A Personal History by Dave Jago, trombone

I never meant to become a street musician. Even today, against all the evidence, I tend to tell people I'm a jazzer. Come to that, the Bollywood Brass Band were somewhat surprised to find they'd become an Indian wedding brass band. It all started so innocently...

In 1991 the world-beat street band Crocodile Style were asked to play for a Diwali celebration. This Indian festival of light, held usually towards the end of October, often involves lantern parades and fireworks. This sort of parade is a typical bread-and-butter gig for the Crocs, but they were unable to offer any specific repertoire suitable for the occasion. The following year, however, one of the great Indian wedding brass bands, the Shyam Brass Band from Jabalpur, were in the UK for an international street band festival. A collaboration was set up, and the Crocs worked with the Shyams for a week, learning some of their repertoire and mounting a joint performance for the festival.

The next part of the jigsaw fell into place when links were made with Johnny Kalsi, stalwart of the UK Bhangra scene and leader of the Dhol Foundation. The dhol is a Punjabi drum, traditionally made from a hollowed log, which has a deep bass end and a high, piercing treble end. It is used to play a number of distinctive bhangra rhythms, and has the added advantage (with regard to street performance) of being VERY VERY LOUD. Johnny joined the band, and the Bollywood Brass Band was born. That October, the band were able to perform a selection of classic Indian film ("Bollywood") hits on their first season of Diwali processions.

The band was slightly enlarged from the standard Crocodile Style line-up. A lot of the tunes are fairly hard-driving, and a long gig can be hard on a brass player's lip, so several regular Crocodile Style "deps" were added in on a permanent basis to help spread the load (this was when I joined). The line-up has remained pretty much the same since, with the notable additions along the way of Alice on sousaphone, providing a much deeper bass than the baritone sax can handle, and Joe, who plays occasional second soprano and produces our albums. Johnny's international touring schedule proved too demanding for him to commit to the band on a full-time basis, and so the dhol role has been filled by a number of his most gifted Dhol Foundation players, with Jas Daffu settling comfortably into the position over recent years.

To start with, the band worked infrequently, occasionally picking up gigs that might otherwise have been taken by the Crocs. The first couple of years were characterized by shopping malls and children's processions. Not necessarily a jazz player's dream (in the UK, a jazz player dreams of doing a nice Sunday lunchtime gig in a pub somewhere and maybe going home with a tenner), but we got the tunes and the style down solidly and figured out how to make our own arrangements of popular Bollywood hits in the right style.

Then something happened that, in retrospect, should have been obvious. On a Diwali procession, someone asked us if we played Indian weddings. Sniffing work, we of course replied rather airily that yes, we did them all the time. We were a bit busy, but might be able to squeeze them in...and we were away. One wedding led to the next, and before long the diary really was full. The first few were played very much by the seat of the pants, and we were very grateful to our dhol players for guiding us through the various stages of the day's events. You learn quickly in that sort of situation, of course, and it wasn't long before we had the confidence to deal with bookers on their own terms, make suggestions of our own, and generally get the process (generally characterized by a mass of contradictory instructions from all sorts of people with no real connection to the organisers ,and a uniquely relaxed and decidedly non-Western concept of time and punctuality) under some sort of control. And there we were: Britain's (and probably Europe's) first Indian wedding brass band.

We've been in the wedding business for a while now, and we still do lots, but the most recent development in the band's career has been our emergence onto the international festival circuit. In the past we would occasionally do stage sets, for example at the end of a procession, but we always found them a bit restrictive. Our street set involves a lot of movement and performance, and it's difficult to do this on stage when you have to play into a static microphone to be heard. One or two band members started to experiment with clip-on mikes that attach to the bell of the instrument, and this proved to be such a good idea that they became standard band equipment. Suddenly our stage sets were as lively as the street performances, the crowds responded, and we found ourselves booked for festivals as far-flung as Canada and Australia.

We enjoy both types of gig. It is a special thrill to stand in front of a large and appreciative festival crowd and get them dancing and cheering, but on the other hand, there is something unique about playing a lead role in helping a couple to enjoy one of the most memorable days of their life. Long may we continue to do both.