Brass Β⊄ϕ⊄ –

Stories from the World of Indian Wedding Bands

Introduction

“What a noise and what a clatter! Drum-a-drum-a-drum! Pipe-

a-pipe-a-pipe! Crash-a-crash-a-crash! ... Drums and pipes and
cymbals, glare and hubbub and tinsel! It is a Hindoo wedding.
Musicians and torch bearers lead the way.”
Scenes in the Cities and Wilds of Hindoostan (Hobes 1832: 221)
India, brass bands, and ritual
The handwritten manuscript that R.G. Hobes produced in 1832 is a tourist's account of
the exotic, the quaint, and the picturesque. Despite his choice of title, the land that Hobes
depicts was also coming to be called India, at least by many recently arrived British
merchants, soldiers, and administrators representing the British Government and the
Honourable East India Company. By the time of Hobes’ tour, Hindoostan (or Hindustan, as it
is spelt today) was already a land in which many components of expressive, sartorial, and
culinary culture were being built from bricks made of British as well as Indian clay. Music
was among the arts in which such cultural fusions were to be found. Far in the south of India,
classical composer Muttuswami Dikshitar had already created a series of devotional
compositions, called kritis, in which imitations and adaptations of British melodies served as
the melodic foundation. His brother Baluswami had begun the process of establishing the
violin as one of South India's most important musical instruments (Raghavan, 1975). Farther
north, in Calcutta, we learn that as early as 1792, during that city’s great Durga Puja
celebrations, “at the house of Sookmoy Roy, a novelty was introduced in the Pooja
ceremonies, namely, a combination of English airs with the Hindoostanee songs” (Carey
1980: 122). In Carey’s opinion, “this innovation did not succeed owing to the indifferent skill
of the musicians” (ibid). This book is a study of yet another syncretic musical outcome of the
British presence in India, one that began to take shape in some Indian cities in the years
between Sookmoy Roy’s experiment and Hobes’ encounter with an Indian wedding
procession. By 1832 gradual innovations in Indian processional music had begun that would
dramatically change the nature of what Hobes called “a Hindoo wedding.”
The South Asian subcontinent was an increasingly popular destination for European
travelers as the 19th century progressed; people were growing curious about the large,
complex, and distant land where Britain was becoming ever more involved. We cannot
identify Hobes as a Victorian in 1832; but like later travelers, Hobes wrote with a fair amount
of certainty regarding his culture’s and his religion’s superiority relative to those of the land
he was observing. Also like many of his Victorian successors, Hobes frequently demonstrates
minimal understanding of the scenes he recorded. He provides us with little of the
ethnographic detail, for example, about many aspects of the wedding procession he witnessed.
We can only guess at the identity of the musical instruments Hobes heard (what kind of a
pipe, please?), the location of this procession within the larger series of ritual events that
comprise a marriage ritual (before or after the marriage ceremony?), and the social identity or
economic status of the families whose children were being married (Were these aristocrats?
merchants? farmers?). We cannot even be sure about the religious identity of those families:
at the time that Hobes was recording his impressions, the term Hindoo, used by a European,
might have meant anyone native to or living in the subcontinent. One thing we can be certain
about, however, is the depth of the historical context for this procession. Inhabitants of the
subcontinent had been using public processions as part of their wedding rituals for centuries
by the time Hobes visited Hindustan.
Some form of processional practice remains integral to the vast majority of wedding
celebrations in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh; but the musicians have been musically
and visually transformed. After all, almost two centuries of musical and cultural change lie
between the procession and the band that Hobes witnessed in 1832 and today’s Indian
wedding processions and bands. The stories in this book focus on those years of change.
They are primarily the oral accounts of the processional musicians who provide the music for
contemporary weddings in the northern two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent. I am concerned
with the musical instruments on which these musicians perform and the trade in which they
are engaged. I am also concerned with the growth of that trade and the spread of European
processional instrumentation. This is consequently a historical study of musical and cultural
change that was beginning to take shape at roughly the same time that Hobes was busily
recording his impressions. Since the early 19th century, a steadily increasing number of
Indian wedding celebrants have processed to musics played by musicians wielding the
trumpets, clarinets, and other instruments of the European brass or wind band.
In mainland South Asia there are probably well in excess of seven thousand private
professional brass bands, ranging in size from small ten- or twelve-man family groups to large
business concerns that employ hundreds of full- and part-time workers. In the sheer numbers
of musicians and of listeners, it is certainly the largest professional brass band tradition in the
world. During the yearly wedding seasons, it sometimes seems that one cannot walk down a
street anywhere without encountering one or more of these bands. Dressed in their
replications or revisions of British military uniform, brass bands accompany wedding and
devotional processions, playing anything from early 20th century regional wedding songs to

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the latest rap-inflected Hindi film hit on a variety of European instruments such as trumpet,
clarinet, and valve-trombone. Their music overpowers local neighborhoods during the day
and echoes throughout the cities at night. Almost every Indian has, at some point in his or her
life, listened, processed, or danced to the music of a brass band, as have a majority of
Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and many Nepalis.
From an anthropological perspective, brass bandsmen are ritual musicians. Their
primary function is the production of celebratory, prestige generating music for private and
public processions, most importantly wedding processions. But, while some form of
procession is almost indispensable for most Indian weddings, those processions normally lack
specifically religious content. Consequently, few Indians conceptualize wedding processions
as ritual; instead, most describe wedding processions as purely celebratory events. Even those
who are willing to widen their view of rituals to include wedding processions still point to the
clearly marginal nature of those processions within the larger event.
Processions after all, are liminal events, taking place outside the safety and cleanliness
of private homes or wedding halls. The focus of the event, most often the groom, is in a
transitional state on the road to adulthood and the role of householder, a process which is
certainly ritual if not inarguably religious. While the wedding itself focuses on religious and
ritual behaviors, the processions are transitional celebrations. Especially in contemporary
terms, they appear to have little of the overtly transformative, cleansing, or devotional power
of explicitly religious ritual. As professional ritual musicians therefore, bandsmen's
livelihoods are dependent on demand generated by an event located on the margins of the
wedding ritual. Fortunately for them, their presence is almost non-negotiable within this
marginal context.
There are naturally many differently defined sets of margins in cultural space. It is
unfortunate for Indian bandsmen that they occupy almost all of them. Bandsmen are socially
and musically marginal musicians performing for an event that is only marginally understood
as ritual. Socially and economically, playing music for wedding processions is an
unrewarding profession, as many western musicians can attest. If it were not for the
differences in urban and rural costs of living, the economics of the contemporary processional
music trade in India would be impossible. The predominantly rural origins and low socio-
economic standing of Indian wedding musicians further marginalize them in the minds of
their customers. The fact that processional music in South Asia has been and still is
traditionally performed by members of low or what were called untouchable castes further
complicates bandsmen's identities, especially since, at a very old level of understanding, that

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low caste status is actually required by the liminal nature of the procession, and the
consequent ritual factors and behaviors all of which contribute to the musicians' conditions of
impurity.
In addition to the low-level social and economic status and reward, playing
processional music on Indian streets is not an especially rewarding occupation from a musical
or expressive point of view. Brass bandsmen in India are often looked down upon on musical
grounds, even by the people who hire them, in part because, as I will show, the professional
and commercial conditions of their trade do not especially encourage or reward high musical
quality. The fact that many bandsmen are rather cavalier about musical quality is added to the
list of their sins by their patrons. Band patrons sometimes criticize the popular music
repertoire of brass bands; they frequently point to the brass band instrumentation itself as a
cause of bandsmen's musical negligibility. Although the demand for brass bands is pervasive
across class, cultural, and geographic boundaries, the fact that India's wedding musicians
perform on the musical instruments and cultural symbols of South Asia's former colonial
rulers is routinely held against them. Collectively, these factors locate bandsmen at the most
distant reaches of the Indian musical universe. Whether one thinks of classical or popular
music as being at the core of Indian musical life, almost nobody is farther away from that core
than a typical rank-and-file brass bandsman.
Marginality and musical worlds
I observed my first Indian wedding processions in Varanasi, an Indian city that attracts
a great many foreign tourists, travelers and scholars, in part, perhaps, because the ritual life of
that city is so rich. Later, standing on the edge of the glare and the hubbub of my first
wedding season, wielding my video camera or tape recorder, I tried to make sense of the
events I was witnessing in musical or at least performance terms. I went to wedding
processions with the bandsmen, and so usually felt somewhat isolated from the procession's
consumers, or ritual participants. Although this was not unexpected, the social complications
were multiplied by the obvious separation that exists between most ritual consumers and the
bandsmen who provide music for that ritual. Participants tended to assume that I would
perceive this separation (I did) and that, as a foreigner, I would locate myself on their side of
the social divide (I did not). In Varanasi, it seemed to be a regular source of local amusement
for younger members of the processional party, who were often feeling the effects of
considerable partying, to induce foreigners to dance with them. I would try to explain that I
was “working,” that I was “with the band.” The obvious differences of behavior and dress
between participants and producers in the Indian processional environment, and the

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thoroughly understood distinctions in socio-economic class and caste that they implied,
together with my obviously foreign origins, however, clearly marked me (in Indian eyes) as a
member of the fun-seeking rather than working category. I was obviously not a bandsman or
other producer of the ecstatic processional environment; I must therefore have been present to
consume, or to participate in that production. (Of course, I was consuming the ritual, but not
in a way that either Indian consumers or the bandsmen themselves always found meaningful.)
Since the noise level was too loud to allow rational conversation anyway, and since many of
the young men I was talking to were fairly inebriated, it was usually my size, rather than my
explanations, that kept me out the melee. I am sure that if they thought about it at all, many of
these celebrants considered me just another asocial foreigner. Aside from the well known
problematic that this imposes on the entire notion of Ethnomusicological research, these
conflicts of interest forced me to consider more seriously the social gulf between the
musicians I was studying (many of whom were becoming friends) and their patrons. In any
given event, I felt that I had to choose between being “with the band,” the producers of the
event, or being a processional participant, and, although I have become more adept at bridging
this gap, it remains to the present day. Fortunately, not all processions and participants are as
gregarious as those I encountered in Varanasi, so the choices are not normally as difficult.
Wedding processions, in Varanasi and elsewhere, are cultural performances. Like
other performances, their enactment defines a particular relationship between those who are
understood as performers or producers of the event (in this case the bandsmen) and the
audience or participants, those who consume the music and respond emotionally to the
package as a whole. Musicians and patrons must understand and properly act out specific
ritual roles and relationships in order to produce a successful wedding procession. In
contemporary India, the relationship between producers and consumers of processional music
is especially difficult and polarized. To my way of thinking, some degree of social
polarization is inherent in the wedding or processional music business wherever one finds it.
Where music is defined as a required component of a social activity (functional music in an
older Ethnomusicological paradigm), even to the specification of ensemble configuration and
repertoire, and where that audience is participating in an event which is defined by social and
ritual, rather than explicitly musical, criteria, I suspect that the musical performance can never
be the focus of attention. Nor can the musical quality of that performance be the defining
criterion that measures the success of the event. For the wedding bandsmen of South Asia,
the already unfavorable conditions of their relationship with their audience are exacerbated by
the ways in which their trade has been industrialized and by some characteristics of India's

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popular music industry. Most of all, however, the negative aspects of a bandsman's musical
and social identity are intensified by issues of caste.
In South Asia, and especially in Hindu South Asia, caste is a contentious and
confusing issue. It is not completely separable from more generic notions of socio-economic
status or class, but it does have a more purely hereditary component than do these terms. The
interpretation and effects of caste can be negotiable, of course, and in many Indian lives caste
is clearly distinct from economic and even social success. The extent of its importance and
impact changes across urban-rural, socio-economic, and geo-cultural spectra. Although caste
is apparently a creation of Hinduism, related concepts are part of South Asian Muslim social
structure as well. Even Muslim bandsmen performing for a Muslim patron are affected by the
broader conceptualization of society in pure and impure, high and low terms that springs from
the Hindu ideology. At the same time, Indian and Pakistani Muslims contribute their own
systems of social hierarchy to the mix. Some follow patterns of Hindu structure in their pure-
impure insider-outsider distinctions; others reverse the insider-outsider status by valuing those
lineages whose members can claim extra-subcontinental descent. I cannot say that caste is
foremost in bandsmen's minds in the daily pursuit of their trade; but it does form an important
subtext in their professional lives and relations, both with their customers and with each other.
Combined with class, caste contributes significantly to the isolation that defines and separates
bandsmen from other social and musical groups in South Asia.
As a result of my research experiences among Indian bandsmen, I have come to
perceive bands and bandsmen as part of a separate world within the larger universe of South
Asian music and culture. I have already made the argument for a model of South Asian music
culture that allows for a host of semi-independent musical worlds all located within the
musical universe of South Asia (Booth, 1997). I pursue this trope here, postulating a band
world bounded by a combination of features that do include the geographical, but are
fundamentally musical and socio-cultural. The theoretical physics of this quasi-astronomical
model allow, indeed call for, musical worlds to intersect with others. They do so along lines
that may be social, musical, or professional. Bandsmen are often connected to other
professionals in the processional trades, the men who provide the horses upon which grooms
ride, for example, or the men who provide illumination. Bandsmen are sometimes connected
to other kinds of processional musicians, such as those who play traditional double-reed
instruments, for example. Such connections are often rather tense: those who still perform
processional music on pre-colonial instruments are often overwhelmed by their louder, more
numerous, and more colorful neighbors. Intersections can also be found between the band

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world and other musical worlds: classical and light classical music (in both northern and
southern styles); the world I identified as “traditional” in 1997, which includes folk, and other
pre-mediated popular styles (melodies from music-narratives, religious songs, wedding songs,
etc.,); and of course, the world of contemporary mediated popular song, primarily Hindi film
song. Although such songs constitute the vast majority of bands' processional repertoires, the
connections between the band world and that of Hindi film music are much more tenuous than
one might expect. Finally, caste often relates bandsmen to professions completely outside the
musical realm, such as leather-work, weaving, baking, or basket making.
Musically and socially, bandsmen are on the margins of their society. The music
performed by wedding bands helps to generate the emotions of ecstasy and joy that families
and friends may share during wedding processions; but in at least one very old strand of
Hindu social relations, the musicians themselves are understood to be the recipients of the
accumulated impurities adhering to the groom and his family. Despite the festive and party-
like atmosphere of wedding procession music, the musicians producing that music are
ascribed, either birth or by their profession, to the very lowest rungs of South Asia's complex
social and musical hierarchies. Social, economic, and musical factors locate Indian bandsmen
on the margins of the events at which they work, and the worlds in which they live. The
words and behaviors of both bandsmen and patrons at wedding processions enact these
polarized relations. These perspectives, however, do not define the limits of their marginality.
The symbolism and history of the brass instruments upon which bandsmen perform
marginalize bands and bandsmen with regard to Indian cultural traditions as well.
Musical change and continuity
Change and continuity have been time honored topics and theoretical foci in
ethnomusicology. Some of the very earliest precursors to the field, folk song collectors such
as Cecil Sharpe, were motivated in part by the demise of the old in response to musical and
cultural change. Indian brass bands are at first glance obvious examples of musical change.
If two historical “facts” can be assumed with regard to brass bands, they are these: that brass
bands appeared on the subcontinent due to external European colonial influences and that they
complemented and have gradually replaced earlier non-European ensembles. In the face of
these facts, I would maintain that there are broad and significant layers of local (and locally
generated) meaning included within the brass band conglomerate of meanings.
There is no question that brass bands were introduced into the sub-continent by
Europeans, mostly British, as part of the colonial military establishment. Nor can one
question the proposition that the contemporary private trade is a result, in part, of that

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introduction. At the same time that bands are symbols of the political and military dominance
of British government and culture in South Asia, however, they are symbols of the locally
produced and unmistakably South Asian cultures into which they were incorporated. The
distinctiveness of that private trade, relative to the contemporary military bands of the Indian
and Pakistani armies and relative to the processional ensembles of India before the arrival of
the Europeans, suggests that musical and cultural transformation figure prominently in the
stories I present here. Nevertheless, hereditary families of musicians also play a role in these
stories, as do the remnants of royal Indian ensembles of the 18th century, as do patterns of
social organization and ritual behavior that go back centuries before Europeans ever arrived in
South Asia. Thus in addition to the inevitable transformations, these stories also include
important strands of continuity. The behaviors of the Indians who perform in and hire brass
bands show that these simultaneous and somewhat conflicting meanings are both constant
realities of the brass band world. South Asian brass bands are part of a tradition whose
everyday reality evinces the kind of social content Fernand Braudel may have had in mind
when he wrote that “social content can renew itself almost completely without ever reaching
certain deep-seated structural characteristics” (1980: 12).
The transformational tales of the band world began when the first European military
instrument, the first fife, drum, or bugle reached the subcontinent; they continue in the
present. Indian royalty may have initiated the first new ensembles; the royal adoptions were
certainly documented first. Nonetheless, the processes of change did not proceed in a
homogeneous fashion or at a homogeneous rate across the subcontinent. European
instruments did not spread from a single geographical point, nor in the hands of a single group
of musicians, nor to meet the demands of a single class of patron. The growth of the brass
band trade cannot be portrayed as a unified response, either to British imperialism or to the
adoption of military bands by indigenous royalty. Ex-army bandsmen figured prominently in
the process at particular times and places, but so did ex-royal bandsmen, hereditary
processional musicians, and refugees with no connections to music or the processional trades.
Consequently, in a study of brass bands in India, I am continually challenged to make
sense of the ways that musicians, acting as individuals and in groups, in response to their own
economic needs and the demands of the societies around them, effect the renovation or
refashioning of social content: musical instruments, uniforms, musical repertoire, and
processional performance practice. These changes are, in my perception, taking place on the
surface of a deep-seated and very old tradition of processional music practice, which may also
undergo change, if at a much slower rate. I struggle also to understand those less perceptible,

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but perhaps more fundamental transformations: changes in the fundamental rationale
(Braudel's deep-seated structural characteristics) of the wedding band profession and practice.
These stories of the Indian brass band world, however, are enough to make one
seriously question the entire notion of musical change and musical history. They contribute
immensely to an understanding of musical change as a process specific to and inseparable
from the culture in which it occurs. This conceptualization of musical change should not,
after all, be too surprising. Ethnomusicology as a field has proposed for some time now that
in order to understand a music, one must understand the culture that produces it. The musical
changes that led to the contemporary band trade may collectively be a metaphor for the
Dumontian (1980) notion of “stratified stockpiling” which that great India scholar proposes
for Indian culture. As such, change may not be the readily generalized global phenomenon
that current usage seems to imply.
Christopher Waterman addresses issues of ethnography, history, and musical change
in his seminal study of Nigerian Jùjú. He notes, “it is one thing to describe a music, and quite
another to explain why it perdures or changes under certain historical conditions.” Quite
properly, Waterman goes on to assert that, “musical style is grounded in values” (1990: 6). It
may be especially apt that Waterman uses his father’s writing to define this matter of values
through a series of dichotomous positions or continua involving discriminations between
music/non-music, good-bad, meaningful/inept, etc. Many of Waterman’s theories have in
some sense become as truisms for ethnomusicology, but even as such, they emphasize the
dynamic variability that one encounters in the study of music and culture through the
questions they raise regarding the “music” or the musical world which is the focus of this
study.
Waterman grounds his discussion with an insight on musical change from John
Blacking: “From a purely practical point of view, there are conflicting needs to study a
musical system both intensively [i.e.’ ethnographically] … and at various stages of its
evolution [its history, in other words]” (Blacking, 1977: 13). In the years that I have been
obsessed with South Asian brass bands, I have wavered back and forth between these
conflicting needs. I have more than wavered on the exact nature of the changing object of my
study. Waterman focuses on “a music,” Blacking on a “musical system.” The band tradition
cannot be described as either. Instead, I am concerned with a socio-musical world that is
located within a much larger, highly complex, and culturally diverse musical system or
universe. Further, the world of brass bands is one that could be said to have no music of its
own. Processional music has incorporated and still incorporates folk and classical, pre-

