. It wasn’t long before she was invited to join Mickey Correa’s band, a  legendary dance band that proved to be the nursery of the city’s best swing musicians over the next two decades. She then worked under the baton of such top-flight leaders as Ken Mac and Chic Chocolate.

On the side, she was a regular member of the Bombay Swing Club “Ork”, an outfit that had been started by jazz musicians and fans at the end of 1948 to prove that jazz wasn’t merely dance music. The BSC aimed to be a “show-window of swing” that would allow musicians to demonstrate their talents to the best advantage and to spread the taste of this truly international language. She was a darling of both the crowds and the critics.