Why Bollywood, why a brass band?

Let's deal with the name first. The Indian film industry is the largest in the world - producing more films annually than Hollywood - and is based in Bombay, therefore the name Bollywood. The films all contain many songs which become hugely popular all over India and of course in this country or anywhere there is a large South Asian comminity.

The Bollywood Brass Band plays the hits from these movies as well as songs by singers like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for example his song Mustt Mustt which has been used for re-mixes and even for a Coke Advert!

So, that explains the name but why are we a brass band? Why not a more conventional line up - with singers - we do play songs after all!

There is a long tradition of brass bands or procession bands in India and in 1992 we met the Shyam Brass Band from Jabalpur, who were in Britain to perform at the International Festival of Street Music. Most of us were already in a street band called Crocodile Style which is run by Emergency Exit Arts who organised a collaboration with the Shyam Brass Band and The Bollywood Brass Band was created.

Why are there brass bands in India? - it goes back a long way - There are records of Indian aristocrats having brass bands in the 18th Century. Towards the end of the 19th century brass bands gradually became more important - particularly for weddings. Originally wedding or procession bands were made up of instruments like the shanai - a loud double reed instrument, a bit like an oboe, but over the years traditional shanai and percussion bands converted to brass bands or gradually changed to clarinet and then brought in other brass band instruments. The first private brass bands were established on the Western coast of India which was the first part of India to be colonised by the British.

This had a big effect on Indian music, a lot of Indian musicians were being trained by the British and played in military or school bands, all of which helped to spread the knowledge of European instruments in India.

The early band repertoire was made up of traditional 'light classical' music based on Indian raags but they soon turned to playing film songs. Indian films started to be made in the 1930's so to a large extent the popularity of brass bands and films grew simultaneously. Hindi film songs have become the popular music of India so when people hear these songs they think of the scene from the film - whether it was a love song or a wedding song for instance. There's a song we play called 'Aaj mere yaar ki shaadi hai' (today is my best friend's wedding) which was originally in a wedding scene in a film but has now become a traditional wedding song - we play it at every wedding we do.

In any large Indian city there will be up to 100 brass bands competing for business. They tend to be in a particular area of the city and all have their shop which is basically a small room opening onto the street that displays pictures of the band and uniform choices.

In India bands consist of the lead clarinet, trumpets, baritone horns and percussion. They mainly play for weddings and festivals and depending on money and the size of the event the band can vary from 8 to 50 men, although 18 - 25 is more typical.

There are three classes of musicians in Indian brass bands. Class 1 musicians are the band leaders - either the owner or his sons and they usually play lead clarinet, trumpet or saxophone - instruments that they actually own.

Class 2 musicians are the majority and the backbone of the band - often hired for the season, they wear the uniforms and play mostly baritones and drums - usually owned by the Malik or Band Leader. They will be less musically competent than the class 1 musicians but can be relied on to know all the current tunes.

Class 3 musicians are usually hired on a daily basis to fill out the numbers. They are usually given old uniforms and instruments that they are not expected to play usually because they don't actually work! They quite often will just carry a broken sousaphone because it acts as a sign post - it has the band's name on it's bell.

As far as weddings go the band is hired by the grooms' family to accompany him on the baraat - the early morning procession from the groom's house to the temple, which is exactly the sort of thing that The Bollywood Brass Band do now. Click on "Wedding Repertoire" for more info.

When we met The Shyam brass band we learnt 4 songs from their repertoire, now (10 years later!) we have almost 30 songs in our repertoire including, of course, hits from the latest Bollywood movies. The Shyam brass band has the traditional line up of clarinet, trumpets, baritone horns and percussion but we use soprano sax instead of clarinet and trombones instead of baritone horns this means we have a different sound, but also of course we play in a different style.

This is a lot to do with the sound of the dhol - we started working with Johnny Kalsi from the Dhol Foundation and developed our own sound.

We soon realised that there was a market for this kind of music within the Asian community, particularly for weddings but also for festivals such as Diwali - the Festival of Lights, a festival that we have performed at every year since. So that's how we started - with a few weddings in the summer and a Diwali procession in the autumn. Now we play at venues and festivals all over the world.