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mediated and mediated, pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial musics; while one certainly
has expectations about what one will hear a brass wedding band playing, there is no music
which is its exclusive property. Even the military marches of its British Army past must be
shared with the bands of the Indian armed forces, which are a very distinct world. Although,
like Waterman I am concerned with perduration and transformation, my concerns relate to
cultural practice and instrumentation, rather than “a music.” The musics played by Indian
bands have indeed changed (rather than perdured) over time; bands play popular film songs
now rather than British (or even Indian) marches. But the relationship between changes in
music and changes in practice and instrumentation is complex and by no means direct. The
identity and importance of “the music” in this musical tradition may be much less essential to
the conditions of our understanding than ritual practice, the ritual roles of the musicians, and
the cultural symbolism of musical instruments or ensembles. Thus, among other things, this
study confronts the range of possibilities that may be encompassed by the notion of musical
change. Can we, for example, have musical change without “a music?” More fundamentally,
what actually is it that changes in the process we call musical change?
However one answers such conundrums, the question has implications for any causal
progression from “values” to “style.” One only has to consider American jazz or more recent
popular musics to accept the proposal that changing values (or to use Walser’s 1993
terminology, ideologies) lead to changing musical styles. One can, perhaps, adhere to such
causality even in a tradition which has no distinctive claim to any single style at any point in
its history: shared or borrowed styles can, after all, easily be said to reflect changing cultural
values. The more severe challenge lies in the confrontation of a multi-layered understanding
of the notion of cultural value. One must consider both the values that produce the musics
(for example, the values of popular Hindi film music, or the values of British military music
in colonial India) and the values that led to its incorporation and continuity in “traditional”
processional culture, in this case, the conflicted relationship between the colonizing and
colonized cultures of the urban centers and peripheries (not to mention the scholastic or
Ethnomusicological “values” that are part of the research process). In purely contemporary
terms, a 12-man band playing the latest film hit in a small town is not the same as a 12-man
group playing the same song in Delhi. Even a larger band in Delhi, say the standard 51-man
ensemble, might generate less prestige there than would a 12-man group in a small enough
village. In Delhi it would be easy to imagine a father hiring for his son the same band that
played for his own wedding, demonstrating behaviors valuing tradition in which a particular
brass band represents familial continuity. I have witnessed transactions of precisely this

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nature. If we can imagine that band representing the first appearance of a large urban
ensemble in my distant hypothetical village (also quite possible), we might see that village
family's behavior as innovative, as an action in support of the modern.
Not only changes in instrumentation, but also changes in repertoire compound the
situation. The connotations of the “oldies but goodies” that bands play, chosen from the huge
repertoire of Hindi film songs, include those of the song’s text, the cinematic scene in which it
appeared, and perhaps even the actors involved. To these connotations are added the
variables of ensemble image and geography, making the situation historically yet more
complex. Old film songs that survive in the band repertoire acquire a particular nostalgic
quality that is distinct both from the still older marches a band might play (traditional?) and
from the current hits (modern?) that they must also play. It should be clear that the originally
British military symbolism of the marches that are still played by some bands undergoes still
more radical transformations of meaning. Even if the tune is well into its third generation of
active use, can we describe a British or American march played by an Indian band at an
Indian processional ritual as traditional? Can we assert that the “values” of independent India,
whatever those might be, include an adherence to the styles of the colonial period? The
survival of symbols of British dominance can only be understood in terms of a constantly
shifting blend of continuity, incorporation, and transformation.
Changes in symbolism and in music culture or performance practice that are witnessed
in wedding processions throughout South Asia offer the opportunity to examine the ongoing
flow of externalized meaning, as Ulf Hannerz (1992) characterizes this phenomenon. The
changes in repertoire, instrumentation, and ensemble that have taken place in India are part of
a process of symbolic transformation that was not initiated by the colonial presence, but that
was certainly altered by it. In musical change, I suggest that we are faced with something
akin to a chemical reaction latent within the cultural body, or already actively proceeding in a
particular direction. Upon introduction of a suitable catalyst, changes in that reactive process
begin to take place throughout the cultural body. The appearance of British military bands in
India was the catalyst that initiated a change of direction in the process of change; the
appearance of film song and the supra-regional power of its media, initiated yet another
change of direction even before Independence further complicated the political and cultural
meaning of both repertoires and ensembles. The band tradition offers an especially complex,
but ultimately rewarding example of musical change. Repertoire and ensemble can be
discerned at the heart of a multi-layered and multi-directional process in which a wide range
of cultural variables take part in the transformational play of meaning and value.

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Stories, history, and metaphor
Any consideration of musical change requires historical discourse. Certainly,
historical events and phenomena have already worked their way into this Introduction.
Nevertheless, I intend the subtitle of this book as an explicit rejection of “the fantasy that real
events are properly represented when they can be shown to display the formal coherency of a
story” (White: 1987: 4). This itself might seem to be a contradiction; but the stories I recount
here do not in fact form a coherent whole. They are bits of a non-coherent process and are
intended to form what Hayden White later describes as a “nonnarrative representation of
historical reality” (ibid). To consider the matter in Michel de Certeau's terms, the undeniably
European origins of the brass bands and their introduction into a non-European culture seem
to offer one of the clearest inaugural ruptures in all of musical history. We do know, after all,
that neither brass bands nor their European processional antecedents were present on the sub-
continent before a certain date (1600 perhaps?). De Certeau, however, establishes the notion
of the inaugural rupture only to reject it completely: “Nor could anyone believe, as much as
historiography might tend to have us believe, that a ‘beginning’ situated in a former time
might explain the present: each historian situates elsewhere the inaugural rupture” (1988:
11). In the matter of new beginnings, the appearance of European processional instruments in
South Asia rates very highly for its semblance of corporeality; but the events that followed the
introduction of European instruments did not unfold in anything that might be called a
progression. There was not one beginning, but many, not one history, but many. Some of
those histories were underway well before the Europeans appeared; others began as a direct
result of their appearance. The direction(s) in which transformation within the processional
music traditions proceeded were powerfully and increasingly influenced by the British
presence perhaps from as early as my arbitrary 1600; the establishment of the first East India
Company factory in Surat in 1611 is certainly likely to have displayed some aspects of British
processional behaviors for Indian edification. At no level, however, neither local nor
regional, does that process of musical change fit neatly into the sequential tropes, style
periods, and the perhaps understandable fascination with inaugural ruptures that characterize
traditional music (or culture) histories. I will point to specific series and patterns of musical
change that can be found at specific times and places in the band world; these are almost
inevitably bounded by particular families, geographies, or social identities. The desire to
rationalize through sequential images the process of musical change in India is, in the band
world at least, constantly thwarted by social and political forces that appear to supersede and
in fact invalidate any but the coarsest sequential models.

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 The history of processional music in India, especially brass bands, is largely devoid of
documentation (which, from Levi-Strauss' classic 1967 perspective disqualifies it as history in
any event). This absence of documentation and the lack of separation between past and
present in the oral histories of band families, combined with the relative isolation in which
bandsmen from different regions of the subcontinent operate, almost allow me to assert that
brass bands in India have no collective history. This is the first time the phenomenon has
come under the historiographic gaze. The myth of their history--as de Certeau (1988) would
call it--that I construct here has enormous potential for understanding the process, the attitude
of musical change. Central to this project is the notion that the brass band tradition can be
interpreted as a musical, anthropological, and historical metaphor for India's encounter with
Western culture. In addition to these three basic methodologies, I will need to consider brass
bands in their bi-directional interactions with the cinema and its music, as part of fashion and
popular culture. In other additions, socio-professional organization, politics, religious ritual
and social change, colonial culture, urbanization and economics must all fit somehow into the
stories I relate in this volume.
Among other things, this means that the topics and factors I consider are more
multifaceted than many standard ethnomusicologies. Ethnomusicology, of course, starts from
the mutually defining premises that culture defines music and that music defines culture.
Most research in this field takes quite seriously the need to interpret music and culture in a
roughly egalitarian framework; but the extent to which this particular research is about things
other than music (as I will suggest below) may be greater than average.
In some ways, this volume has more in common with Ramchandra Guha’s (2002)
history of Indian cricket than it does with many ethnomusicology studies. Cricket, after all, is
a British cultural icon. Like brass bands, the game arrived in India with the British and then,
beginning in the 18th century, proceeded to acquire a specifically Indian life of its own.
Indian cricket and Indian brass bands are contemporaries; for both, their persistence and
growth in independent South Asia is the result of the local meanings and the syncretic
symbolism that these icons of Indian culture have achieved. Finally, Guha treats the game as
a metaphor for broader issues in Indian history and politics and again, for the entire colonial
and post-colonial experience. As I will suggest below, this is one of the defining tropes of my
study of brass bands and music change in India.
The band trade is a syncretic component of a popular culture constructed during the
19th and 20th centuries, in both colonial and Independent India; but this component was
constructed from second hand parts (both literally and figuratively). Even the British noticed

13
this second-hand quality. In the early 1930s, a British officer of the Indian Civil Service was
about to disembark the P&O steamer in Bombay, having been in England on leave. He wrote
in his diary, “a rather tatty band struck up with familiar old-fashioned tunes. … It was for the
Nawab [a fellow passenger, member of the Indian aristocracy]. There was much salaaming
…and the cortege drove off to the martial music of the band” (Carrington, n.d.: 9). Not only
were most of the artifacts (the tunes and instruments) taken from British or other Indian
sources, the very idea of the ensemble and the processional event were constructed from older
cultural and behavioral models (these were largely Indian). Brass bands, like the culture that
supports them, represent simultaneous and conflicting patterns of cultural continuity and
transformation, conflicting responses to colonialism and (later) to the mass media.
The issue of metaphor is thus central to this Ethnomusicological study of musical
change. What is the relationship between change in a music culture (musical change) and
change at the larger cultural level? Even musical change can act as a metaphor, and perhaps
that is all it ever is. What can descriptions of change in a music culture (or subculture in this
case) tell us about other changes in society? Even if the Dumontian metaphor holds, the
greatest development within the Indian band tradition happened during the hundred years that
began in the mid-1860s. During this same period, the Indian population doubled,
industrialization and urbanization increased dramatically, and the sub-continent witnessed
numerous socio-economic and political traumas, both long and short term, many of which
were attributable and attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the British presence. B.R. Tomlinson
describes the fundamental economic understanding of the British raj in these terms:
The coming of British rule was seen to have removed indigenous sources of
economic growth and power, and replaced them by imperial agents and
networks. This deprived Indian entrepreneurs and businessmen in the
‘modern’ sector of the chance to lead a process of national regeneration
through economic development, and also had severe welfare and distributional
effects in the ‘traditional’ sector by imposing foreign competition on handicraft
workers and forced commercialization on agriculturalists. (Tomlinson, 1993:
12)

Now, the phenomenon I am concerned with belongs to a ritual or cultural service sector,
rather than to a production sector of the economy; nevertheless, I consider it crucial to view
the development of brass bands against the larger socio-economic backdrop of colonial
history.
The very existence of a tradition of Indian processional music played by brass bands is
a response to historical change, specifically, of course, the arrival, presence, and ultimate
political dominance of European (specifically British) culture on the subcontinent. The

14
European presence began in the very last years of the 15th century with the arrival of the
Portuguese. For the British, the notion of India as a place to be, rather than as a place to visit
for trading purposes, began developing over one hundred years later, in the early 17th century.
Permanent settlements of the East India Company, primarily in coastal and riverine cities,
grew steadily as did the inevitable military and political engagements. By the early 19th
century, British interests were in de facto control of large portions of the subcontinent. Not
coincidentally, the early 19th century is also the point at which the earliest brass band activity
appears on the historical radar.
The process of conquest and political acquisition by British military and commercial
interests that was underway throughout the 17th and 18th centuries was not formalized into a
unified colonial structure until after the Indian Revolt of 1857-58, which the English
“contemptuously described as the Sepoy Mutiny” (Mukherjee, 1974: 278). Given the
violence and decisiveness of the British response to this Indian Revolt, and the changes in
British-Indian social and cultural relations that followed, subsequent Indian responses to
British culture must be seen as qualitatively distinct from those that took place before this
date. Certainly, the growth of a brass band trade through the latter 19th and early 20th
centuries must be counted among those post-1857 responses.
It is one of the many ironies in the story of the brass band tradition that it grew
markedly along with a rising tide of Indian nationalism that appeared almost at the beginning
of the 20th century, as Indians embarked on their second major, collective reaction to British
imperialism, and specifically to the 1905 Partition of Bengal. Even in the midst of the Quit
India movement that grew out of that initial response, however, we shall see that some of the
very political rallies that supported Indian Independence sometimes featured brass band
accompaniment. The final success of the Indian quest for independence from British rule was
achieved in August 1947, accompanied by an even more devastating division of the
subcontinent. The Partition of India into an explicitly Islamic state, Pakistan, and a
theoretically secular state, India, was emotionally traumatic and resulted in millions of deaths
through rioting and conflict. The conflicts that were formalized in 1947 are still being fought;
the religious and nationalist politics of India and Pakistan are still causing death and
dislocation more than fifty years after the creation of those states.
Musically, Partition divided a seamless classical musical world into almost totally
separate entities, in effect leading to the disappearance of a viable classical tradition in
Pakistan. More to the point for this study, the size and vitality of the band world in India after
1947 show the results of changes in that society that are not mirrored in Pakistan. The rather

15
static nature of the Pakistani band world is equally a response to social change, although in
very different directions. In relation to developments in India, the Pakistani band world
remains old fashioned in its repertoire, social and professional organization, and relations to
Pakistan's broader musical universe. Brass bands are metaphors for many kinds of growth in
independent India; but to a significant extent they are metaphors for something altogether
different in independent Pakistan.
Elements of Ethnomusicological theory and method, the study of music in cultural
context, the application of social-musical metaphor, the ethnographic concern with oral
histories and musical culture all add exciting elements to the practice of music history. To
propose that the sounds, formations, and repertoire of modern Indian brass wedding bands
embody a range of core cultural realities in urban Indian society is the relatively
straightforward application of a well-known Ethnomusicological paradigm. The addition of a
chronological element, however, although clearly inescapable in a discussion of musical
history of transformation and continuity, puts considerable strain on musical-cultural
synecdoche. Under such a paradigm, not only must we accept the possibility that “musical
structures, ritual, and performance” may be “master narratives of society” (Erlmann, 1995:
15), we must also accept the idea that musical transformations and continuities can be models
or master narratives of social transformations and continuities. In the ethnomusicology or
musical anthropology of culture change, therefore, it is not enough to assert that Indian
wedding bands—with their overwhelming volume, ragged playing, line formations, and
repertoire that combines mediated pop song with traditional melodies and English marches—
constitute one important master narrative of Indian society. We must also assert that a
description of the processes of change that have resulted in this musical phenomenon also
describe, in some key fashion, the processes that have produced contemporary Indian society.
Research in the world of Indian wedding bands
When I began the research that led to this book, Indian brass bands—and for that
matter, the larger world of South Asian wedding musicians—were almost completely
unexplored objects in ethnomusicology. With vague suspicions of connections to the
military, and a partial awareness of their film song repertoire, I went to India to work my way
towards some perspective on what I discovered is probably the largest professional music
tradition in South Asia. Among many other things, the very fundamental question of the
physical and cultural locations in which I was conducting my research, as well as those
locations in which I felt I should be conducting research, were issues of considerable
perplexity. Bandsmen do not know much about band activity outside their own areas, and so

16
could not always provide reliable advice or information; those outside the world of brass
bands could provide almost none. Consequently, I agonized frequently about whether I
should go to this place or that place, and whether just one more city would provide insights I
felt were lacking.
The lack of available information and my own solutions to this problem have resulted
in a rather lengthy engagement with the brass band world. My first research trip devoted to
this topic took place in 1988 and lasted twelve months. I returned in 1993-94, 1995, 1996,
1998, and 1999-2000. The American Institute of Indian Studies and the University of
Auckland Research Committee have supported this extensive program of research, that by
now includes three years of actual field work and a great deal of travel. It is no longer easy
for me to explain why I was attracted to a musical tradition that was accorded almost no
respect (let alone prestige) by its own culture and that displayed wildly variable levels of
musical quality. I suspect the obviously syncretic nature of the tradition was a major factor.
Ultimately, the need to make historical and geographic sense of a tradition with no history
kept me coming back for yet one more trip to still another city or region. Later, I struggled
with the question of how to geographically locate and represent this world. I have, with some
historical justification, reverted to the gloss, India, for the location of a phenomenon that grew
to maturity during a period in which India meant everything from Balochistan to Rangoon.
Some of my friends in Pakistan will no doubt find this objectionable and for this I apologize.
In the final analysis, I feel there is no good answer to the question of how one
identifies culturally related but politically divided space. In this work, I will rely on context
to hopefully make clear those instances in which I use India in this broad inclusive sense and
those instances in which I refer to the independent political state in the center of the
reconfiguration of South Asia that took place in 1947.
Within Pakistan and India, it is natural to use the names of the various states and
provinces of the two nations to identify smaller areas. I have already suggested, however, that
political realities do not always match cultural realities. I must therefore also make use of at
least three traditional geographic labels to identify cultural areas that overlap state and
national boundaries. These are: the Punjab, Hindustan, and the Deccan. The most important
of these is the Punjab, since it encompasses a region that crosses the India-Pakistan border. I
will have more to say about the precise identity of the Punjab in Chapter One. Today there
are states identified as “Punjab” in both India and Pakistan; my usage will identify the entire
trans-border region as identified in Chapter One. The term, Hindustan, is an indefinite term.
When Padishah Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur used the term in the 16th century, he meant

17
everything south of Peshawar. Religious and historical issues blur its literal meaning; modern
usage often places it in opposition to Pakistan. Since this political and religious opposition is
less than 60 years old, such usage must be understood as similarly recent. Traditionally,
Hindustan referred to the general area said to run between two rivers, the Sutlej (a river also
used to mark the eastern border of the Punjab) and the Narbada. A glance at the map will
allow the reader to understand the lack of precision in such a definition, especially as one
moves farther east. Nevertheless, Hindustan is a word that can be used constructively to
identify, in a general way, the northern portions of central India, encompassing the states of
Harayana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and, with more qualifications, Gujarat, Rajasthan,
Bihar, parts of Maharashtra and even Bengal. The term is used in this sense by classical
music scholars who study “Hindustani” classical music (which dominates classical practice in
all these areas). In this sense, Hindustan is especially useful as a geographic term that
contrasts these regions with the Deccan. The Deccan is the large plateau of central India that
is to the south of Hindustan. In the band world, the Deccan can be said to begin even as far
north as Mumbai (which is nevertheless part of the Hindustani classical music world) and by
extension of influence even farther, to Ahmadabad. The Deccan's southern borders become
clearer gradually, firming up around a rough latitudinal line connecting the cities, Bangalore
and Chennai. The world of commercial, privately owned brass bands, playing a repertoire of
popular music for weddings is primarily located within these three regions. The brass bands
within and to the south of Bangalore and Chennai are, for the most part, smaller ensembles
with distinct historical precedents functioning in a more classically oriented world. The social
and professional relationships that I will describe, which unite the northern areas, apply with
less consistency and strength south of the Deccan. The world of Indian brass bands of which
I write is thus, a world located primarily in the Punjab, Hindustan, and the Deccan, the
northern two thirds of India, and all of Pakistan.
I have pursued my research in this world largely via two methods, typically
encompassed under the ethnographic method of participant observation and interview. Since
1985, I have attended over 150 wedding and other processions in India and Pakistan with
bandsmen hired to provide the processional music for those events. From the very first of
those processions, I have had to confront the contrasts that are immediately obvious between
the difficult and business-like quality of bandsmen's lives and work on one hand, and the
extravagant, celebratory nature of the events for which they perform. Although I have served
my time in American marching bands, I was initially taken aback by the amount of physical
effort that the Indian band trade could require. The loud playing and repetitive performances,

18
the waiting, and the long processions and journeys sometimes take up ten to twenty hours of a
bandsman's day, and may do so for days in succession. I have to add that as a musician
trained in two classical traditions, I initially reacted with a sense of dismay and bewilderment
to the typically low levels of musicianship displayed and the apparent unconcern for musical
standards on the part of both the musicians and their patrons.
Although many of the musicians in the band world are competent performers and
although some are quite gifted soloists, the professional structure of their lives and limited (to
dancing) social response to their efforts results in a generally low level of performance quality
by South Asian musical standards. Some bandsmen are drawn to the trade because of music's
expressive possibilities of course; but for most, heredity and economic need are the deciding
factors. Most bandsmen are musicians; but they all ply a trade in which live musical
performance is provided for economic gain. Although I have to some extent become inured
to them, as bandsmen do, the contrasts between the representation of wedding processions
from the ritual consumers’ perspective and the representation of the same events from the
perspectives of those who produce the ritual are as powerful fifteen or more years later as they
were in 1985 when I witnessed my first Indian wedding procession. I will seek both to
describe and explain these contrasts as I proceed. It must be clear, however, that this is a
study of musical performance as work. In a hypothetical sense, it questions the entire notion
of musical value; indeed, in this tradition processional music may well not be “about” musical
quality at all.
Band leaders or bandmasters do sometimes offer brief assessments of their band's
performances. When we listen to the tapes I sometimes make, bandsmen do take pleasure in
pointing out each other's contributions and errors; soloists do listen (sometimes with
satisfaction) to their performances. Nevertheless, the intense demand, limited repertoire, low
levels of training in many cases, lack of audience response, and except in the broadest terms,
the absence of financial motivation for improvement are all factors of which bandsmen have
deep experiential knowledge. Consideration of this modern ritual performance practice and
the socio-professional organization of ritual music making, therefore, forces us to ask about
the ways in which ritual performance practice and socio-professional organization interact
with ideas about musical and human value and quality. If one were so inclined, it would be
easy to portray modern Indian bandsmen as interchangeable cogs in an industry developed to
meet urban demand, an interchangeability reinforced by the social and musical
marginalization of the performers and their simultaneous participation in and separation from
the popular music industry. Even in a ritual context that demands live musicians, the

19
possibility of thoughtful or expressive music making is continually threatened by professional
competition and commercialization.
In between processions, I have spent the largest portion of my time in this research
sitting in band shops, tea stalls, and bandsmen’s homes, standing with bandsmen on the street,
and following along during their work. I have conducted a very few formal interviews; but
instead have relied on casual conversation (in which I was often required to give as much
information about my life as the bandsmen were about theirs). Some conversations in my
research have been one-off casual exchanges with men I would never meet again. Other
conversations have been carried on over many years (sometimes by letter) with men whose
families I have met and who I consider friends. Bandsmen have been, for the most part,
welcoming and hospitable across the subcontinent; for men who receive so little, they have
often been as generous as they could possibly have been. This project would not have been
remotely possible without their good will and generosity. It remains a source of regret for me
that many of the conversations that I have begun with bandsmen over the course of this
project—in places to which I could not return or with men who have since passed away—
remain unfinished. Financial and time-related realities have limited my ability to return as
frequently as my bandsmen friends would like. Although there are some attributed quotations
throughout this book, I sometimes resort to speaking for bandsmen (“bandsmen say…”),
either generalizing a host of related comments or allowing an unnamed individual to speak for
his colleagues. Given the number of individuals with whom I have spoken, often casually and
with little chance of further conversation, the breadth of the tradition, and the nature of the life
of music which these men lead, I make no apology for this practice for which I frankly see no
practical alternative.
In both historical and ethnographic terms, much of this study thus depends on
anecdotal information resulting from my own field experiences and from the talk of
bandsmen. The stories I choose to relate, and the pronouncements that bandsmen choose to
make to me, a non-bandsman, and one perceived as possessing far more wealth and influence
than they, are, as we are well aware by now, suspect for a variety of reasons. A range of self-
interests—both sincere and misguided—intervene between the known realities of the band
world and those realities postulated by the men with whom I speak and by myself, sometimes
from their postulates. Nevertheless, there being no alternatives, I seek models both cultural
and historical of the band world itself and of the relations between that world and the broader
world of South Asian music and culture by means of postulates based on ethnographic and
historical description.

