Early musical career In 1942, he left Mumbai for
Mussoorie to play with Rudy Cotton's band and blossomed into a fine jazz musician. He lived and played in
Delhi for a while the same year. In the 1940s, when he was playing at a resort in Mussoorie,
Mahatma Gandhi happened to be passing through. Frank Fernand listened to one of his lectures, and it brought about a big change in him. He began trying to find a way to play jazz in an Indian way.
Indian jazz India's first prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru's biography
The Discovery of India is also said to have influenced him deeply, and resulted in his complete change of outlook. With a sense of patriotism, he later considered 15 August (
India's independence day) every year as the greatest event of the year. He was already back in Mumbai in 1946, playing with Micky Correa and his band, among others. A turning point in his career and life came in 1948 when he joined the celebrated
Hindi music director-duo
Shankar Jaikishan.
Raj Kapoor's
Barsat was his major assignment under the duo's baton. Later he worked under top-level music directors and had close association with
Anil Biswas,
Kishore Kumar,
Roshan,
C. Ramchandra and others. Fernand was music conductor for many films including
Don,
Hera Pheri,
Zanjeer and
Victoria No. 203. He was music assistant for a few films including
Johny Mera Naam. 1963 Konkani film
Amchem Noxib. His last assignment in the Hindi film industry was as the first assistant of
Kalyanji Anandji, another popular music director duo. His deep love for his mother-tongue
Konkani motivated him to produce
Amchem Noxib under his banner Frank Films with
C. Alvares and Anthony Mendes in main roles. He came out with his second film
Nirmon (Destiny), This film had a powerful story with C. Alvares,
Shalini Mardolkar,
Anthony D'Sa and
Jacinto Vaz in the main cast and won the Certificate of Merit for regional films, the first of its kind for Konkani, at the hands of the then Prime Minister,
Indira Gandhi. Frank also provided the musical score for the Konkani movie
Mhoji Ghorkarn directed by A Salam. Encouraged by the success of two Konkani films, he made a Hindi film
Priya in 1965. It had
Sanjeev Kumar and
Tanuja in the lead, with some catchy songs composed by Kalyanji-Anandji. But it bombed at the box office. Not losing heart, Frank again attempted to produce another Hindi film
Ahat inspired by the popular English film
Wait Until Dark. The film was never released. Frank Fernand has set to music some memorable lyrics by noted poets, most remembered of them all being "Fulam Zai" and "Sobit Amchem Goem" by Dr Manohar Sardesai, for which he won the Bombay Journal Award. He had also staged a
tiatr entitled
Bekar Patrao in the 1980s with a ten-piece orchestra introduced for the first time. He pioneered as a classical jazz player and in trumpet concerto by
Handel under music maestro
Victor Paranjoti. In 1958, he organized a concert wherein he played the Evolution of Music, Jazz, starting with
Negro Spirituals,
Dixie Land Jazz, followed by
New Orleans Jazz, Sound of America commercial music, Symphony Jazz and
Ravi Shankar's Caravan. == Personal life ==