Prolific Indian jazz musician Adil Manuel on balancing craft with commerce

Adil's parents were rock and rollers as their home in Uttar Pradesh echoed with The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Cream and Peter Frampton

The first song Adil Manuel learnt to play in full on a guitar was British rock and roll star Cliff Richard’s Teenager in Love. Manuel was a teenager himself, smitten with music. He quickly picked up the three chords he was taught by a friend and new chords began forming under his fingers as if they had always lived there. Richard, in a poetic coincidence, had grown up in the same compound in Lucknow where Manuel also spent a period in his childhood. 

As much as this tryst with music sounds like it was meant to be, Manuel also had to