20
 Although I write about transformation and continuity, about capitalist commerce and
family enterprises, popular and traditional musics, and urban and rural contexts, I do not offer
these terms in a dichotomous or even historically sequential sense. I do wish to consider their
effects on a trade that is already problematized in professional, musical, and social terms. As
ethnographic objects of study, the problems of the band world transpose themselves into
problems of representation. Although I write about social groups, the Indian popular music
industry, and social forces, I also write about and interact with individuals, musicians doing
their best to survive, make music, and support families in a difficult trade and a difficult
world. Many of the stories offered here are those of individuals and families in precisely
these terms. In a broader sense, however, I also seek to understand how South Asian cultures
define themselves through musical instruments that most Indians (including bandsmen)
understand as foreign and colonial in origin. In both contemporary and historical settings I
describe the social life of those “things,” in Appadurai’s (1986) well known and ambidextrous
theoretical and methodological interpretation of that term, the instruments and symbols of
South Asian bands. The pre-colonial, colonial, and (perhaps) post-colonial nature of those
things are one reason why the musicians of the Indian band world fit so neatly into the
framework of twentieth century ethnography as Clifford (1988) describes it. These musicians
and their patrons do indeed “improvise local performances from (re)collected pasts, drawing
on foreign [I would add “and local”] media, symbols and languages” (1988: 14).
The stories related by bandsmen and the conglomerate stories related by myself as a
researcher represent the two forms of reality that de Certeau suggests are generated by
historiography which “makes the study of the real appear in two quite different positions
within the scientific process: the real insofar as it is the known ... and the real insofar as it is
entangled within the scientific operations...On one hand, the real is the result of analysis,
while on the other, it is its postulate” (1988: 35). This applies to historical ethnography, and
for that matter, historical ethnomusicology, as well. As I have already related, the known (as
de Certeau originally emphasizes it), the primary historical information about the band
tradition of South Asia, and especially as it represents musical or cultural change, remains
frustratingly small and narrowly focused on the personal perspectives of the families currently
engaged in the trade. Random references by European travelers, bits of advertising, photos
taken and surviving by chance, and a few paintings in which musicians appear contribute
peripheral and usually anonymous details.
Some of the stories of the band world are simply gone, never to be recovered. Those
that exist do so in the oral histories of those families still engaged in the trade; they are

21
supported by very little (if any) documentation. Since in many cases, success in the band
trade leads to gradual disengagement with that trade, one might say that the stories of the band
world are those told by newcomers, survivors, and those who have had no opportunity to
leave the trade behind. Once a family does leave the trade, their past connections to this
marginal world and low status trade are rarely matters of pride. Their removal is total and
their past histories (and sometimes their very identity) lost or inaccessible.
Because particular versions and segments of the past are so important for individual
band families and many more are necessary for a study of the tradition, this is an ethnography
that reaches well into a number of pasts: those of families engaged in the trade, those of the
Indian processional music trade itself, and those of South Asian culture in general. To
paraphrase Veit Erlmann (1995), I seek to understand how the sounds, images, repertoires and
behaviors of processional musicians and ensembles in South Asia offer a micro-narrative of
South Asian culture in the period 1800-2000 and further, how changes in that processional
culture (its history, in other words) contribute to our comprehension of the historical narrative
of South Asian culture in that period.
Families presently engaged in the band trade are the primary social and economic
structures that have enabled the maintenance of the oral histories that tell us about the larger
history of the band world. The perspectives they offer are invariably narrowed to the city or
region of their residence and the actions and events that have affected their lives. We are
presented with a conglomerate of human histories that are held together only by my
knowledge of other such stories. Thus, in addition to the stories of families are the other
stories that only come into being as I combine the conclusions or events from different
individual family stories with the observations and few documents of my research. I must use
individual narratives and family stories to construct a nonnarrative history.
A nonnarrative history is a rather dubious commodity under any conditions; but there
are at least two important reasons to attempt one. First, the process of change, in Indian
processional music culture at least, is not sequential. I could quite reasonably propose a
general progression from pre-colonial to colonial musical instruments within Indian
processional practice. Each subsequent proposal that further refined the details of that broad
progression, however, would carry with it an unacceptably large number of qualifications and
exceptions. Second, the primarily oral histories of families and individuals collected in
conversation across much of the subcontinent, the chance recorded encounters with
processional culture by European travelers, and the very occasional documentary evidence of
processional practice that collectively form the bulk of my data more or less demand that I

22
avoid tying these stories into one great narrative strand. Bandsmen’s comments to me, and
the consistently local or regional nature of their knowledge about their trade, both suggest that
bandsmen do not think of themselves or their trade in this fashion. Bandsmen know that there
are other bands in other cities; but their specific knowledge of who and where those bands are
(and for that matter, who is still active and who is not) is limited. Fundamentally, I can see no
reason to view the process of musical change from the conceptual high-ground of sequential
history.
How to construct a nonnarrative history is another matter. There is no chapter or
section of this book that explicitly addresses historical process; I do not begin at a
chronological beginning or end. Instead, this study is organized into two large parts. Part
One addresses issues of identity and marginality from social and professional perspectives in
Chapters 1 and 2. These are combined with geographical perspectives in an examination of
movement and careers in the band world in Chapter 3. These first three chapters are to a large
extent, an anthropology of musicians and of a music trade. Change in these chapters is
expressed primarily in terms of identity and professional organization. In Part Two, Chapter
4 begins a shift of emphasis towards a musical anthropology by examining the instruments of
the colonial and post-colonial processional worlds. Instrumental change gives way to musical
change (Chapters 5-7) in which change becomes a matter of repertoire, transmission, and
performance practice. Here, marginality becomes a functional element, representing a kind of
social continuity, but interacting with musical features to support musical change. Because
my focus is on the stories of individuals and individual families, some bands and bandsmen
will reappear as characters in many of these chapters. The brothers of the Jea and the Mumtaz
Bands, for example, will become familiar enough to offer some sense of continuity. This is
not only convenient; it is necessary. The process of musical change is a personal one; the
men who are at the heart of this story of change have hardly ever given the matter thought
outside of the personal contexts of their lives and livelihoods; for bandsmen, working in a
ritual service economy, change is a pragmatic necessity. The history that emerges from this
approach will not lead the reader neatly from the beginnings of Indian engagement with
British processional instruments in the early 19th century to the present. To the best of my
understanding, there is no historical “reality” that corresponds to such a presentation. There
will be gaps, as well, in the supporting histories. The culture of colonial India is an area that
requires considerable further research, as does the Indian musical culture of that period
(outside of the explicitly classical world, where much historical research has been done).
Nevertheless, I will assert that the picture emerging from these stories of individuals and

23
groups provides the reader with an image that corresponds to the reality of professional life
and the processes of change in the world of Indian processional music.

24
Part I. Contemporary and Historical Ethnographies of a Processional Music Trade

Chapter 1. Identity, caste, and family

Ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂
In February 1997, when I had been thinking about and writing about Indian brass
bands for almost ten years, I was recounting my day’s activities to some friends as we drove
to dinner at Mumbai’s Race Course Restaurant. I had spent most of the day in one of the
older and largely Muslim parts of the city broadly known as Bhendi Bazaar, although I had
been in a smaller neighborhood of that area called Pyadhunie, where two of Mumbai’s oldest
and most famous brass bands, A. Noor Mohamed and Bombay Native (Punjab), had their
shops half a block from each other. My friends, a highly educated middle-class Hindu couple,
rarely traveled in that part of the city. The wife, not knowing of my research, asked whatever
had I been doing in that place. She clearly suspected me of slumming, foreign foolishness
and poor judgment at the very least. When I explained that I was researching brass bands, she
at once understood that I had at least a quasi-legitimate excuse for being in Pyadhunie, but her
only response was, “Oh, the ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ fellows!” I did not know what the word
ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ meant; but I recognized the dismissive tone in her voice. I had heard it quite
frequently in India when I explained what my research program was.
Ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ are a shortbread-like biscuit, often homemade, but at one time also
made by the millions in largely Muslim-owned bakeries in Bhendi Bazaar, although now
many of the bakeries have moved out of the city and there are fewer than there were.
Ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ have their own small but special place in popular culture, having become
distinctive culinary specialties of late Raj-era India. Ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ are also possessed of a
certain mid-century quality of nostalgia; today they remind many Indians of the country’s first
decades of Independence when the things of India’s pleasure, and certainly of every-day
pleasure, whether culinary, cinematic, or musical, were mostly the productions of internal
manufacture. They also belong to a less distinct past (which is perhaps all the more powerful
for its indistinctness) when evening strolls with parents or grandparents, as well as formal and
informal family visits and picnics were accompanied by the appearance of ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂
among other delicacies.
The men who baked ν⊄νκηατ⊄⊂ in Mumbai were mostly members of middle and
lower status Muslim castes who have produced much of India’s distinctive textiles, the once
famous cottons and still famous silks and gold embroideries, and other manufactures (to use
the very old British term) for centuries. They are of the same caste and class groupings as the

25
men who own and play in the A. Noor Mohamed and Bombay Native bands in Pyadhunie.
The physical, social and cultural locations of Muslim bandsmen in Mumbai are all very much
amongst and of the biscuit-making bakers of Bhendi Bazaar. Although my friends did not
bother to explain the connection at the time, biscuits and bands have a logical commonality in
the religious and caste identities of people who produced them and the locality in which those
people still live and work. Biscuits and bands are also elderly contemporaries, a bit tattered
and old fashioned, sharing a place in the latter colonial and early Independent periods of
Mumbai’s history. The association is widely shared by residents of Mumbai and other
northern and western Indian cities; as symbols they look backward rather than forward.
The commonalties between bakers and musicians extend beyond Mumbai; in some
individuals they are physically brought into the city in the cycles of mobile labor that
characterize the band world. Muhammad Bashir’uddin is an elderly bandsman who began
traveling back and forth from northern Karnataka state to work in the Noor Mohamed Band
sometime around 1965. He and his brothers, sons, and nephews have traveled widely
throughout central India. Like the rest of the mobile labor force in the world of brass bands,
his family remains at home near the small town of Aland (roughly 350 kilometers south-east
of Mumbai) where they are bakers.
Biscuits and bands are located in the same urban space, are produced by the same
religious and caste groups, and occupy a similar social space in relation to the larger urban
environment. The status of both groups, but most especially of the bandsmen, is further and
more negatively complicated by the presence of other neighbors. Barely two streets away
from the Pyadhunie band shops begins an even more notorious part of Mumbai, inhabited by
the members of an even older profession, which like processional musicianship, has
traditionally been both outcaste and an important component of processional ritual: one of
Mumbai’s most infamous red-light districts, often known by the still-colonial names of the
main roads, Falkland and Lawrence Roads.
Whether one thinks of them as ρανδ⊂ [prostitutes], ταω⊄ιφ [courtesans], or
δεϖαδ⊄σ⊂ [temple dancing women], female entertainers who perform in public share that
difficult mix of ritual functional necessity, association with the production of auspiciousness
(or removal of inauspiciousness), and low social status that characterizes bands and
bandsmen. Only the recent dominance of post-Victorian or Indian middle-class morality has
managed to divorce dancing women from their role in processional ritual. I have never
witnessed professional women dancing in contemporary processions, nor have I heard of this
practice in contemporary terms; some elderly Indians, however, can recall watching the

26
dancing girls (or not being allowed to watch the dancing girls) at the wedding processions of
their childhood. On the other hand, earlier reports of wedding and other processions
invariably connect processional music with processional dance. Jean de Thevenot’s account
of the marriage procession that came for the daughter of the Governor of Surat in 1666 is
typical: First came the military standards; then the lights, two hundred or more “flambeaus,
followed by a similar number of men and women with candles affixed to their heads on
wicker frames; next the musicians: trumpeters [de Thevenot was obviously not an
ethnomusicologist; he did not count the trumpeters] and public dancing women, carried on
palanquins, singing and playing cymbals;” and finally the groom and his friends on horseback
(Guha, 1976: 39). Physical and processional contiguity between bands and “public dancing
women” within urban contexts, as well as historical factors, some of them probably reaching
back to the arrival of the Aryans, some much more recent, all contribute to identifying
bandsmen collectively in low status terms.
The interactions among the four defining variables in the world of South Asian brass
bands--shared relative social status, caste, occupation, and place--are subtle and far from
immutable. These structures of hierarchy, status, profession, and caste interact with matters
of place and occupation in such a way that for me at least, the knots remain only partially
untangled. The matter of social identity (as defined by caste, socio-economic status,
occupation, and sometimes place) can be said to define social status and is thus a good place
to begin. Certainly the Indian cultural understanding, and often the reality, of bandsmen’s
low-status social and musical identities explains much of the combination of incredulity and
dismissive-ness that has often greeted my announcement in polite Indian circles that I am
studying wedding bands.
From a global perspective, bandsmen are not alone in their marginality. In at least
some other music cultures, musical performance, and especially functional or ritual music
performance is undertaken by individuals and groups who occupy marginal social and/or
musical positions. I suspect it is no coincidence that most marginalized music traditions, are
like those of the brass bands: full- or part-time professional, and necessary for social or
religious ritual. “Within the Nepalese caste hierarchy ... the δαµαι tailor-musicians rank at
the bottom of the social scale, together with the other Nepali musician castes” (Tingey, 1994:
86). Nepal’s is a culturally distinct, but related band world. In some western areas of South
Asia, bandsmen may even be distantly related to one of the planet’s most famous caste of
marginal musicians, the Rom, whose musically desirable attributes are combined in most
European cultures with social undesirability. In his study of γριοτs, the musicians,

27
genealogists, and maintainers of tradition and ritual in western Africa, Hale writes “griots in
the Senegambian region appeared to be social outcasts, living outside or on the margins of
society” (1998: 193). His ethnographic research confirms that this European perception is
shared by contemporary West Africans.
Who are bandsmen?
Brass bandsmen are the most recent incarnation of India’s long tradition of
processional musicians. Processional musicians are a distinct class of musician and of person
throughout South Asia, but especially in Hindu South Asia. In the music cultures of the
subcontinent, the boundaries between processional music performance and other kinds of
music performance are more or less permeable depending on the place and on the historical
context; but the boundaries are always perceived. Music contributes to the production of an
appropriately auspicious and/or prestigious atmosphere in almost all of the world’s
processional rituals, whether these are religious, political, social, or otherwise. Music attracts
the attention of potential divine observers and of human observers as well. Rare, expensive,
or socially restricted instruments or music may serve to mark or contribute to the prestige and
social status of the procession’s human organizers. Lawrence Babb (1975) suggests that in
specifically religious Hindu processions, music focuses worshippers’ thoughts on the divine.
In Hindu processional ritual, however, processional musicians also have an important
function, one which is tied to very old ideas about purity and impurity and its management in
social contexts, and which problematizes the whole exercise of processional music
performance and identity in India. Ideas about purity and impurity in Indian society are
related to the systems of social structure and stratification commonly glossed by the term,
caste. Most processional music in South Asia, has been, and continues to be performed by
members of very low and untouchable castes.
Caste, ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂, and processional musicians
The matter of caste is complex and intensely debated both in India and among the
many contemporary scholars both deconstructing and reinterpreting the matter of caste and
the phenomena of social stratification and organization in South Asia (e.g., Fuller, 1996;
Quigley, 1993; Rudner, 1994). Without reproducing the voluminous literature on this subject,
it is enough to note that there is no consensus about the existence, meaning, or importance of
caste-related phenomena in contemporary India. One of the most valuable attempts at
capturing the complexity of caste issues is offered by Bayly (1999) who concludes her
introduction with some of the same types of arguments I have made for ethnomusicological
studies of musical change. She writes,

28
 India’s enormous complexity and historical dynamism must make any quest
for a single model or formula of caste a deeply frustrating experience. Herein
may lie the great advantage of exploring these issues historically. … It may be
possible to reach a view of caste which captures much of the plurality and
multiplicity of Indian life and thought …it may be possible to show that none
of the divergent theoretical interpretations [of caste] can be refuted absolutely.
On the contrary, each of them may actually be correct for some, if not all
Indians, at least for limited periods, and in at least some areas of the
subcontinent (Bayly, 1999: 23).
Most Indians use the word, caste, when speaking to foreigners in English or when
referring to the politicized aspects of socio-economic classes in India. Most commonly one
encounters the term as part of the official euphemism for low or untouchable castes,
“backward” or “scheduled” castes, also referred to as Harijan (the Gandhian term) and Dalit, a
term claimed as the preferred term by at least one member of this class (Shukra, 1994). Based
purely on observation, I can agree with Shukra’s assertion that socio-economic and political
oppression are fundamental factors in the institutionalized existence of low caste groups. As
one might suspect, none of these terms is completely satisfactory; I will use the relatively
neutral and ambiguously descriptive term, low caste, throughout this work to refer generally
to all low- or out-caste groups. My generic usage will include groups that are often
understood to be located outside of the caste system itself, such as Bhangi and Dom.
In northern Indian languages terms including ϕ⊄τ⊂ or ϕ⊄τ [“type”] and sometimes γοτρα
[“clan” or extended marriage relationships] are commonly used by Hindus to specify their
membership in larger social groups, which they might call caste if using the English term. In
popular theory these fit into the classical concept of the four ϖαρ∧α [literally “colors”]; but
attempting to fit these commonly encountered terms into the ϖαρ∧α structure is a difficult,
not to say futile undertaking. Béteille points out that the ϖαρ∧α connection is weak and that
the most generic of the Indian terms, ϕ⊄τ⊂, is itself indeterminate in common usage. The
“disparate assemblage of clans, sects, castes, tribes, religious communities and linguistic
groups that can all, according to context and situation, pass as ϕ⊄τ⊂s fits at best awkwardly
into … the four ϖαρ∧αs” (Béteille 1996a: 171). He also indicates a distinction in the labels
and uses of caste as found among members of various castes, on one hand, and outsiders
studying the phenomenon on the other. Finally, “in addition to caste, the things that count for
status …are education, occupation and income, and the subcultures of the profession, the
office and the association. The latter are by no means unrelated to caste in the traditional

