Evening Standard, 23/08/02

Jazz Café, 22/08/02

Bands that play weddings always have the edge. Of course bands themselves prefer 'proper' jobs at festivals and concerts. But playing at weddings gives you an intimate experience with audiences and a lived-in familiarity with your material - and it shows. So the Bollywood Brass Band were storming through their numbers on stage, a magnificent line-up of trombones, trumpets and sax propelled by thunderous Indian dhol and tabla percussion, backed by sousaphone. Whether doctors would recommend jumping up and down with one of these coiled around your upper body, I don't know, but jump Alice Kinloch did, and soprano sax player Joe Cohen stepped forward and, with the sultry guile of a snake charmer, enticed a thinly populated jazz café to dance.
The Bollywood Brass Band are the UK's version of the most ubiquitous music in India after Bollywood hits - the wedding brass bands. Forget the cliché of the jangling sitar, the sound of India is wedding bands and, at the right time of year, you simply can't avoid running into a wedding procession led by a band in gaudy livery, belting out wedding standards and Bollywood hits. The BBB were actually tutored by the Shyam Brass band from Jabalpur, although the main difference between them and any Indian wedding band I've heard is that they are really accomplished musicians: nine non-Asians joined by a couple of guests from the spectacular Dhol Foundation on percussive propulsion.

The backbone of their current repertoire is by A R Rahman, the most successful film composer in India and composer of Bombay Dreams, with some bhangra classics and uproarious arrangements of hits by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Their familiarity with their material shows through as they glide smoothly from one number to another, but with a stimulating change of gear. More than anything I was reminded of the invigorating sounds of New Orleans jazz - not that I was there in the 1920s - but here was an intimate crowd getting down on some powerful music that was more than the sum of its parts. Bombay meets New Orleans in Camden Town. Global village, or what?

Simon Broughton

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