With only minutes left for closing time, Sujit Ponoth still entertains the last three people who rush in, drenched from the pouring rain, scrambling through the thousands of LP records (long playing vinyl records) he has placed on racks spread across the cosily set up space in the ground floor. This is home, he tells those who call it a store, for this collection of music is as personal as it can get for him. He does not even have a board hanging outside the house, located a few metres into the Ponoth Lane in Kochi’s Kaloor, for this is more a venture for community building than a business. He calls it JD’s Jukebox.
Long before the revival of music records and a newfound love for LPs emerged, Sujit began his scouting, not just within the country but internationally. He began with five in 2012 – the records which were left behind by his grandfather and parents. “They had thrown the rest away,” he says sadly. But it was their collection that first put him on the path of music, from which he'd never recover.
“I have listened to every possible style of music since my childhood. When I came back from school, my mother (Jyothi) would be training with her music guru. After that she’d play her mixtapes, she had about 300 to 400 of them. It might begin with a Pink Floyd song, and then the next one would be a disco track, and the third song Tamil! This is what I got through my [late] mother,” Sujit says.
The only two genres he had not listened to back then because they had not existed yet, he picked up along the way – heavy metal and rap. Sujit did not play a musical instrument himself but had basic knowledge of them. He did not join a band. But music in its many forms – records, cassette tapes, CDs – was always there with him, as he finished his studies and began working, travelling across several countries.
The urge to begin a record collection came when he saw how there were LPs in many houses, stacked away in the attic, or given away to the rag picker. “When I started, I was a waste collector!” he says. In six years he had about 5,000 records with him. He’d collect it from people’s homes wherever he travelled.
“I must have gone to at least a hundred houses in Sri Lanka, in Cambodia, in Malaysia and so on. There would be houses without a roof but they’d have records. They may be poor but they still invite you in and offer water. It is a world away from buying from stores. That is the culture I follow,” he says.
He now has a collection of six thousand records that he has kept for sale, apart from those in his personal collection. He had not collected them for sale, but the first thought of sharing his love for records came during the 2018 floods of Kerala.
“If the wildest of calamities could bring together people regardless of their religion or politics, what are the other factors that could do it? Music, sports, art are a few things that could, they are universal. I had music and everywhere I travelled I could connect to people through music,” Sujit says.
Two years after the floods, when COVID-19 hit, Sujit had the time to catalogue his huge collection into the precise neat folders we see today. He began an Instagram page and was surprised to have thousands of records being bought. “There was a fear among people that they were going to be stuck indoors for a long time that made them invest in players, upgrade their collection,” he says.
In May 2023, Sujit opened the space in his house and spread the records there, lit up the place in quaint colours, stuck posters of artistes on the walls, threw together a few shelves of music magazines and radios and gramophones. There would be “listening sessions” when people would just come to the space and listen to music together.
He converted it into a haven for music connoisseurs, and called it JD’s Jukebox. JD, he’d tell people who asked, is for the love of Jack Daniels, the whiskey, but more than that, it stands for all the women in his past and present. JD’s also hosts people – members of the LGBTQIA+ community – when they need a safe space.
In less than two years, he has watched the love for record players and records slowly spread among the newer generations. Sujit is ready to open his new store in Bengaluru, where the passion for live music appears to be a lot deeper.