29
sense, but they can hardly be regarded merely as aspects or expressions of it” (Béteille 1996a:
173-4).
Although the theology of Islam opposes stratification of society along pure and impure
lines, Muslim South Asian culture does show a similar tendency towards social hierarchies
(Ahmad, 1978a). In my experience, however, hierarchical criteria, the rankings of specific
groups, and outcomes of such rankings are all more subject to debate than on the Hindu side
of things. The Persianized form of ϕ⊄τ, ζ⊄τ, the term βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ [most commonly
“brotherhood”], or even θαυµ [“tribe” or ‘clan”] are all used by Muslims in discussion of
social identification and stratification. In the many discussions I have had among both
Hindus and Muslims on matters related to social groupings, consensus is rarely achieved as to
meanings or importance of any of these terms. Lamsweerde proposes two general meanings
for the English term, caste: “a caste as a category of people bearing the same name or title,
who may live widely apart” and “a caste as an organized group, which nearly always has a
strongly local character” (1969: 10). In this study, I will use the appropriate specific
terminology whenever possible; otherwise, I will continue to use the generic English term,
caste, in the sense of an often endogamous, named social group that possess assigned, if
negotiable associations to a particular social and/or ritual status, often to a particular range of
traditional occupations, and sometimes to a particular region or area. In this sense at least,
caste identity affects the social and professional lives and identities of all South Asian
bandsmen.
What is more significant than the simple existence of caste in the band world is the
potential, and potentially triangular connection between social identity, ritually pure/impure
status and occupation. The causal link between ritually impure status and impure
occupational traditions (or vice versa) is made clear by Deleige (1996). He also points out the
wide range of meanings and gradations in the recently coined terms, untouchable, low caste
and ηαριϕ⊄ν. Because occupation may be important in defining caste, it is essential to
consider (although not necessarily from their specific perspective) the defining issues
proposed by Searle-Chatterjee and Sharma: “Caste is undoubtedly also performed [original
emphasis] in a variety of ways” (1994: 8). They note that although caste can be described
“in terms of a system of groups …it is probably more useful to regard it in terms of a system
of action (flexible and mutable - perhaps in reality a collection of modes of action)” (Searle-
Chatterjee and Sharma 1994: 9). The performance of caste will thus take on special meaning
in a study of bands, as will the idea of caste as a potential system of action or behavior. By
their engagement in ritual and by the nature of their behaviors, bandsmen assert and act out

30
the hierarchical existence of caste at the same time that other elements of their trade (the
involvement of caste Hindu families, the “business-like” behaviors, etc.,) reduce
interpretations of hierarchical caste relations to more straightforward socio-economic class
distinctions and economic transactions. I must note that for many contemporary Indians,
these latter interpretations of class, occupation, and economics are more important. Some see
bandsmen as stereotypical members of the lower classes rather than the lower castes; others
see the two terms as conflated, at least in the lives of brass bandsmen. The vast majority of
bandsmen are members of caste groups that are defined as low by bandsmen and by outsiders.
The connection between low status castes and processional or ritual music is
longstanding and widely perceived, even if it comes in for relatively little discussion.
Christopher Bayly’s (1983) economic history of India in the 18th and 19th centuries is largely
concerned with merchant castes; but even this focus cannot avoid some consideration of low-
status castes such as Camars and Doms who were gifted with clothes, and sometimes with
money, at festival seasons, births and marriages (of the merchant class families) in exchange
for ritual services. Bayly does not tell us what the Doms or Camars did to earn their rewards;
but that knowledge is implicitly understood in India: among other things, they made music.
Doms especially have been known as processional musicians for centuries. In many Indian
cities families belonging to various of the Dom sub-groups are firmly entrenched in the local
band worlds. Camars, traditionally and collectively identified as leather workers, are also
important as bandsmen in many places. Lamsweerde’s categorization of musicians in India
finds wedding musicians located under the heading “village musicians”. As those who play
for ritual and life cycle events, most typically on drums and double reed aerophones, he notes
that “village musicians are usually recruited from the local low castes; providing this music is
then a part-time or full-time activity” (1969: 13).
Complementing the engagement of low Hindu castes is that of a number of similarly
low Muslim castes. Henry reports that in his area of study (near Varanasi) “members of
English bands were all from lower Muslim castes such as the ϑολαηα (weaver), ∆αρζι
(tailor), and Χυριηαρα (bangle seller) castes” (1988: 220). To the west of Henry’s eastern
area of study, somewhat higher status artisanal Muslim castes are predominant. These include
Sheikh, Siddiqi, Mansoor, and Masood, in a range of combinations.
Regardless of the actual caste status of any given bandsman or band owner, there is a
very old stratum of understanding and behavior in India in which the low castes provide
music for the rituals of the upper castes. The music itself may be auspicious, but the act of
providing it is often quite the opposite. There are two interpretations of this phenomenon;

31
both employ the pure/impure dichotomy that is an important aspect of Hindu thought. First,
there is the idea that the instruments of processional ritual, which in traditional India are
horns, oboes and drums, are themselves polluting. Drums, the sine qua non of processional
music, whose leather heads, the product of dead animals, are inherently polluting; these
instruments fit easily into an understanding in which pollution is attached to mucial
instruments. The connection between Camars, whose traditional occupation is leatherwork,
and processional music makes good sense in this respect. Briggs (1920), for example, offers a
very clear, although decidedly colonial perspective of the connection Camar relationship to
both leatherwork and with drumming.
The saliva that is an inevitable part of wind instrument performance is also interpreted
as polluting, although from some perspectives, pollution only arises from contact with the
saliva of others. Nevertheless, this is the usual explanation for the polluting qualities of the
∨αην⊄⊂s and trumpets of traditional Indian processional instrumentation. Tingey, for
example, notes that Nepali wind musicians face pollution “because their saliva comes into
contact with their wind instruments” (1994: 87). For these reasons, the polluting nature of
their instruments figures prominently in any explanation for the low caste-processional music
connection.
There is a second, more powerful philosophical or theological conceptualization,
however, that explains the ongoing dominance of the processional music trades by the low
castes. In his research on caste, Gould proposes that an important feature in the classic
interpretation of the “the caste system” is the management of contact between groups
possessed of differing levels of purity in economic and ritual life. He also points out that “for
a ceremony to be valid, two classes of ritual specialists had to participate;” in addition to the
expected Brahman ritual specialists, “the other class of specialists was what I call the defiled
‘contra-priests’” (1987: 49). The individuals Gould identifies as contra-priests belong to
barber, sweeper, washer and other occupational groups at the very lowest end of caste-based
models of social structure. Raheja (1988) points out that among the contributions made by
each caste to village ritual, it is the sweepers (Bhangi) who provide the music. In these terms,
processional music production is often connected with the system of ritual inter-caste
exchange (most commonly identified as ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂) with which scholars such as Gould and
Raheja have concerned themselves. Lamsweerde also alludes to ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ in a survey of
professional musician identities; but also notes that “more specialized musicians are usually
hired incidentally and serve more than one village” 1969: 13). While it is no longer clear just
how all-encompassing ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ may be, Gould’s theories of ritual and ritual exchange

32
(1987) explain untouchable contra-priests, such as bandsmen, as removers of impurity, not as
creators of auspiciousness. They are those upon whom higher castes, the patrons of
processional events, shed layers of inauspiciousness by means of the gifts that they give the
musicians in exchange for their production of processional music. In this explicitly ritual and
explicitly caste-Hindu interpretation of their role, processional musicians are the musical
garbage men of public ritual.
This explanation of processional musician status is based upon an older and presently
more rural model of Indian social relations than is commonly understood in contemporary and
especially urban India. Dr. N. Rajaram, Professor of Sociology at Maharaja Sayajirao
University in Baroda agrees that this idealization of ritual exchange and the shedding of
impurities is important in historical terms; but points out that it has been transformed in the
20th century urban India, the original home of the brass band version of processional culture
(personal communication). I will show below that many of the identities, and in some cases
the very families, of the brass band world are consistent with ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-based models of
exchange, and that bandsmen still appear to act out the relationships of caste, as Searle-
Chatterjee and Sharma suggested. Nevertheless, as Rajaram notes, in matters of identity and
economic exchange we see the process of transformation built on top of a foundation of
continuity. Throughout my research, bandsmen and their patrons have consistently described
the exchanges that take place during wedding processions in purely economic terms and the
job itself as reflective of a conflated identity that has as much, if not more to do with socio-
economic class identity than with matters of caste identity.
There is a certain ‘chicken-and-egg’ quality to this issue, which may lend strength to
the idea of the low castes as an oppressed, rather than a socially impure class: it is far from
clear which comes first, the negative aspects of the occupation or the low status of the social
group. There is also an increasing awareness that interpretations of social organization
stemming from high-status Brahman informants (as ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ clearly is) may not be shared
by the supposedly low caste individuals on the receiving end of the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ exchange
(Shukra, 1994). This is especially the case when the bandsmen are Muslim, as many are.
Certainly, dual perspectives may operate simultaneously, one through the eyes of the
bandsman and one through the eyes of his patron. Whether one views the dynamic as one
structured by caste or by class relations, however, the practical outcome is the same. In
almost any musical context in India, folk, classical, or intermediate, the combination of
processional music activity with performance on drums and wind instrument results in low
musical status and is normally accompanied (or driven) by low (or at least lower) social status

33
as well. Throughout the region, processional music continues to be provided by individuals
from the most economically depressed and lowest status social groups.
The correlation between low caste and occupation is reasonably strong in the band
world, but far from absolute. The Muslim artisanal caste band owners of Mumbai, for
example, are hardly on the bottom rungs of even the Muslim social hierarchy and if one could
make such unlikely comparisons, probably well above low caste Hindus. They certainly do
not readily qualify as oppressed, and do not accept ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ based interpretations of their
trade. Nevertheless, the social reality is that even if a bandsman is explicitly not low caste
(quite a few are not), he is low status by association. For those high- and even middle-status
families in the trade, their participation may be a sign of hard-times and misfortune. Such
misfortune might be personal as in the case of a famous band family in Pune, whose Brahman
status is certainly an exception in the band world. The early death of their father left the four
young sons and their mother destitute, and with no means of support. The boys had learned to
play clarinet, saxophone and trumpet in the Boy Guides, however, and in 1937 opened what
was probably the first brass band in the city, in imitation of similar bands in nearby Mumbai.
For other high status families engaged in the brass band trade, that trade was a final recourse
to recover after their flight from post-Partition Pakistan. In such families, even though most
are highly successful, there is always a faint tinge of embarrassment surrounding their
occupation. Many will claim that they do not actually play in their bands, that is, they do not
participate in what might potentially be a transference of impurity; they simply manage the
business. Even if they do admit to playing in their band, in most high caste band-owning
families there is either clear evidence or at least a sense that coming generations will move on
to other trades.
From one perspective, the question, “Who are bandsmen?” has an answer based on the
employment of new instruments and ensembles in a very old activity. Bandsmen are the
inheritors of a musical role in processional ritual that is intimately connected with some of
Hinduism’s core beliefs regarding social hierarchy and purity/impurity, a role that
automatically defines anyone who occupies it in negative terms. From another, still historical
perspective, however, bandsmen represent their culture’s engagement with the west
(specifically the early 20th century British west), through their adoption of modern popular
music ensembles into Indian life and entertainment. At the beginning of the 21st century,
neither the extremes of Hinduism’s hierarchical tendencies nor the ongoing role of symbols of
India’s colonial experience are issues that many Indians confront comfortably. Thus, the very
existence of brass bands can be, and often is, an embarrassment. This, of course, adds yet

34
another reason why, within the context of South Asian society as a whole, bandsmen remain
individuals with low to very low social status. It is also a reason why this is the first study of
this massive component of South Asian music culture.
In addition to these fundamental social and musical perspectives, a variety of other
issues can produce a range of sometimes complementary answers to the question, “Who are
bandsmen?” Some of these perspectives are those of time and place. Although one can
expect that in any city one looks, bands will be owned and manned by low status, refugee, or
minority castes, the particular identity of those groups changes with the city and region. In
addition, identities change over time within cities and regions. Looking at the backgrounds of
newcomers to the band tradition, we see a combination of hereditary processional musicians
from a range of castes and individuals and families with military band backgrounds, as well as
some with no previous musical experience. In the next section, I assert that among the
historical and geographic perspectives, in ways that simply do not relate to matters of caste,
one can propose that bandsmen are individuals from the Punjab.
The “Punjab” Band
The Punjab is that area of western South Asia encompassed by the tributary river
system of the Indus; the “five rivers” of the region’s name are (from east to west) the Sutlej,
the Beas, the Ravi, Chenab, and the Jhelum. All five flow into the Indus, which in some
accounts replaces the Beas as one of the five. Politically, the Sutlej and the Beas begin in
India, while the Ravi meanders along the still contested border with Pakistan, leaving the
Chenab and the Jhelum (and the Indus) in Pakistan. The Indian State of Punjab is understood
to extend as far to the east as that state’s capitol, Chandigarh. The historical urban center of
the Punjab, Lahore, is now the heart of Pakistani Punjab and, as most Lahoris will tell you,
the cultural capital of their country as well. In addition to large Muslim and Hindu
populations, the Punjab is home to adherents of the Sikh religion, and during much of the first
half of the 19th century, the center of a Sikh political kingdom. Leaving aside the conflicts of
the 1857 revolt, the Punjab was the last area in what became British India that saw large scale
military activity and presence. It is also an area that, since 1857, has provided many of the
soldiers for the native regiments of the British and Indian armies.
Allen (1975) reports accounts of recruiting activities in the Punjab showing that
military connection between the British and the Sikhs had a direct impact on the processional
music trade. “At the entrance to the village you’d probably be met by the local village band,
big drum, pipes, side-drums, many of them retired drummers from the regiment” (Allen,
1975: 142). Much has changed in the Punjab since this pre-1947 story took place; but retired

35
Punjabi pipers and drummers from the Pakistani Army (at least) still man many of the
bagpipe bands that play for weddings in modern Pakistan. All this may help explain the
prominence of the Punjab region and its people in early stories of brass band activity in India;
it also makes more comprehensible the connection in popular culture between the Punjab and
the brass band trade.
Throughout modern India, there are spread countless “Punjab Bands.” Picking on
some of India’s geographic extremes, for example, one finds a Punjab band in Patna
(northeast), Chennai (south), and Kolkata (east). In Mumbai (west), one finds the more
creatively, if ambiguously named Bombay Native Band (Punjab). There is even a Punjab
Band in the Punjab (in Phagwara, near Jalandhar); but to my knowledge, only one. Some
Punjab bands are large and famous shops, well known in their regions, with histories that
reach well into the early 20th century; others are just one more band among the many. Some
are owned by families originating in the Punjab, others by people who simply borrowed the
name and the affiliation for commercial reasons. There are no stylistic or other elements
(beyond the name) that connect all these bands, although almost all are owned by Muslim
families.
The Bombay Native Band (Punjab) was opened around 1920 by a Muslim bandsman
who migrated to Mumbai from a village near Jalandhar. The band’s ambivalent name locates
the family within the high fashion cultural world of a city that continues to take the lead in
India’s cultural and stylistic interactions with the west. The name simultaneously locates the
family’s place of origin in a region famous for processional music of both an exotic and
colonial sort. The founders of the Bombay Native Band (Punjab) and the Punjab Band of
Patna were both Muslims of respectable status (the Mumbai family are Sheikh, the family in
Patna are Pathan, both groups at the higher end of the Muslim hierarchy, but not connected to
any traditional occupation). Both men are described as economic refugees by their
descendents. Muhammad Hanif Khan, founder of the Patna shop, was a British Army
musician, who played a small local oboe-style double reed instrument that his descendents
call Afghani τοτ⊄ [literally, parrot], as well as bagpipes and clarinet. Hanif was born near
Peshawar (which is, more strictly speaking, the Northwest Frontier), and resigned from the
army in the early 1940s in favor of private enterprise. The band Hanif opened was initially a
bagpipe band. In this, Hanif was following a trend; the first half of the twentieth century saw
a proliferation of “police” or “army” bands, as bagpipe bands are often called in India, opened
and operated by Muslim families. After a brief flirtation with Kolkata, Hanif moved to Patna
in 1944 where there was less competition. In the period between the first and second world

36
wars the progenitors of a number of extant (mostly Muslim) band families, like Muhammad
Hanif, left the Punjab for various urban destinations in central India. But almost a century
before these emigrations took place, musicians from the Punjab were already making a name
for themselves as brass bandsmen. What is more, it appears that many of the very earliest
Indian bandmasters were Sikh rather than Muslim.
The tentative nature of this assertion is in part the result distinctive patterns of family
engagement with the band trade demonstrated by Muslim and Sikh families. Muslim families
engaged in the band tend to remain in the trade over multiple generations, sometimes as many
as six and seven generations. Sikh bands, on the other hand, are often single-generation
affairs; as a group and as families, Sikhs have been better able to avoid the trap of hereditary
engagement in this low-caste occupation. For example, the Azad Band of Lucknow, founded
by a Sikh bandmaster shortly after 1947, is now owned by a low caste Hindu family. They
purchased the enterprise from the owner, whose sons had moved on to other, more respectable
trades. Thus, bands owned by Sikhs (e.g., the Patiala Band, Chandigarh; the Lahore Military
Band, Delhi) change hands quite rapidly and tend to be one or two generation enterprises at
most. When families leave the band world, their oral history generally leaves with them;
often the very fact of their existence is vanishes as well. Consequently, in contemporary
India, where there are many fewer Sikh-owned bands than Muslim, it is very difficult to
measure with any certainty, the level of historical Sikh engagement in the processional music
trade.
In spite of the paucity of Sikh owned bands, there is reason to allow for the possibility
of an early and influential role for Sikh musicians in the band world. The rule of Maharaja
Ranjit Singh (1780 - 1839) is a political highpoint of Sikh history. Ranjit’s rule also features
one of the very earliest documented appearances of an Indian-owned European style band.
One of the many 19th century travelers in India, Miss Isabella Fane (1804-1886), encountered
the Maharaja’s band near Ludhiana in 1832, playing “God save the King” although the
performance was “not so well executed as our own bands could do it” (Pemble, 1985: 187).
Ranjit’s band had apparently still not got the tune right six years later when the British
Governor General, Lord Auckland was received by the Maharaja. Auckland’s famous sister,
Miss Emily Eden reported that the band played the anthem “with every other bar left out,
which makes rather a pretty air” (Eden, 1983: 224). Despite their musical errors, the Lion of
the Punjab’s band, like his army was nevertheless very much a European enterprise.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s band (trained by European bandmasters) was created to
accompany a formidable European-style army (trained by European officers). Indeed, the

37
very notion that Europeans were the source of military, technological, and musical innovation
is one source of the metaphorical strength of this musical ensemble. Subsequent associations
between military success (Indian and European) and musical ensemble and style are one of
the roots of the brass bands’ importance in the Indian culture of the colonial period. For that
matter, the Sikh army was one reason for the increasingly large military British presence in
northwestern India in the first half of the 19th century, as the bulk of the British and Company
armies gradually shifted in this direction to confront the political uncertainty following
Ranjit’s death. The Sikh Wars (1844-1849) ultimately placed the Punjab under British
domination; but further threats and military involvement beyond the Punjab, in Afghanistan,
meant that there remained a higher proportion of military activity and personnel in this region
than in most other regions of India. The increased presence of the military, and therefore of
military bands as well, and the maintenance of a European band by the Sikh army lend
credence to the possibility of an important and early role for Punjabi bandsmen, both Sikh and
Muslim.
One of the very earliest names to appear in the oral histories connected to private
bands is that of a Sikh. Lakshman Singh is described simply as a bandmaster, probably in the
British or Company Army, apparently active circa 1820-1840. One of his bandsmen during
that period was a Muslim musician named Muhammad Jehanghir, who later retired and, like
Muhammad Hanif ninety years later, went into business for himself, lending his own name to
his new band in 1855. Muhammad Babur, Jehanghir’s youngest grandson still manages the
Jehanghir Band (which moved from Amritsar to Lahore in 1947) and recalls the name of the
man who taught his grandfather to play what he calls piccolo, but which I take to mean fife.
Thus, in the mid-19th century, at least some Muslim bandsmen were learning the music the
trade from Sikh bandmasters.
Lakshman Singh’s later career is unknown. He disappears from the Jehanghir oral
history after having initiated Jehanghir into the mysteries of European processional music and
has no family in the trade to tell his own story. Without reading too much into an absence,
one might perhaps take this as symptomatic of the general trend described here. While
Lakshman Singh’s family apparently went on to other trades or occupations, his student’s
family still follows the processional music trade over one hundred years and three generations
later.
In the same wave of emigration that carried the Muslim founder of the Bombay Native
(Punjab) Band from Jalandhar to Mumbai, a Sikh clarinet player (probably ex-army, but his
grandson is not certain) left the same region for Hyderabad, in the Indian Deccan, opening the

38
first brass band in that city, which he simply called The Sikh Band. Because Sikh band-
owning families so readily leave the processional music trade behind them, there are few
enough Sikh band-owners in contemporary India to make this three-generation enterprise
exceptional. When the owning or founding family is Sikh (as opposed to simply being from
the Punjab), the band’s name is likely to note the owner’s identity more explicitly than by the
inclusion of “Punjab” in the band’s name. “Sikh”, of course, and “Sardar” are common,
σαρδ⊄ρ being a term commonly used to identify Sikhs; there is even a Guru Nanak Band in
Jabalpur, named after the first of the Sikh Gurus. Connections with the military are also used
by Sikh band owners. Two such groups, The Sardar-ji Fau-ji [Sikh Army] Band and the
Lahore Military Band both appeared in Delhi shortly after 1947, re-opened by Sikh refugees
from post-Partition Lahore. Partition imbued the name and image of Lahore city with a
certain level of nostalgia for the many Sikhs who had to flee the city before and during
Partition, as the latter name shows. Both of these bands closed with the deaths of their
founders, an especially Sikh practice which remains important throughout this study. Lahore
appears in the name of the M.S. Anand Lahore Band, another band owned by Sikh Partition
refugees who in 1947 fled across the border to Amritsar. It is characteristic of the ironic
tragedy of Partition that even as these Sikh bandsmen were leaving Lahore, Muslim
bandsmen and owners in Amritsar (such as the Jehanghir Band) were fleeing in the opposite
direction. In contrast to these stories of political conflict and flight, Amrit Singh, the owner
and manager of the Patiala Band in Chandigarh (founded 1964), turned to music to escape
what he perceived as the tedium of agricultural life in his Punjab village. Neither Amrit
Singh’s father nor his sons have been involved in professional music making. As with the
two Delhi bands mentioned above, Amrit Singh fully expects the Patiala Band to close on his
retirement; his sons already have more respectable jobs in the civil service.
The early and enthusiastic embracement of European bands by the Sikh state and the
extent to which British military activity was increasingly focused on northwestern India as the
19th century progressed make it easy and reasonable to suppose that a pool of trained Sikh and
Muslim bandmasters from that region may have been created in that region and period, and
that these men were in search of employment in the 1820-60 period, perhaps increasingly so
towards the end of that period. It is certainly true that after the shock of the 1857 Revolt, the
British sought to rely increasingly on Sikh recruits for the Indian army (the Sikh princes and
soldiery had sided with the British during this conflict), so that there was (and still is for that
matter) a higher proportion of retired soldiers (and perhaps retired bandsmen) in the Punjab
than in Hindustan and central India.

39
 Boonzajer-Flaes (1993) has proposed a leading role for retired military bandsmen in
the Indian band world of the mid-20th century. I have argued elsewhere (Booth, 1996/97) that
the oral histories of both the 19th and 20th centuries, together with the genealogies of extant
band families all suggest that period of interaction between ex-military musicians and the
processional music trade (two different musical worlds, subject to different kinds of social
control) began in the mid-19th century and declined through the first decades of the 20th.
What oral histories also suggest is that in the first half of the twentieth century, participation
in the processional music trade (as opposed to military bandsmanship), as performer and/or
owner, was a survival mechanism employed by Muslim and Sikh individuals and families
leaving the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier (among other regions) for a variety of
economic and political reasons. Conditions during the 1920s and ‘30s in northwestern India,
such as the local impact of the global economic depression and a rate of population growth
that approached and in some years exceeded 100 percent may well have encouraged
emigration. It may also be that Indian soldiers returning home from Europe and other posts at
the close of the 1914-1918 World War returned with a desire to see more of the world and to
live in a more exciting environment than their villages could provide. There was a slight
resurgence of the military-processional interaction around the time of India’s independence;
subsequently, refugee and low caste families have dominated the trade.
I must make clear that a military point of origin for band families is only one possible
mode of entry. Other oral histories suggest that low caste hereditary processional musicians
were among the very earliest owners of private bands, employing new musical instruments
within established occupational activities and patronage networks. The appeal of the trade for
Muslim families is also increasingly apparent from the mid-19th century onwards.
Muhammad Farid (circa 1945) is the eldest of four brothers, members of a Sheikh family,
three of whom are owners and bandmasters of the Mustafa Band of Ahmadabad. He explains
the high level of Muslim involvement simply by stating that Muslims enjoyed the trade; “they
like it, they found it interesting”. His family’s history shows yet a third mode of entry in
which individuals with no musical training found work in urban bands through social
connections. Farid’s grandfather, Muhammad Mustafa, was a boatman who came to
Ahmadabad in the second half of the 19th century where he found work in a band run by
another Muslim musician, one Ghulam Rasul, whose caste identity Farid describes as related
to his own.
Muhammad Farid has no idea what motivated his grandfather’s move. Among the
older surviving bands of the central western cities, however, the arrival of an ancestor in the

40
city—his subsequent employment in an existing processional ensemble (brass band or
precursor) where he learns music and the processional trade—is a common beginning to the
oral histories of these important band families. The motivating factors for these urban
migrations appear to have been economic. The family that owns the A. Noor Mohamed Band
in Mumbai, one of the oldest and most famous bands in India, traces its origins back to a
Muslim artisan named Abdulla, who, as a gold-cloth (ζαρ⊂) worker in Surat was displaced
economically in the 1830s by the “disruption of demand at both the luxury and intermediate
levels of the economy” (Bayly, 1983: 264) that was underway throughout northern India at
this time. This crisis “involved a complex set of changes which had wide repercussions
throughout Indian social and economic life” (ibid). When Abdulla reached Mumbai as an
economic refugee in the late 1830s, he found a niche as a worker in what his family think was
probably a drum and bugle band. In a process that Muhammad Mustafa employed some years
later, and that seems to have been repeated in other Indian cities, Abdulla then went on to
establish his family and to some extent his caste/religion as well, as central players in the band
market of India’s biggest and most innovative city. No one in Mumbai, including his family,
recalls the identity of the group with whom Abdulla found work. One hundred and fifty years
(seven generations) is a long time, after all, especially to recall the names or identities of a
group who lost the struggle for patronage and thereafter disappeared from the band world and
the trade’s oral history. A. Noor Mohamed is probably the oldest extant shop in India. As far
as I know, there are no contemporaries or peers to contradict their version of events.
I cannot emphasize enough the historical problems created by the disappearance of
those families who have left the band trade (for whatever reason) and whose stories by and
large disappear from the oral history of the band world. Whether we suspect earlier activity
and anonymous progenitors because of oral histories, or because of historical documentation,
or on sheer supposition, we rarely if ever arrive the beginning (that tempting inaugural
rupture) of the process of musical and instrumental change, that is, the first European style
ensemble in a particular city or region. We cannot even identify what might be called the
second link in the chain of musical change. As in the Mustafa Band story, we know the
identity of the bandsman from whom Mustafa learned; but from whom did Ghulam Rasul
receive his training? Such stories can remind us that in oral history, even more than written
history, the survivors get to write the story; they also suggest that the beginnings of musical
change are not always visible from a distance and may not even be worthy of comment by
locals. While I can provide many answers to the question, “Who are bandsmen,” I cannot
answer specifically the question, “Who were the first bandsmen?”

41
 Of course, it hardly matters who was first. What is important is that stories such as
these suggest that in addition to the continuity of hereditary families in this new version of the
processional music trade, brass bands had great potential for the involvement and
transformation of non-hereditary families as well. This dual aspect to the identities of early
brass bandsmen is the source of much of brass bands’ metaphorical power. The
transformation of India’s processional music trade was initially personal, as when a boatman
became a bandsman; but like the proverbial circles in a pond after a stone, those individual
transformations expanded in waves from individual to caste group. In the case of
Ahmadabad, the Ghulam Rasul and Mustafa Bands were the core of an urban band world
dominated, until 1947, by artisanal caste Muslims. Throughout the colonial period these
transformations took place through the medium of caste-based social networks, reaching
regional levels and, as regional waves overlapped, national levels as well. The developing
processional culture was inherently syncretic; in the context of the new colonial urban centers
and an emergent colonial Indian culture the new instruments and ensembles were understood
to be suitable additions to and replacements for pre-colonial processional instruments. The
dispersal of brass bands from the centers of British influence (that is, the British-created
coastal metropolises) throughout India can thus be said to mirror the spread of colonial
culture. The process of musical change and the identities of those who participated in or
precipitated those changes both reveal the outcomes of this syncretism.
In the processional music trade specific castes often exercised a considerable degree of
hereditary control over processional music performance and over access to instruments,
instruction, repertoire, patronage networks, all valuable commodities that were retained within
extended family and caste groups for the economic well being of the group. In this sense, no
one controlled performance on British instruments. Hereditary low caste processional
musicians could take advantage of their established market niche and patronage networks
even as they changed instruments (assuming their client groups were interested in the new
instruments). Because European instruments were, by their very identity, not under the
control of other groups, however, there was no one to object when non-hereditary individuals
or families became involved in the trade. Indeed, from what I can tell, hereditary musicians,
especially in the cities, sometimes hired newcomers to their city, men who were too desperate
to be fastidious about their source of income (Abdulla’s story might well have been along
these lines).
The syncretic qualities of the band trade left it open to adoption by non-hereditary
families. Other aspects of those same qualities simultaneously encouraged the development

42
of the trade along the lines of caste-based, hereditary control and dissemination. Here I refer
to the specifically syncretic cultural formation that equated British processional instruments
with pre-colonial processional instruments in this functional musical realm. The process was,
of course, neither neatly nor sequentially enacted. While low caste musicians were taking
advantage of the traditional nature of the function for which music was required and their
hereditary dominance in that activity, economic and political refugees from one sort of trauma
or other, began taking advantage of the novel and explicitly British character of the ensemble
to insert themselves into the business. Brass band performance and/or ownership offered
economic opportunities for those who had lost their place in the economic framework. For
much of its history, the band trade has been a business for newcomers to the city and for
refugees. In many such cases, the family washes it hands of the whole business as soon as
they are able. This, of course, is because of one of the great consistencies in the Indian
processional music traditions, whether played on a trumpet or a ∨αην⊄⊂, is that the
occupation remains a low status undertaking. It is also true that in present day India, low-
caste processional musician families continue to transform themselves from performers on
pre-colonial trumpets, double-reeds, or drums into brass bandsmen. Before considering some
of these stories of instrumental transformation, it is important to examine the state of
processional music in pre-colonial India.
Social and musical identities in pre-colonial processional practice
The wind instruments, drums, and cymbals of the British military have replaced or
complemented other winds, drums, and cymbals in Indian processional music practice in a
cultural and musical process that began perhaps as early as the early 18th century. I will
consider some of the earliest instances and speculations in Chapter 4. The range of pre-
colonial processional music options, however, which brass bands have ultimately and largely
replaced is generally much larger than the processional options of independent Indian or
Pakistani culture. Flora (1983) and Wade (1999) are among the relatively few scholars who
have examined the scant evidence and information regarding Indian processional instruments
and performance practice before the 18th century. Like Terada (1996) and Grossbeck (1999)
these studies use as their starting point the importance of classical music genres and the
relations between courtly or temple music performed as entertainment and similar musical
genres performed in processional contexts. It is exceptionally difficult, to establish a
definitive picture of pre-British practice, especially when regionalism plays a major role in
informing that practice. What is clear, however, is that although the range of options in
processional instrumentation was quite wide in pre-colonial South Asia, the types of

43
instruments are consistent: trumpets, drums, and reed aerophones make the sounds of
processional prestige.
Traditionally, two types of aerophone were widely used in South Asia: double reed
oboes and natural trumpets. Drums also came in two generic varieties distinguished by the
shape of the bodies, which most commonly can be seen in a wide variety of barrel or kettle
shapes. Tingey writes with good authority that “before the arrival of the tabl or naqaara
khaana [West Asian military ensembles], an ensemble of conch and drums was prevalent in
South Asia, and drums with scared or military functions have been in use in the sub-continent
since ancient times” (Tingey, 1994: 19). As with many aspects of post-Independence (or
more accurately, post-Partition) South Asian culture, a degree of politicization has arisen
regarding the origins of these instrumental types, many Muslim or Pakistani sources asserting
the West Asian origins of almost the entire range of basic Indian processional instruments
(with the exception of barrel shaped drums and cymbals) while many Indian writers have
gone to some lengths to establish the South Asian roots of kettle shaped drums (Mistry,
1984), horns (Deva, 1977), and double reeds. This is not the place to rehearse these
arguments. They do have a clear impact on how we are to understand the process of musical
change on the sub-continent, however, as I will emphasize in Chapter 4. Since many families
in the band world that I have described have their roots in earlier instrumental configurations
(where ever those configurations originated) it is important to have a general idea of pre-
British instrumentation.
Drums are the most basic instruments of the processional repertoire. A family too
poor to hire a band or other instruments will almost always hire at least a group of drummers
to mark their processional ritual. In contemporary Mumbai, one alternative to a brass band is
an ensemble such as the Rohit Nasik Baja, in which an amplified keyboard is accompanied
exclusively by large barrel shaped ⋅ηολs (with membrane circumferences as large as three
feet). Kettle-shaped drums also make outdoor processional and prestigious music in a range
of sizes, from the huge metal ναθθ⊄ρα still observable in some Mughal and Rajasthani
palaces, or in the royal enclosures of Patan (Nepal), to the small shallow clay-shelled
instruments (often called τ⊄∨α) still found in small processional bands throughout much of
modern India. Wade (1999) shows us the upper range of these ensembles, and their iconic
importance as symbols of Mughal/Islamic dominance, relative to the barrel shapes of Hindu
South Asia. Ναθθ⊄ρα are central to the ναυβατ ensembles that were certainly imported into
South Asia by Muslim invaders beginning in the 8th and 9th centuries. These music bands
also included double reed aerophones, such as ∨αην⊄⊂, and long metal trumpets, called

44
ναφ⊂ρ. Royal ναυβατ musicians have, in rare instances, made direct transitions to brass
band instruments during the 20th century (as in the princely state of Bhuj, discussed Chapter
3). More commonly, however, those players of traditional instruments who became brass
bandsmen were of somewhat less exalted status.
Trumpets made of conch shell appear in early references to and representations of
indigenous South Asian ritual; these are still used in Hindu ritual. Trumpets made of
hammered metal, in a range of shapes and called by a range of names are also found
throughout the region. The general consensus seems to be (Wade, 1999) that semi-circular
curved horns (often called σ⊂γ) may well be native to the subcontinent, whereas the long
straight horns found in the ναυβατ are West Asian imports. Double reed instruments
similarly appear across the subcontinent and into West Asia. Many double reed instruments
have no Muslim connotations (such as the small συνδαρ⊂ and µυκηαϖ⊂∧α found in the
Deccan, or the large ν⊄γασϖαραµ found in South India. The ∨αην⊄⊂ itself is more
ambiguous in its more extreme conical shape and its West Asian name. All these instruments
had their role in processional music contexts before the arrival of the British. When India’s
last host of physical invaders arrived, their processional instruments were added to existing
ensembles and also formed the basis for new ensembles. But musical change was underway
and is evident in processional music well before 1600. The kettle-shaped drums and double
reed shawms are both evidence of West Asian cultural influence in Indian culture. When the
British did establish their political power in South Asia, it is only natural that processional
musicians and their patrons began to engage with the new set of processional instruments. In
some cases, as I have made clear, musicians already engaged in the processional music trade
exchanged their older instruments for the new ones. Many of the more recent stories of
instrumental change within families come from the large plateau region of central India,
known as the Deccan.
Instrumental transformations in the Deccan
In 1957, two brothers came to the central Indian city of Hyderabad to open a wedding
band shop. Bittuappa (circa 1925-80?) and Tukaram (circa 1933) were the youngest of four
brothers in a family of hereditary musicians from a village in northern Karnataka State. The
brothers and their family were members of a sub-caste of the low caste ϕ⊄τ identified as
Jadhav, called Mane-Jadhav or sometimes Bajantri. There is general agreement that Jadhav
itself is a version or sub-caste of the Camar caste of leather workers who also act as
processional musicians in some capacities. The brothers’ father (circa 1895-1945) and
grandfather (circa 1870-1920) had been ∨αην⊄⊂ players, as were the elder two of the four

45
brothers; Tukaram describes one of his grandfather’s uncles as a great classical singer,
although precisely what this means is unclear. By the time of Bittuappa’s birth, it must have
been clear to the family that the ∨αην⊄⊂ was an instrument in peril of being perceived as old
fashioned. Although he and Tukaram learned their family’s music, they did so on the clarinet.
Their elder brother Jayatappa had already started the family transformation; he played both
∨αην⊄⊂ and clarinet.
The brothers operated a ∨αην⊄⊂ party (“party” is a generic English term used in
India in the sense of “band” or “ensemble”) consisting of two ∨αην⊄⊂ (played by the elder
brothers), harmonium (which Tukaram also played) and one or two drummers (Bittuappa
played ταβλα as well as clarinet). They performed for weddings and other auspicious
occasions, both in seated and processional formats. They played light classical songs, music
of the Natya Sangit theatre (light classical Marathi-language music dramas), and probably
some classical ρ⊄γα music as well; Tukaram has described their style as γ⊄ψακ⊂, a word
used by Indian musicians to identify instrumental music played in a vocal style. Based in
Sholapur (their mother’s home city), the group performed over a geographic range that
stretched from Hyderabad to Mumbai. A number of the brothers, including Tukaram, worked
as casual accompanists and apparently soloists for All India Radio (AIR).
After the death of the eldest brother and ∨αην⊄⊂ soloist in 1951, the party broke up.
Jayatappa eventually returned to the family village, Hidebenur, to manage the farming and to
establish a career as an itinerant musician, playing both ∨αην⊄⊂ and clarinet for weddings,
ναυτανκ⊂ (popular music theatre) performances or whatever else was available. Tukaram
worked in Pune for some years playing clarinet in the Marathi Natya Sangit theatres of that
city and also working in the Prabhat Brass Band, one of Pune’s most famous bands. In 1956
he and Bittuappa moved back to Sholapur to open their own brass band shop, which they
named Prabhat [dawn], after the Pune band in which Tukaram had worked. A year later,
Bittuappa suggested they shift their base to Hyderabad (a larger, more prosperous and
growing city compared to Sholapur) where he thought there would be more demand and less
competition in their new trade. Indeed, oral histories agree that there were only two bands in
Hyderabad in 1957: the Sikh Band (actually located in Secunderabad, right next to
Hyderabad) opened in the early 1920s by a Sikh ex-army clarinet player and the Penteyya
Band opened some years later by local low caste processional musicians, apparently in
imitation of the Sikh group.
Tukaram explains Prabhat’s success in terms of his family’s preference for the
γ⊄ψακ⊂ style of clarinet. Before the brothers’ arrival in 1957 he says that everyone was

46
playing in “γατ/√ορα style, instrumental style.” Tukaram and Bittuappa had learned
γ⊄ψακ⊂ style from their brothers and also from a caste-fellow, named Bhojappa, who was
renowned for his performances on clarinet and saxophone and who lived in the nearby city of
Bijapur, a center of Mane-Jadhav band activity. Although Tukaram does play light classical
music in a vocal style that could be called γ⊄ψακ⊂, I wonder whether the family’s success is
truly attributable to the Hyderabad public’s good musical taste, or whether it is more the
family’s good luck and hard work that are responsible. Whatever the reason, classical
training was obviously not important enough that Tukaram felt compelled to transmit that
knowledge to his three sons, who can at best manage film songs adequately on electronic
keyboards. For Tukaram’s sons and for his public, classical music is not of great interest.
Tukaram points out that he and his brothers worked hard at being musicians [“bahut mahanat
kiya,” as musicians frequently say, “I did a lot of work”], but that his sons have not worked at
their musical skills at all. They run the business, but depend on other musicians to produce
the actual music.
This disengagement from actual musical activity is a goal for most band owners.
When they can afford to hire others to do the musical labor and remain in their office acting
as managers, they have demonstrated their commercial success and (to some extent) their
social superiority. They have become businessmen rather than processional musicians.
Certainly, the Prabhat band is a success financially. On my last visit to Hyderabad in 1994, I
was shown the new three-story house that the family was having built. Tukaram’s eldest son
had secured a teaching job at the YMCA in Secunderabad and was participating only in the
higher-level decision making associated with the shop, rather like a managing director.
Tukaram is seeing that his grandchildren get good educations and hopes they will end up in
other lines of work, perhaps in an office or government. The band has become a backup
resource rather than the family’s hope for the future.
The story of the Prabhat Band in Hyderabad provides different answers to the
question, “Who are bandsmen?” Bandsmen are traditional low-caste processional musicians
who have transformed their instrumental skills, replacing pre-colonial instruments with brass
ones or adding European instruments to existing ensembles. What is more, in any given city
bandsmen are different people at different points in that city’s history. The pattern of
instrumental change itself is an issue to which I will return later; but the role of hereditary
low-caste processional musicians in this process and the relations between groups of these
individuals and incomers/newcomers is important here. In Hyderabad, it was only after the
Sikh Band appeared, playing “English tunes” on brass instruments that local low caste

47
musicians felt the need and had the models present to transform their instrumental
performance media. Sikhs with army background might have led the way in Hyderabad and
elsewhere, but were quickly outnumbered by local and immigrant low-caste groups. New
instruments and a new repertoire may have triumphed, but in Hyderabad they did so
ultimately in the hands of hereditary musicians. The changing identities of bandsmen over
time in any given city or regional market is important, since it at least offers us a processural
explanation for the inadequacy of oral histories. The transmission of the brass band trade
across different groups is often a competitive process. In most Indian cities, the current
identity of those groups dominating the brass band trade must be understood as only a single
link in a continuous process of social and musical change. Although the past may in fact not
explain the present, it at least helps us put the present in perspective. To understand who
bandsmen are requires some sense of how they became so. This in turn requires a sense of the
social dynamics behind the process of musical change; one must ask, “who were bandsmen”?
Inter-caste transmission and competition in Patna
For Tukaram Jadhav and his brother, Hyderabad in 1957 represented a densely packed
patronage market with relatively few competitors. Their arrival began a three-way
competition for dominance in the brass band trade that was soon joined by other bands
representing both the Sikh and Mane-Jadhav sides and by other new comers as well. In any
given city bandsmen belong to a range of social identities that may be nearly or distantly
related by blood or religion, but who usually form part of the ongoing chain of introduction
and transmission of the new instruments of processional music culture. These social groups,
castes, βιρ⊄δαρ⊂s, and so on, cooperate and compete among and within themselves in the
never ending battle for patronage in the urban marketplace.
This competitive/cooperative process of transmission is evident in the story of the
band world of 20th century Patna, a city that forms part of the professional area of which
Kolkata is the heart. I am using the term, area, here in a fairly specific sense as a
geographically, culturally, and professionally delimited collection of cities, towns and villages
in which bandsmen are socially, historically, and professionally related. Kolkata’s influence
extends to Patna and reaches into the surrounding regions of Bihar. The interplay of caste
identities in the processional music trade of this area from roughly 1940 to the present
illuminates some aspects of caste and behavior, as well as some of the strategies that are
intimately connected to matters of identity.
Although European influence was felt earliest in the West and South of the
subcontinent, Kolkata was the capital of British India for more than a century, and an

48
important economic center as well. The natural assumption, however, that Indian
processional culture in Kolkata was strongly influenced by the British presence, is not
supported by oral or documentary evidence. Very late in the 19th century, Lady Elizabeth
Bruce, who had recently arrived from England, recorded in her diary her first encounter with a
wedding procession on the streets of the British capital. Her description gives some
indication of European influence and is remarkably similar to contemporary practice, but is
vague as to the music. There is no way of knowing whether the musicians she heard were
playing ∨αην⊄⊂s, bagpipes, brass, or some combination thereof. In late 19th century
Mumbai, the brass option would have been a strong possibility, but oral histories cannot
support this assumption for Kolkata. In fact, the oral histories of living brass brand families
in Kolkata go no further into the past than the 1920s. This is not to say that there were no
bands in Kolkata before the 1920s. I suspect that there were, and that they were run by low
caste families. I have found no trace of any low caste bands, however, so the issue remains
moot for the present.
Oral history in the Kolkata band world begins with the appearance of bandmasters
from the Northwest Frontier and the Punjab, in the same broad wave of emigration from those
regions that I have already mentioned. The political capital of British India was among the
many destinations chosen by individuals and groups within that wave. Many of the
immigrant processional musicians from the Northwest Frontier were bagpipers who also
played Afghani τοτ⊄. Among the immigrants was Muhammad Hanif, whose name I have
already mentioned as founder of Patna’s Punjab Band. Hanif belonged to a θαυµ called
Pathan. Members of a particular θαυµ share language, culture and a general sense of place;
the word is most commonly translated into English as tribe. A θαυµ may have a loose
hierarchical structure in the area of its origin and families within a θαυµ are more likely to
have marriage connections than not; but the desirable qualifications for endogamy in Muslim
South Asia are usually much narrower than the relatively simple matter of shared θαυµ
membership. Further, θαυµs have no traditional claim over particular occupations. In 1944,
after a year in Kolkata, Hanif moved up the river to Patna, where he opened the Punjab Band.
The band that Hanif opened was a bagpipe band, as is implied by the band’s business
card (see Figure 11). The bugle is an instrument carried by bagpipers in the Indian band
world. The left hand side of the Punjab Band card also states “Oldest Shop”. In the historical
context of Patna’s band world, this is a very subtle and specific claim: there was already at
least one other band in Patna, also a bagpipe band, and also owned by Muslims, operating in
the city when Hanif arrived.

49
 Muhammad Musa, owner of the Musa Band, states that his father Mulvi’uddin and
uncle Khar’uddin opened their bagpipe band in 1937, although Musa states that they also
played Afghani τοτ⊄ in this group. Although they do not include it on their card, Musa
claims, with apparent justification, that his is the oldest band in Patna. The Punjab Band’s
subtly different claim to be the oldest shop may have more to do with their manner of
organizing and marketing their group than with dates. In other words, although the Musa
Band may have been there first, they were probably operating their family based enterprise
from their home. Hanif may have been the first bandsman in Patna to locate his enterprise in
a shop-front. (see Chapter 3).
Muhammad Musa’s family belongs to a Muslim ζ⊄τ widely encountered in eastern
India, called Ansari, who are traditionally associated with weaving (Musa’s grandfather was a
βυνν⊄⊂, that is, a weaver,) and other relatively low status jobs. Consequently, and unlike
the Pathan θαυµ, which is quite high in the Muslim social hierarchy, the Ansari ζ⊄τ is
generally considered to be rather low in the social hierarchy. In responding to questions about
caste, many of the Ansari band owners specifically included the qualifier “backward” after the
Ansari label. Kumar’s research on the Ansari community of Varanasi, however, reveals some
of the negotiability of caste. She notes that Ansari is a new and explicitly Arabic name for the
low-status weaver ζ⊄τ that Henry identifies as Johala (in Bhojpuri, or Juhala in Hindustani).
The public activities and behaviors Kumar describes constitute this group’s efforts to elevate
public perceptions of their status (Kumar, 1988). The ways in which members of these two
caste identities, Pathan and Ansari, and others interacted amongst themselves and with other
bands outside of Patna demonstrate the powerful connections between caste identity and the
transmission of the brass band trade.
After the early appearance of the Musa and Punjab bands, there was a considerable
gap before the next group appears. In 1957 the Bachcha Band was opened by Ajjan Mia,
another Ansari musician. Ajjan is described by his son as a refugee of the “Hindu and
Muslim war” (i.e., The Partition of India in 1947), apparently from somewhere in Bangladesh.
Fleeing to Kolkata, he found a job with the Mahboob Band, owned by yet another Muslim
ζ⊄τ who also describe themselves in low status terms, called Bhirain. For roughly ten years
Ajjan worked in the Mahboob Band (a brass band, rather than a bagpipe band), learning the
trade and saving money, before moving to Patna to open his own brass band. Thus, in what
may have been the first 20 years of entrepreneurial band activity in Patna, three bands
appeared in a variety of dyadic categories. All were initiated by Muslims; two were opened
by recent immigrants to the city, two were originally bagpipe bands, and by 1957, two were

50
brass bands (the Punjab Band did not convert to brass until roughly 1960). Finally, two of
bands were owned by the same local low-status ζ⊄τ.
It was ten years again before another band appeared, still in Ansari hands. The owner
of the new Hindustan Band had learned the trade in Patna, from the original Ansari group, the
Musa Band. After 1967, new bands began to appear with more frequency; in 1997 there were
21 bands in Patna. Figure 2 helps make some sense of the way identities and traditional
associations with pre-colonial processional instruments participated in the development of the
brass band trade.
Figure 2. Historical Perspective on Patna Bands

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Band name Date opened Owner’s caste Band in which Pre-colonial
owner previously instrument played
worked by owner or family
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Musa 1937 Ansari unknown Afghani τοτ⊄
2. Punjab 1944 Pathan Army Afghani τοτ⊄
3. Baccha 1957 Ansari Mahboob none
4. Hindustan 1967 Ansari Musa none
5. Prakash 1973 Jadhav Mahboob none
6. Acchan 1975 Valmiki none ∨αην⊄⊂
7. Ibrar 1978 Pathan Musa none
8. Naushad 1980 Sheikh-Siddiqi Musa none
9. Avon 1980 Mirasi Mahboob ∨αην⊄⊂
10. Abrar 1981 Sheikh-Siddiqi unknown none
11. Shamim 1984 Ansari unknown none
12. Bombay 1985 Ansari unknown none
13. Himmat 1985 Mirasi none ∨αην⊄⊂
14. Milan 1987 Ansari Musa none
15. New Milan1988 Jadhav ?? none
16. Maharaja 1990 Jadhav Mahboob κηυρδακ
17. Bharat 1990 Jadhav unknown none
18. Pankaj 1990 Valmiki Mahboob none
19. Durga 1994 Jadhav Mahboob κηυρδακ
20. Abrar 1994 Sheikh-Siddiqi Punjab none
21. Raj Kamal 1997 Valmiki Musa none
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The chart shows that there are six castes engaged in the brass band trade in Patna.
Two, Jadhav and Valmiki, are low caste Hindus. Of the four Muslim ζ⊄τs represented, the
relatively high status of the Pathan θαυµ is in part a result of the fact that Pathans are
ασηρ⊄φ, that is, of Arab, Persian or Turkish descent. As Ahmad (1978b) indicates, Muslim
definitions of status and hierarchy tend to favor those groups who can claim Arab and Persian
descent over those who have Indian roots (αϕλαφ). The other three Muslim groups, the

51
Sheikh-Siddiqi, the Mirasi, and the Ansari are generally understood to belong to the
αϕλαφ category of Muslims whose roots are Indian. Among these three, Sheikh-Siddiqi is
usually of fairly high status; but the level of uncertainty is shared by many Indians as well as
ethnomusicologists. Sarfraz Hussain, owner of the first Abrar Band (founded 1981) adds
“Highest caste” after Sheikh-Siddiqi, while Muhammad Usman Ali, who owns the 1994
Abrar Band and Abdul Aziz of the Naushad Band both describe this same to caste, in which
they also claim membership, as “backward.” Nevertheless, Sheikh-Siddiqi is definitely of
better standing than Mirasi and Ansari, both of which are understood, not only to be South
Asian, but also of low caste ancestry. Of the six castes then, four are unequivocally low
status.
The Caste and Date columns together show a clear interaction. For the first fifty years
of commercial band activity in Patna, Hindu-owned bands represented only fourteen percent
of the city’s bands. In the following ten years to 1997, they had grown to represent sixty-
seven percent. This Muslim-to-low caste Hindu pattern is consistent with national trends as
they are represented by oral histories. Such consistency might lead to a broad conclusion
about the changing identities of bandsmen across the history of the trade if it were not for the
fact that caste Hindu and Sikh families tend to leave the trade as soon as possible. This latter
behavior may be compounded by the changing social dynamics and religious politics of post-
Partition India. It might well be that rather than a Muslim-to-low caste Hindu shift from the
late 19th century to the late 20th, a low caste Hindu/Muslim/low caste Hindu pendulum-like
movement may have taken place from the early 19th century to the late 20th.
The fourth column of this table indicates that band in which the founder worked
before opening his own shop. When it is clear that the owner worked in a band initially, but
that band is not known, the column indicates this by “unknown.” There are three band
owners who specifically state that they did not work in any previous band, who are identified
by “none.” The exceptions in this issue are Mulvi’uddin and Khar’uddin, founders of the
Musa Band. Their father was a weaver and their son, Musa, does not explain how his father
and uncle learned their new trade. This naturally leads one to suspect the existence of a yet
earlier band that has since disappeared; but of course, there is no way to explore this suspicion
directly.
Two bands, Mahboob (Kolkata) and Musa, are almost equally represented in terms of
expressed influence on others in the Patna band trade; but four of the men who learned their
trade from the Mahboob Band are low caste Hindu, while only the most recent Valmiki band
owner learned his trade with Musa. What is more, the four ex-Mahboob band members live in

52
villages in Samistipur District, more than 50 kilometers from Patna. To me, this suggests the
possibility of a relatively closed local market (Patna) during this period, where the initially
dominant Muslim band owners hired from within their castes and religion as long as possible.
The Mahboob owners had little cause to fear competition from bandsmen in the villages
outside Patna. Finally, five of the families on this list claim a hereditary connection with
double reed processional music either through double-reed performance (on ∨αην⊄⊂ or
τοτ⊄) or through performance on κηυρδακ, a small drum used to accompany ∨αην⊄⊂. The
connection with Afghani τοτ⊄ shown for the Musa and Punjab bands is not described by
either family as hereditary. It should not be surprising that there are no Pathans or Sheikh-
Siddiqis in this group, neither has traditional associations with any particular trade, but if they
did, it would not be with a trade as inherently low status as that of processional musician.
Dominance of urban markets by different caste groups over time is a historical characteristic
of the band trade. I will develop other aspects of this process in the following chapter; but
this information from Patna makes the outlines quite clear. From within castes to across
castes, workers become owners and train more workers and the brass bands proliferate.
Who are bandsmen? The answer changes over time and over the many band bazaars
of India’s cities and towns. To greater or lesser extents, these changes are driven by an
interaction between the arrival of immigrant families or individuals with band experience who
introduced new ensembles or new castes to a city’s band world on the one hand, and on the
other, the instrumental transformation of local processional music castes in response to the
innovations that are normally initiated by immigrant groups. Many different castes contribute
bandsmen to South Asia’s huge processional music trade; my answers to questions of identity
in this world have in this chapter focused band-owning families primarily. They share a range
of traits that normally includes low social status, but that also frequently includes refugee
and/or urban-immigrant status. Other questions of identity consider bandsmen not in contrast
to the rest of their societies, but in contrast to each other. The hierarchies within the trade are
themselves a complex matter that brings me closer to matters of both performance and
commerce.

53
 Chapter 2. Μ⊄λικs and Bandsmen - Social and Professional Hierarchies
Traditional service and free enterprise
The five bandsmen shown in Plate 1 lead a small family group of women to a locally
famous Lakshmi temple (the brick edge of which is visible to the musicians’ left) in the small
Deccan city of Bijapur. The bandsmen are members the Mane-Jadhav ϕ⊄τ, the dominant,
indeed almost the only, caste active in Bijapur’s band world, as we saw in the last chapter.
Neither the bandsmen nor their music will enter the temple; they will remain playing as the
women enter the temple to complete their ritual and then they will disperse. The band’s lack
of uniforms is somewhat unusual, but Bijapur is not a very large town, and after all, this is a
small event, hardly calling for the additional investment that uniforms would require of the
family. After the consideration of band identities in Chapter 1, it is hardly a revelation that
band owners and bandsmen belonging to barber, sweeper, washer and other low status groups
(such as the Mane-Jadhav musicians shown in the above photo) continue to be important
players in the contemporary band world. It would be easy and accurate to describe the event
depicted here in terms of the socio-cultural roles of the participants; on one side, we have
caste Hindu patrons and on the other low caste Hindu musicians. They are collectively
engaged in a ritual whose purpose is the purification of the former’s home and family. This
kind of small scale, rather casual performance of processional music by low caste musicians
for the benefit of caste Hindu ritual represents a very old set of behaviors; it relocates us in the
ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ based understandings of bandsman identity offered in Chapter 1. This description
of processional musicianship as part of traditional service and ritual economy, however,
ignores the changes that have occurred in the band trade during the past 150 years, changes
that have taken place within the context of processes such as modernization and urbanization.
Thus, we must see the identities of bandsmen, the hereditary families, refugee new comers,
low caste Hindu and artisanal caste Muslim all within the context of similar changes (and
continuities) in the professional organization of the band trade.
On the basis of events such as the procession shown in this photograph, one might
assert that the band trade is simply a modern day version of the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ system of
exchange, that it embodies a powerful current of continuity in Indian society. The focus of
this chapter, however, is on the professional and economic relationships, between band
owners, bandsmen, and patrons, which are also at the heart of such events. Here we
encounter a challenging triangle formed by the issues of identity found in Chapter 1, matters
of place (rural/urban), and interpretations of processions as ritual and as commerce.
Depending on how we choose to understand these interacting factors, we might also view this

54
procession simply as a group of musicians, members of a relatively low socio-economic class,
performing (for a fixed fee) for middle and upper-middle class patrons, who have obtained
their services from a sub-contractor. Contemporary interpretations of these events by Indians
(including those participating in the events) most frequently favor this free enterprise
explanation of socio-economic relations rather than the ritual economy model that begins this
paragraph. As this chapter develops we will see how these two interpretations interact and are
each manifested by particular aspects of the band trade.
In standard views of the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ relationship, such as those that Gould (1987)
presents, low caste (ritually impure) καµ⊂νs perform ritual services for their high caste
(ritually pure) ϕαϕµ⊄νs, for which they receive prestations (δ⊄ν). These services have
included the production of processional music by castes I have already mentioned. In much
of India these have most commonly been members of any of the many smaller groups
belonging to the Dom, Bhangi, and Camar castes (such as the Mane-Jadhavs in this
photograph). In this traditional Hindu perspective, processional musicians are service
providers, part of an elaborate, socially integrated ritual economy. This theoretical
perspective takes us into contested territory, however; its role may be more in the nature of a
basis for transformation within contemporary music-culture than as a source of fundamental
continuity. It is certainly the case that throughout much of Indian history, the low caste
musicians who provided processional music did in fact do so as part of a system which was
not socially interpreted in commercial terms (although it had obvious economic implications).
Whether one views these exchanges as part of a simple barter (service in exchange for
food and clothing) or the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ system, may be another matter, and may depend upon
whom one asks. What high caste and/or rural Hindus may insist is the shedding of impurity
through gift giving, low caste Hindus or Muslims may interpret as simple economic
exchange. This photograph, however, shows precisely the kinds of behaviors and the precise
social relationships upon which scholars such as Gould and Raheja (1988) constructed their
theories of ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂. There can be little doubt that the ritual or theological roots of such
behaviors are as these theories propose. Nevertheless, patrons, bandsmen, and passers-by in
modern India and Pakistan explain these behaviors in terms of straightforward economic
exchange, even in cases where the ritual is of an expressly purifying nature (which this ritual
is). These social and economic ambiguities speak directly to the complex of social meanings
and structures that inform the world of brass bands and to bandsmen’s location in the midst of
a transformed set of cultural understandings about the nature of processional ritual. One must

55
consequently ask questions regarding the nature of the economic exchange from which
bandsmen earn their livings; should theirs be considered part of a ritual or a service economy?
There are two types of payments made to bandsmen in contemporary South Asia.
Band owners are paid an agreed upon fee, with some portion (usually between a quarter and a
third) given as a deposit when the booking is confirmed and the rest given at the conclusion of
the procession. In addition to the fee, which is given directly to the µ⊄λικ or his nominated
“on-site manager,” cash notes are also distributed during the procession by the groom’s father
or uncles. These are ritually given to the musicians playing in the band; these may or may not
include the band’s owner, who is called the µ⊄λικ or σε√η. In this context, both of these
terms translate as “boss”; µ⊄λικ is generally used in the north of the sub-continent (roughly
north of Ahmadabad) while owners from Ahmadabad south are σε√ηs; but southern
musicians would understand “µ⊄λικ” and vice versa. Not all µ⊄λικs perform with their
bands, however, as I have already noted. It should be clear that a ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-based
interpretation of the activity contributes to the impetus to avoid performance if possible. This
is even more the case where the µ⊄λικ is of a different and perhaps higher caste or status than
his bandsmen.
Prestations given during the procession resemble δ⊄ν, even in the manner of their
giving. During the βαρ⊄τ, the wedding procession, when the dancing and music intensify,
the leading males of the family distribute small denomination notes (usually 2 and 5 rupee
notes brought specially from the bank for this purpose) to the bandsmen; these are first circled
around the heads of the dancers (who are also members or representatives of the family). At
the conclusion of the procession, more prestations are given; in some areas, the notes are
tossed in the air, to be pursued by children or others who may have gathered to watch the
event. In traditional terminology, δ⊄ν are gifts which the receivers are obliged to accept,
“always given in the context of ritual actions that are said to promote the ‘well-being’
[achieved through] gift giving (κηαιρ− κηαιριψατ) and ‘auspiciousness’ (⇔υβη) of the …
donors through the transferal of inauspiciousness to the recipients” (Raheja: 1988, 20). In
ritual processions, therefore, bandsmen can be seen as the obligated receivers of gifts that act
to transfer inauspiciousness from the patron family to themselves, from high caste to low,
from ϕαϕµ⊄ν to καµ⊂ν.
Despite the obvious similarities in context, behavior, and social identities, to
ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ type exchange, bandsmen and their patrons invariably describe these ritual
payments simply as tips, using the English term. In fact, some processional participants to

56
whom I have spoken have specifically used the analogy of the restaurant; “just like if you go
to a restaurant, and you like the service, you give the waiter a tip.” Motivation for such
donations is explained in terms of happiness over the event and satisfaction with the band’s
performance (although this latter explanation hardly extends to dispersing notes to children
and others observing from the sidelines). In their approach to the matter of prestations/tips,
bandsmen are in agreement with much recent scholarship on India that has questioned the
validity of the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ model, especially in the modern city. Rudner (1994) for example,
locates this distributive system squarely in the village (rather than the urban) economy; he is
explicit in his contention that “the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ does not represent a pan-Indian phenomenon
and that where the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ or ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-like systems do operate, they make up only part
of the total village economy” (Rudner 1994: 40). Band patrons always offer tips during
wedding processions and bring stacks of new small-denomination banknotes especially for
this purpose. But while tips may express an unequal socio-economic relationship between
patron and bandsman, they do not necessarily move the inequality into a ritual transference of
inauspiciousness. On the one hand, it is impossible to ignore these ritual implications since
they contribute to the broadly negative social interpretation of bandsmen’s role in
processional ritual and help explain the ongoing predominance of low status groups in the
trade. Although ritual exchange appears as the historical foundation for the processional
music trade, to adhere solely to such a ritual understanding would be to ignore the urban,
commercial, and colonial implications of brass bands. It would leave no room for the process
by which non-traditional families and individuals in refugee or other desperate situations have
used the modern character of the band trade (as distinct from traditional processional
ensemble activity) to establish footholds in hostile urban environments.
To put this matter in other terms, for bandsmen, ritual is business; although they make
their living from ritual demand, both they and their customers are aware of the socio-
economic and rural-urban inequities. As one bandmaster explained it, “They [the customers]
can be late; but we can’t be late. If some one dies in their family, the βαρ⊄τ is cancelled
until a more auspicious time. If some one in our family dies, we play anyway. We can’t even
go to our own friends’ weddings because we’re always working.” The speaker, Naushad Ali
of Mumbai’s Bombay Native Band (Punjab) is more explicit about the social relationships of
his trade than are many of his colleagues; but his characterization is consistent with bandsman
status and behaviors throughout the country. Despite the obvious social inequities, the
bandsman-customer relationship is a transformation of the pure-impure/ϕαϕµ⊄ν-καµ⊂ν
relationship rather than an extension of it. There are many middle and some high caste band

57
owners in India; a band will play for anyone who can afford the fee. At certain times of the
year, it is the customers who are begging for the band’s presence rather than the other way
around.
This chapter confronts the cultural transformations that are made explicit in the
economy of the band world and the professional hierarchies and relationships of that world.
Moving from the primarily social identities of Chapter 1, this and the following chapter
consider professional identities, viewing bandsmen as professional beings, with social
behaviors and professional and geographic structures that are in good part family or caste
based, but that are responses to a highly capitalized music performance industry. Bands are
here considered first and foremost as urban commercial phenomena. The emergent
description is one in which ritual behaviors and relationships occupy the same terrain as
commerce, although with a certain amount of tension.
The application of centuries old social structures such as extended families, clans, and
caste groups to economic activity is hardly unusual in the pre-capitalized world and is far
from unheard of in areas of the modern world. The specific features of the Indian band trade,
however, employ traditional social relationships in socio-economic response to the demands
of urbanized culture. We have already seen this in the story of the Patna market. There, the
growth of urban patronage opportunities for musicians led to competition for that patronage
along caste lines. In addition, over the next two chapters, we will see that competition also
exists at the level of labor (in capitalist terms): the bandsmen who work in Indian cities also
organize and compete for access to urban labor opportunities through the same kinds
structures that urban band owners employ in their struggle for survival.
Regardless of how one frames it, professional engagement in processional music
activity (professional here understood as any service performed for gain, whether the gain is
ritually structured or not) must have been a part-time activity in pre-colonial and colonial
India (indeed, it still is in many places). It was also a hereditary activity that involved family
and caste members who engaged in musical as well as non-musical income earning as
opportunities arose. It is only during the early colonial period that hereditary and non-
hereditary musicians were able to adopt explicitly commercial, and what I will call capitalized
forms, although without abandoning the social and sometimes the economic behaviors related
to caste and family. Subrahmanyam (1990) is among many scholars (Rudner, 1994; Leonard,
1978; etc.,) who argue against a monolithic role for caste in Indian commercial or capitalist
enterprise and for the notion that Indian capitalism was neither learned from, nor a response to
the British presence. Subrahmanyam goes further, arguing that capitalism and commerce were

58
not the exclusive properties of a caste or even a group of castes. Indian merchants certainly
did not learn capitalism from the British; but new, large urban centers did develop during the
colonial period. I argue first, that these new urban centers offered more opportunities for the
capitalization of traditional service occupations and that the culture characteristics of the new
cities encouraged the modernization of aspects of the processional music trade.
Of the early coastal metropolises that developed as major sites of British culture and
activity, Surat (1611), Chennai (1639), Mumbai (1661) and Kolkatta (1698), the latter three
were new urban creations, built on the sites of small villages. They had larger European
populations and better communication with Europe and the outside world than did the earlier
urban power centers of India such as Delhi or Vijayanagara. The music culture of colonial
British India is a subject related to, but distinct from my concerns in this book. It is also one
for which much basic research must be undertaken. I describe some aspects of both British
and Indian colonial music culture in Chapter 4. There is little choice but to believe that the
syncretic nature of the new cities’ cultures was of a different order than those of the old inland
centers. British culture, if not overwhelmingly imposed, was at least widely in evidence. The
growing but diverse populations of Indian middle and merchant class families in the new
cities naturally imported their own distinct cultures and traditions; but heightened exposure to
British traditions led to more deeply embedded syntheses than in locations where British
culture was a paper thin veneer. In Mumbai and other colonial centers, if anywhere, the
appeal of the symbols of British culture and power must have been considerable. The
development of the band trade in India makes it clear that musical change is cultural
negotiation, that change, adaptation, and transformation on both sides are always part of the
equation; but in these cities, the balance must have swung more heavily to the British side at
an early date. European-style processional ensembles represented a syncretic modernity that
lasted well into the 20th century.
The growth of almost all Indian cities throughout the 20th century, especially after
Independence, added the other important element to this story of change. Huge populations
created a market and a demand that could best be filled by the transformation of a traditional,
part time, and often barter-oriented occupation into a more explicitly and extensively
commercial trade. Gradually, growing urban demand created a situation in which family
enterprises could benefit from the labor of other musicians, hired for wages. Owners with
capitalist tendencies could make a profit to the extent of the difference between the fees they
could charge their customers and the wages they were forced to pay hired, non-family musical
laborers. At the same time, and in a uniquely dualistic way, the novelty of the brass band

59
ensemble in the context of the emerging colonial metropolis and concomitant colonial culture
created a relatively empty market niche for individuals and families in need of work or
income. The primary understanding of Indian society regarding the role and status of
processional musicians, however, did not change. Specific castes continue to control band
ownership on a city-by-city or neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis and to control much of
the growing mobile labor force that works in those bands. I must assume that such continuity
gains strength from the fundamentally secondary importance of wedding and processional
music, from ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ based interpretations of processional ritual, and from the nature of
hereditary trade behaviors which encourage the groups involved to gain and extend their
control over as much of a particular market as they are able. The band trade may no longer be
caste defined; but it is certainly and to a large extent still caste controlled.
The Family Firm
The Jea Bands
As a relatively naive ethnomusicologist, still searching for difference in the world of brass
bands, one of my more confusing early experiences was my first meeting with Hira Lal
Thadani (b. 1941), owner of the Jea Hindu Band, Delhi. Hira Lal is the friendly and
hospitable eldest son of Jea Lal Thadani (circa 1915-1981) who was born in Hyderabad, the
capital city of Sindh, a western desert region now part of Pakistan. Jea Lal had learned to
play clarinet in his school band, and after playing in various bands, gradually found himself
being hired professionally for weddings and other events. In comparison with cultural groups
to the east, Sindhi Hindus demonstrate less concern for issues of caste. The Thadani family
had no hereditary connections with musical activity and was clearly middle or merchant class,
even in Jea Lal’s time. Thadani called his new group the Jea Band; they gradually became a
major cultural icon in Hyderabad. Along with many other Sindhi Hindus, however, Jea Lal
was forced to flee Hyderabad in 1947 with his eldest son Hira Lal, and his wife, then pregnant
with Jea’s second son, Moti Lal. Some of his Hindu bandsmen also went with him. The
group ended up in Ahmadabad, where Jea re-opened the band. A significant alteration to the
name, the Jea Ηινδ Band, expressed Jea Lal’s new nationalist orientation towards
independent India.
Like some other band owners, Jea Lal’s dependence on the band trade was a result of his
refugee status following Partition. For a refugee, however, Jea Lal expanded his enterprise
with astonishing rapidity. Using a hired manager, he opened a shop in Jaipur shortly after the
family reached Ahmadabad. The intermediary station of Ajmer followed in 1950, and in
1955, the Jea Band reached the end of the railway (so to speak) opening a shop in Delhi itself.

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As his three sons grew older, they gradually assumed managerial responsibilities in the
various shops, which they inherited upon Jea Lal’s death. Hira Lal, the eldest son, took over
the shop most distant from his father, in Delhi; his youngest brother Kishen Lal (born circa
1950) assumed control of the Jaipur shop. Moti Lal Thadani eventually took over the original
shop in Ahmadabad. Today, many bandsmen across the subcontinent acknowledge the Jea
bands as the largest and the most successful in South Asia.
In one sense, the disappointment of my first encounter with Hira Lal and the Jea Band
stemmed from the very factors that had supported the family’s success. Hira Lal made it clear
at the beginning that his family were not traditional musicians (by that time I was looking
desperately for “tradition,” a commodity that is not always easy to find or recognize in the
brass band world). He spoke with me about his import-export concerns and his son’s
education (the son was then in Lagos, Nigeria, seeing after the family’s business interests in
that country). Hira Lal also provided a clear summary of the band business in Delhi; but
indicated that he considered the details of trade beneath both him and me. He pointed out that
his was not a prestigious trade, at least in part because his bandsmen were, as he put it, “very
low fellows; they don’t know much.”
The Jea shop, located in Delhi’s busy Lajpat Rai Bazaar, was equally disappointing; there
was none of the clash-of-cultures ambience that one encountered in the band shops of Uttar
Pradesh. The walls were devoid of the usual pictures of uniformed bandsmen, founders, and
musical instruments; no bandsmen lounged about, there were no uniforms piled in corners or
on shelves, in fact, nothing to indicate this was a band shop and not a booking agency for
tourist buses or video rentals (both of which are well represented in Lajpat Rai Bazaar). As I
spent more time there, I noticed that Hira Lal hardly even dealt with customers on a regular
basis. Two desk-bound managers dealt with much of the day-to-day business; each was
equipped with a telephone and large account book, showing what bookings had been made,
on what dates, what fees were paid, and how many musicians were required.
To reach the level of the men who actually played music on the streets, one had to move
from Hira Lal (who was really something like a CEO), through the small group of managers,
on down to the bandmasters, hired hands who supervised performances and rehearsals and
who provided musical and professional leadership on the streets, and finally to the rank and
file musicians, most of whom Hira Lal would probably not even recognize unless they
happened to be wearing his uniform.
In at least one way, however, the Jea bands were exactly the same as other bands and
bandsmen: Whether they operate from a hole in the wall shop front or a solidly middle class

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office, and regardless of whether there are six or six hundred musicians parading under its
name, a band is a family firm. It is run by the adult male(s) of the family, who own the name,
the uniforms, most of the instruments, and all the other paraphernalia (banners, sound
equipment, etc.,); they may own a physical space, a shop, as well. Fathers, adult sons,
brothers, uncles, cousins and a host of more distant relations may offer advice, financial
support, musical participation and leadership skills on a regular or irregular basis; but the
son(s) of the owner will inherit the business. The unusual feature of the Thadani family is that
Jea Lal was able to establish three such successful shops across a wide geographic region (the
Ajmer shop was closed in the 1960s), dominating three very important Indian cities, in a
relatively short time, so that each of his sons could inherit one of the branches.
The three Jea Bands are separate enterprises, each owned by one brother. Despite this,
and even though the three Jea shops are separated by considerable distances the three brothers
participate collectively in business deals and cooperate as much as they are able in the band
trade. In case of one brother’s serious illness or extended absence, another may appear at
least briefly in the shop to ensure that all is well with the business. Because professional
geography and culture make it possible, Hira Lal and Kishen Lal exchange musicians and
equipment back and forth as demand requires between their shops in Delhi and Jaipur. They
sometimes also jointly recruit musicians for the wedding season. Sometimes they will even
accompany each other to especially important processions; but in addition to purely economic
measures, the Thadanis, like almost all band families, measure success by the extent to which
they can leave all the daily and performative aspects of their trade to hired laborers. In this,
the Jea bands are extremely successful; it takes a very special event to get one of the brothers
out on the street with his band.
The success of the Jea Bands seems in part a story in which a middle-class merchant
family made the best of their father’s interests when they were forced into refugee status in
1947. Jea Lal, after all, initially seems to have gotten into the business on a whim and in spite
of the negative connotations normally attached to the trade (although the relative non-
importance of caste in Sindhi culture may have weakened such negativity). The family had
no connections in the band world of Ahmadabad and seems to have prospered in that city
without significant caste or other social support. As a commercial enterprise, Jea Lal and his
sons took advantage of their connections with other Sindhi business concerns in ways broadly
similar to those described in studies of South Asian economic history (e.g., Bayly 1983,
Baker, 1984, Leonard 1978, Rudner 1994), although as Bayly makes clear, there is no reason
to think that they would have limited themselves exclusively to their Sindhi connections. The

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success of the Jea Bands, however, as opposed to the Thadani businesses, requires additional
comment.
In Hyderabad, the Jea Band developed in a small city that was relatively free from
competition and in what one might call a natural response to demand in a growing colonial
culture. Ahmadabad in 1947, however, was not without brass bands. There were at least two
families of artisan caste Muslims, those of Ghulam Nabi and Muhammad Mustafa, already
engaged in the trade when the Thadani family arrived. As described in Chapter I, Muhammad
Farid, Muhammad Mustafa’s eldest grandson, now runs the Mustafa Band with his two
brothers. Farid states that his grandfather moved to Ahmadabad from Bharuch in 1865,
learned to play Eb soprano clarinet, and opened his own band shortly thereafter. Farid (b.
1945), and his younger brothers, Muhammad Nasir (b. circa 1950), and Muhammad Mustaq
(b. circa 1957) still play Eb clarinet and still manage and lead their band, along with their own
sons. Farid suggests that in spite of his family’s well-established presence, religious
partisanship on the part of Ahmadabad’s Hindu residents, especially after the religion-based
conflicts leading up to Partition, led the bulk of the city’s patronage in Jea’s direction. Moti
Lal Thadani naturally suggests that it was his father’s business acumen, hard work, and
organizational skills that allowed the family enterprise to expand at the rate it did. This
pattern, however, in which caste Hindus appeared as refugees after 1947 and supplanted
older, dominant Muslim bands, without becoming involved in much actual music making
themselves, is repeated in at least one other northern city, Agra.
What is significant in both situations is that the caste Hindu owners of the Jea Bands
and the Sudhir and Jagadish Bands of Agra have all successfully left behind the task of
actually playing in their bands, or participating musically in any sense, if indeed they ever did.
The Muslim families owning the Mustafa, Star, and Janata Bands (Ahmadabad) or the Gulab
and Sohni Bands (Agra), on the other hand, are still playing on the street and appear to value
their images as musicians. In the Hindu bands and families, the conceptualization of a long-
lasting connection between occupation and caste and the pattern of socio-professional
organization in which human capital is understood primarily in terms of family relationship
have been replaced by what one might describe as more purely commercial capitalist trends
and relationships. These changes are hardly novel; but they may have been more familiar to
Hindu merchant castes than to the remains of 18th century Muslim artisanal families. It is also
worth noting that in both the instances I cite, the Hindu families were from peripheral culture
blocks (Sindh and Kashmir) where caste issues may have been weaker in any event.

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 In Rudner’s terms, Hindu µ⊄λικs and Hindu socio-professional attitudes may more
readily support the objectification of labor. From another perspective, however, Ahmad
proposes that “a correspondence between caste and occupation is strikingly greater at the
lower levels even among the Hindus, and even Hindu high and intermediate castes usually
follow a more diversified pattern in occupational specialization” (1978a: 7). In other words,
the differences between the Sharmas of Agra and the Thadanis of Ahmadabad on one hand
and the Sheikh, Siddiqi, and Mansoori Muslim bandsmen of those cities on the other is a
difference of social class rather than caste or religion. On the other hand, it is tempting to
interpret these developments in relation to trends in other north Indian musical worlds. In the
northern tradition of Indian classical music, for example, some Muslim musicians will
complain privately about what they see as the contemporary dominance of Hindus in a
profession they perceive as hereditarily Muslim.
The Mumtaz Band
If Jea Lal Thadani had only managed to open one shop after 1947, his three sons would
have inherited collectively, and would have had to share the management and proceeds of that
single enterprise. This is what happened to the four sons of Abdul Rahim (circa 1910-70), a
processional musician in Varanasi. His sons, Seraj (b. 1945), Mumtaz (b. 1950), Samshad (b.
1956), and Naushad (b. 1960), jointly inherited and variously manage a band business that
they inherited from Rahim. They named the shop, not after their father, but after Mumtaz, the
second of the four brothers, whose band expertise and enterprise are significant in the family’s
success. This joint inheritance pattern is more common than is the multiple shop strategy
employed by Jea Lal (Jea Lal’s success is unique to my knowledge). As a nuclear family, the
four brothers act very much like the Thadanis or any other family. They cooperate in
managing and performing in the band, but also compete amongst themselves to a certain
extent. They seek other business or work opportunities in trades that are open to them.
In that they own only one band, of course, this family is different from the Thadanis.
Joint inheritance, especially when four brothers are involved, is at best possible for the early
lives of the inheriting generation, after which the needs of the individual nuclear families
often create tensions. Each of the brothers will need to make some provision for his sons that
is independent of the shared business. Mumtaz, for whom the family shop is named, has
opened a new band, which he calls the Bombay Band, for his eldest son, Feroze (circa 1973),
to operate on his own. The new shop makes Feroze and his new family somewhat
independent of the income generated by the band his father inherited and adds to the income
of Mumtaz’s own nuclear household. Because the Bombay Band has been physically located

64
in a neighborhood well removed from that of the Mumtaz Band, there is a good chance of
new business for Feroze and less chance of significant competition with his father and uncles.
Such a move also extends the range of the band trade that falls within the Mumtaz brothers’
collective control.
There is another, more profound difference between these two examples of family
enterprise. The Thadani dependence on the brass band trade was dictated, in part by Jea Lal’s
personal interest in musical performance and in part by their refugee status, not through any
hereditary connection with musical performance. For Mumtaz and his brothers, however, the
opposite is true. They belong to a βιρ⊄δαρ⊂, an endogamous Muslim social group with
regional and occupational affiliations, who identify themselves as Hashimi. Despite, or
perhaps because of its tribal Arabic connotations, this name is an adopted one. It is widely
used in eastern India by a large Muslim ζ⊄τ, called Dafali, whose traditional occupation is
drum making and playing, the ⋅αφ being a large circular frame drum. Many Muslims in India
consider Dafali to be of low or (at best) low-middle status, not only because of their
traditional occupation, but because they are understood to be descended from low-caste Hindu
converts to Islam. Indeed, Mumtaz and his brothers acknowledge that their ancestors were
originally low-caste Hindu, precisely the type of Bhangi or Dom caste musicians that are
described as providing the drumming for weddings. For as many generations as they can
remember (seven, as it turns out) this group has been, among other things, traditional
processional musicians.
More specifically, the Mumtaz Band is one of 36 bands in Varanasi, extant or recently
defunct, that are owned by individual nuclear families who are collectively part of a large
extended family, itself located within the Hashimi βιρ⊄δαρ⊂. Figure 3 shows some of the
central individuals and some of the bands connected with this family. It is, in one sense, a
human manifestation of “one important feature of caste: membership of a caste makes a
person part of a person-based social network which controls insiders’ information about
economic opportunities, transmits skills and provides varied types of human and material
support” (Panini, 1996: 39). In his introduction to the same volume, Srinivas emphasizes the
importance of this “feature of caste” as described by Panini, especially for the stories I tell
here. “This particular role of caste has been steadily gaining importance in the last 150 years
or more, with new economic opportunities becoming available in India” (Srinivas, 1996: xi).

65
66
Figure 3. Local Hashimi-βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ bands and bandsmen in Varanasi.

Key:

Active Brass
Band

Defunct Brass
Band

Bagpipe Band

Note: Individuals are located in approximate relation to the time-line at left.

Bands represent the state of the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂’s engagement circa 1995.

Bands
1. Juli 11. New Punjab
2. National 12. Punjab
3. International 13. Darbar
4. Janta 14. Mumtaz
5. Babu Raj 15. Bombay
6. Sohni 16. Mansur
7. New Janta 17. Suraj
8. Taj 18. Banaras
9. Ravi 19. Bharat
10. Munnu 20. Munna
21. Rajasthan

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 The earliest remembered ancestors of this family group were active in the very early
19th century; they lived in a village near Chunar, a small town roughly 40 kilometers south of
Varanasi. Two brothers, whose names are recalled as Babbu and Dhabbu, played
processional music in the Chunar region on ⋅αφs, on the small kettle drums called τ⊄∨α, and
probably on other drums as well. This was undoubtedly only one of their sources of income.
Since Mumtaz’s nuclear the family still operate a small repair shop for leather bags and other
articles, and since leather working (a ritually unclean trade), drumming and low caste go
together all over India, it is tempting to assume that these ancestors were also leather workers,
although there is no way to be sure of this.
Through the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Chunar was a prosperous satellite of
Varanasi’s growing economic and political stability. Chunar’s role as an important grain
depot for the Ganga River trade and a source of dressed stone for building helped it to survive
the economic confusion of the early 19th century, during which many traditional industries
were succumbing to British mercantile economics and the import of manufactured goods. By
the 1840s and ‘50s, however, many of its prosperous merchant families were leaving for
larger cities where access to British economic interests was easier, such as Varanasi or
Kolkata. At some point in this period, probably the early 1840s, the two brothers also made
the move from the Chunar region to Varanasi. If I wished to invest in a ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ based
interpretation of this move, I would suggest that the two καµ⊂ν brothers simply followed
their ϕαϕµ⊄νs to the big city. They apparently converted to Islam shortly thereafter; but
musicians identified as Muslim Doms are described in ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ relationships in Raheja’s
research (1988), so their conversions do not significantly affect this interpretation.
Alternatively, of course, one could simply view the urban migration as pragmatic solution to a
decline in patronage at the local level, the very early stages, perhaps, of the urbanization that
characterizes Indian history of the past 200 years.
However they conceived of their motivations, the two brothers continued their
engagement with the professional music trade in Varanasi. Between them, they produced
three sons, each of whom moved to a distinct neighborhood in the city and established semi-
independent lineages. The family naturally expanded in size with each generation. They
proved remarkably successful as processional musicians and retained their hold on their pre-
colonial musical instruments for quite some time. Succeeding generations did gradually
exchange their traditional drums for more modern musical instruments as fashion demanded
and their financial resources allowed. The pattern of instrumental transformation described in
Chapter 1, however (in which Tukaram Jadhav’s family moved from pre-colonial instruments
to brass bands in one step and in slightly more than one generation), took many more
generations to accomplish in Varanasi, and included more intermediary stages as well. I will
examine this instrumental transformation (outlined in Figure 3) at length in Chapter 4.
In the families of Jea Lal Thadani and Abdul Rahim, both the fathers and sons began
their careers as musicians; but again, their latter histories demonstrate important differences in
the nature and meaning of the concept of family enterprise as found in these bands. India’s
three Jea bands are owned by what is really a geographically dispersed nuclear family, in
which the three brothers operate both independently and jointly as circumstances require and
allow. They are, in all senses, modern businessmen. Each of their bands is perhaps the most
famous of its home city, but the three do not compete with each other and do not directly
support each other against competition from other bands in their home cities. The Mumtaz
Band, on the other hand, is simply one of the more successful bands, from a large number of
bands, owned by a large extended family, itself part of a larger βιρ⊄δαρ⊂, widely engaged in
the processional music trade, and operating in the same market. Brothers, sons, cousins,
uncles and other relations on both sides of many nuclear families compete for the same
customers, but by their sheer numbers successfully close the market to other caste groups.
Although no individual Hashimi-owned band can control the city, collectively the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂
does precisely that. This is evidenced by the make-up of the band populations in Mumtaz’
and Jea’s home cities. The Jea Bands are almost the only Sindhi owned bands in India. The
many bands of Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmadabad are owned by Hindu and Muslim families across
a range of castes. In Varanasi, non-Hashimi bands represent slightly less than 10% of the
total band population. The members of one caste group have utilized the potential of their
social organization to gain control over a particular urban market by simply outnumbering the
competition. For the Hashimi bandsmen of Varanasi, professional organization and support
are indistinguishable from social organization at the caste level. In this sense, the Varanasi
bands demonstrate the economic potential of social continuity. Jea Lal Thadani, however,
appears to have been one of the leaders in the capitalist transformation of the band trade in the
middle of the 20th century.
The development of owner-laborer relations in the band trade took place as demand
finally began to exceed the abilities of a single group of musicians, no matter how quickly
they ran from job to job. This situation was especially extreme during the wedding seasons of
India’s rapidly growing cities. In the Mumtaz Band, additional musician/laborers were at first
drawn from local members of the extended family and the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂, financial transactions

69
(so much per musician per procession, for example) taking place in the context of shared
identity and a describable family relationship. Men who first worked in others’ bands,
however, soon saw the economic benefit to be gained from the capitalization of their own
engagement, and the value in working for themselves, leading to the proliferation of shops
owned by related contemporaries within the Varanasi Hashimi community. When need
subsequently required that yet more bandsmen be hired, the group turned, not to locals from
other communities, but to βιρ⊄δαρ⊂-mates residing in villages and towns surrounding
Varanasi, mostly to the north in central Bihar, places such as Buxar and Darbhanga.
Caste, functioning as a kind of “geographically extended kin group” (Bayly 1974,
quoted in Rudner 1994:), offered a geographically extended labor pool whose very geographic
dispersal (accompanied naturally enough by an economic diversity in matters of relative,
rural-urban costs of living) the Hashimi band owners could manipulate to their advantage. As
demand for bands, and therefore bandsmen, outstripped local supply, additional bandsmen
were recruited from rural locations, through family and caste networks. In the Mumtaz Band
(and in most other bands, for that matter), outsiders were at first hired for individual jobs, but
gradually these owner-laborer relationships were extended and formalized into fixed periods
and monthly salaries (the two, three or more months of a wedding season at so much per
month). The final step in the process indicates the partial separation of social organization
from professional organization in the Hashimi bands of Varanasi. Originally, the hiring of
laborers was probably informally based on shared βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ membership; but once the
concept and process were in place, it was logical enough to begin hiring outsiders of any
caste. As we saw in Patna, low caste bandsmen whose homes were at considerable distances
from the urban centers of employment were willing to make the journey for the high salaries
that urban demand could produce. The growth of professional heterogeneity in the labor pool
was a gradual process in the Hashimi bands; oral histories suggest that heterogeneous, non-
βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ band membership increased significantly during the 1970s. This story of a
growing trade in which family and caste-based relations are gradually replaced by contractual
owner-bandsman relations is only one of two distinct historical trends in the growth of the
band trade.
Jea Lal Thadani arrived in Ahmadabad with only a handful of his original bandsmen.
His Muslim musicians had remained in Hyderabad, while many of his Hindu musicians had
chosen other destinations in India (indeed Shiv Mohan, who worked as one of the leading
bandmasters in Jea Lal’s original band, moved to Delhi and opened his own band). On
reaching Ahmadabad, therefore, Jea Lal hired new musicians to play in his band, men of any

70
background who had the necessary skills and would work for the wage that was offered. The
Jea Band never was, and was never destined to be, a family- or even caste-based band. For
the Thadanis, who had no labor pool of extended relations upon whom they could call for
extra help, heterogeneity was always part of the picture. The musical laborers of the Jea
bands can be grouped into caste patterns similar to those found in other bands throughout
India, including those in Varanasi; what makes the Jea story different from that of the
Mumtaz Band is that the owners themselves are not part of the social organization that they
utilize in order to staff their bands.
The process in which both these bands participated was one that transformed the
economics and the socio-professional organization of the processional music trade. The
primarily social identities of Chapter 1 gradually were transformed into professional
identities. Bands became a matter of capital investment and µ⊄λικs, who had made or
inherited the initial capital investment, gradually ceased to act as musical, social, and
professional leaders, and began instead to function as musical contractors and managers of
their family’s service enterprise. This naturally changed the nature of the potential profit from
the model of a family band as a musical enterprise. Instead of a part-time undertaking that
simply contributed to the family’s subsistence (with little necessary investment beyond their
own instruments) bands became enterprises which, although perhaps still seasonal, required a
considerably greater initial capital investment for the purchase and maintenance of
instruments, uniforms, and so forth. Because one now had to pay hired bandsmen as well,
more attention had to be devoted to securing more regular and greater levels of patronage.
Like the hereditary Muslim band families of Agra that I mentioned earlier in this
chapter, the Mumtaz µ⊄λικs also continue to act as musical leaders in their bands as
necessary. In the terminology of the band world they are bandmasters as well as band
owners, leading performances, directing rehearsals, teaching parts, etc. In the Jea Bands, the
Thadani brothers hire not just additional bandsmen, but also the bandmasters to provide
musical leadership as well. While the brothers who own the three Jea Bands could and did
perform with their bands earlier in their careers, at this point it is beneath their dignity to do
so. So, although this is a matter of choice and of financial success (the brothers of the
Mumtaz Band are also participating less as musicians as their financial position improves),
there is a fundamental distinction in these and all bands, in social, economic, and sometimes
musical terms, between family members and hired workers. While all who play in a band,
family or hired labor, can be called bandsmen, those who provide musical and often social
leadership are known as bandmasters. The two categories cut across each other in that a

71
bandmaster may be a µ⊄λικ, his son, or a hired laborer, while a µ⊄λικ’s young son may also
act as a bandsman until he is old enough and experienced enough to be recognized as a
bandmaster. Of course, some sons (as in the Prabhat Band described in Chapter 1) never
acquire the musical skills necessary to be bandmasters and content themselves with purely
managerial roles. Thus, µ⊄λικs and σε√ηs, bandmasters, and bandsmen form a rough
tripartite hierarchy, partly social and partly professional, within a band. Below the regular
bandsmen, whether hired on contract or for specific jobs, are the non-musical bandsmen (the
“dummies” as one Mumbai µ⊄λικ calls them) who carry instruments to fill out the ranks or
carry banners. The following section expands upon these very important distinctions.
Bandsmen and bandmasters
In most contemporary Indian brass bands, the membership of a specific ensemble,
called a party in Indian usage, is not permanently fixed over any duration beyond the
immediate job. In other words, the band one hires for a procession will be made up of
bandsmen and bandmasters (although these latter may perhaps also be µ⊄λικs) working on
daily or seasonal agreements or as part of their contribution to the family enterprise. The
specific combination of musicians that appears in front of a family’s home may never appear
again, although a group that differs by one or two minor individuals might play another job
later that same day or the next week. Even the labor pool from which a particular party is
made up will change with the year and across the season. Returning to Varanasi, and the
Mumtaz Band, a closer look at behaviors on the job will clarify the roles of owners,
bandmasters, and bandsmen and illustrate the flexible, but ultimately clear distinctions
between socio-economic and musical roles.
Roles at work
In 1988, I accompanied a small party (12 men) from the Mumtaz Band to their
performance at a wedding procession. In 1988, three of the four brothers, Mumtaz, Samshad,
and Naushad were acting as µ⊄λικs and as bandmasters on a daily basis; that is, they were
making bookings, assigning men to jobs, and looking after business, as well as providing
musical leadership in all aspects of the operation (rehearsals, repertoire selection, and
performance). Sons, nephews, and other relatives were performing with the band; but the
brothers were also hiring additional laborers. The Hindi word most commonly used to
identify hired (and normally non-related) bandsmen is καρ⊂γαρ; but many µ⊄λικs also use
the English term, worker.
Like most successful band µ⊄λικs, the Mumtaz brothers tried to accept as many jobs
a possible. In this respect, one of a µ⊄λικ’s (or manager’s) most important responsibilities is

72
assigning the band’s human resources to specific jobs: “this person on trumpet for this group,
that person on euphonium for that group” and so forth. Personalities and musical skills have
to balance against instruments so that each party a band might send out has a musical leader
or two (the bandmasters), a suitable number and distribution of rank and file musicians, some
reliable drummers, and an overall supervisor (a family member or trusted worker). The three
acting µ⊄λικs of the Mumtaz Band divided supervisory duties amongst themselves;
depending on the demand for that day, each party would be overseen by one brother and play
according to its own schedule, as arranged with the customer.
The group in question on this evening was under the supervision of the youngest of
the four brothers, Naushad; but as we left the shop, Naushad discovered another urgent matter
to attend to. Feroze, Mumtaz’ son and Naushad’s nephew, who was fifteen-years old at the
time and playing euphonium in the band, was put in nominal charge, with the understanding
that Naushad would arrive in good time for the music to actually begin. Feroze and I walked
off down the Varanasi alleys to the groom’s home where the procession would begin. As is
often the case, most of the rest of the band party had already left and was waiting at the site.
With us were two καρ⊂γαρ musicians, Mahender, a local clarinet player, and another
unrelated trumpet player. These were the only trumpet or clarinet players in the party, other
than Naushad, who plays trumpet; the rest of the party’s members were euphonium and
percussion players.
When we arrived at the groom’s house, a ∨αην⊄⊂ party was playing, seated outside
the groom’s door. ⊃αην⊄⊂ or other pre-colonial double reed ensembles are sometimes hired
by families to play outside their home before the procession itself begins; more rarely, they
also take part in the procession itself. Often, when a band arrives at the site of a wedding
procession and discovers any sort of double-reed party in possession, so to speak, the
bandsmen can hardly wait to begin playing. Many bandsmen seem to enjoy drowning out
their more traditional cousins. At this particular event, however, the Mumtaz musicians were
remarkably restrained. They were content to stand about, letting the ∨αην⊄⊂s play, until
their customer, the groom’s father, came out and demanded music.
At this point, the small party required both professional and musical leadership.
Under normal circumstances, both leadership roles would have been filled by Naushad, a
µ⊄λικ who could also occupy the musical role of bandmaster. Because Naushad had not yet
arrived, and because there were no especially senior musicians in the group, Feroze, as the
only representative of the owning family, was forced into a professional leadership role.
Fortunately, the immediate professional requirements in this situation were quite minimal; he

73
only needed to get the band playing. Feroze could manage the group temporarily despite his
age and limited experience. To lead a wedding band musically, however, a trumpet or
clarinet (or electronic keyboard) is necessary; Feroze could stand in as a µ⊄λικ; but as a
euphonium player (and a relatively inexperienced euphonium player at that) he could not
assume the bandmaster’s role, especially since bandmasters are also soloists.
The only trumpet player in the party was the καρ⊂γαρ musician I have mentioned.
Since he had the appropriate instrument, Feroze tried to delegate musical leadership to him. It
soon became apparent that this individual did not have the necessary musical skill or
experience. In this crisis, musical leadership devolved onto Mahender, a clarinetist who,
while not an experienced bandmaster, was a more competent musician. Neither of these men
was perceived as a bandmaster under normal conditions; but Mahender was a local with a
longer standing relationship with the band than his trumpet-playing colleague. More
importantly, he had a stronger musical presence. With a great deal of cooperation, Mahender
managed to carry the performance for about 15 minutes. Everyone in the group demonstrated
their awareness of the problem and there was a higher than average level of participation and
musical contribution on the part of everyone present, although being almost exclusively
euphonium players, their support was inherently of a specific and limited kind. The weakness
of the group, compared to other Mumtaz parties I had heard, was quite evident. During a
performance of one of the standards of the wedding band repertoire, the group managed to
conclude the song in a key one whole-step higher than the key in which they began. When
Naushad finally arrived with his trumpet, the sense of relief amongst the men was almost
palpable; the musical results were also clearly audible. Feroze, who had been trying to
support Mahender’s lead was able to return to his normal responsorial role, leading the lower
brass. Mahender’s clarinet suddenly became the doubled lead following Naushad’s much
more assertive trumpet. Everyone relaxed and the band continued for the rest of the βαρ⊄τ.
There is no clear distinguishing test that qualifies a bandsman to be a bandmaster.
Band ownership does not necessarily imply bandmaster status; but a µ⊄λικ who performs
with his band must, in realistic terms, do so as a bandmaster. Even if a µ⊄λικ were not
experienced enough musically to successfully assume musical leadership, his men would be
forced to behave in public as if he were. In practice, such awkwardness rarely develops. If
µ⊄λικs cannot lead their bands musically, they will normally not assume a role with those
expectations; they will manage without participating musically. Among bandsmen, those
who have experienced enough seasons and cities to feel professionally competent will identify
themselves as “So-and-so Master,” although their behavior on the job may identify them as

74
simply one of the group. As in so many such circumstances, it is not what a bandsman says
about himself matters, but how others speak of him. Some musicians, because of their
perceptible musical skills and leadership qualities gradually come to be called “Master” by
others.
Mumtaz bandsmen and µ⊄λικs were not referring to Mahender as “Master” in 1988;
but the events of the βαρ⊄τ I described above may have contributed to recognition of his
talents and thus been a stepping stone in his career. If he were to acquire enough of a
reputation for musical leadership; he would ultimately find that he was able to demand higher
wages from the Mumtaz brothers, or from whatever µ⊄λικ was to hire him. Economic
recognition is, thus, the ultimate test. Professional, social, and musical identities in the world
of brass bands are inherently interwoven. The socio-professional roles of µ⊄λικ, καρ⊂γαρ,
bandmaster, and bandsman all interact with one’s instrument and musical skills. This is
naturally true when the group is working, but even outside of performance contexts, one’s
stature depends on the location, the nature of the event, the size of one’s band, and the
company in which one finds one’s self. A bandsman who might act as a bandmaster in a
small town or village might be considered a mere καρ⊂γαρ in a big city shop. At the same
time, any employee, however marginal, is a potential representative of the band world to the
outside. When confronted with a potential customer or other outsider, even a day laborer will
attempt to represent “his” band in its best light.
Profit and loss
The professional distinctions I have drawn here have implications for behavior on and off
the job. The cultural importance and specificity of these distinctions and the extent to which
they are representative of the contemporary cultures that support them have been made clear
to me in part by means of the contrasts that are to found between the band worlds of
contemporary India and Pakistan. Although these were originally part of a single developing
musical tradition, the social and cultural outcomes of Partition have allowed the two worlds to
develop in slightly different directions since 1947.
In 1995, on my first visit to Lahore, Pakistan, among the musicians who were welcoming
was Muhammad Babur, owner and manager of the Jehanghir Band. To someone used to the
customs of India’s band world, Pakistani bands offered a number of surprising variations.
This was made evident to me the first time I witnessed the negotiations between Babur and
customers wishing to engage the group for a wedding. A three-man delegation came to book
the band for a wedding, scheduled to take place the following week in the town of Sialkot,
roughly 120 kilometers northwest of Lahore. A week before the event is rather late to be

75
booking a band by Indian standards, especially given Jehanghir’s good reputation, but then,
the issue of seasonal auspiciousness does not arise to the same extent in Pakistan’s explicitly
Islamic culture, so demand is somewhat more evenly distributed (although Friday, when
many businesses are closed, is the preferred day). Since the performance was at some
distance, agreement would mean committing the band to an entire day’s outing. Babur asked
for 12,000 rupees for the 16-man group, which was slightly high by Indian standards, but
hardly outrageous given that Babur would have to provide the bus for transportation. The
customers thought the price high, however, and walked out, showing all the signs of people
who feel they are being cheated. A few minutes later, one of the three reappeared in the
doorway calling to Babur, who went out to the balcony where more discussion ensued. Two
of the three customers then returned to sit in the shop and conclude the negotiations, which
ended quite amicably at 10,000 rupees.
For me as an observer, the most remarkable aspect of this negotiation was neither the
price nor the timing, but the fact that the rest of the band sat and listened to the entire
negotiation; one or two of the bandsmen even contributed to the discussion. In India when
customers appear in a band shop, any bandsmen who happen to be sitting in the shop will
leave or will be told to leave by the owner. This is in part because of the status differences,
both assumed and real, between the bandsmen and the customers. More importantly, Indian
band owners prefer to make their deals in relative private because of the economic
relationship between owner and bandsmen. The majority of the latter, I have noted, are hired
laborers, paid an amount fixed at either so much per procession or (more commonly) so much
per month. While everyone knows roughly what customers are charged, higher fees for
owners do not automatically translate into correspondingly higher wages for bandsmen. If the
discrepancies between fees and wages are known to be too extreme, of course, tension and
demands for higher wages may result.
The scene I had witnessed in Lahore, proved to be common practice in Pakistan, the
outcome of a socio-economic structure that was rather different from that found in India. The
Jehanghir Band, like most of the bands in the Pakistani Punjab, was operated as a cooperative.
The fee for each procession was simply divided in half; Babur took one half, out of which he
had to pay for all expenses (transport, maintenance of uniforms and instruments, etc.,) while
the bandsmen divided their half amongst themselves. The public nature of the fee negotiation
was thus what one might call a contractual necessity. Following the relative equality of
economic status and interest in the group, from the owner down to the tuba players, the social
and musical behaviors of the group were similarly egalitarian. This is in clear contrast to

76
behaviors in India, where there are additional implications to the musical labor-for-hire
system.
The Indian model of µ⊄λικ as musical sub-contractor, coupled with the widespread
practice of caste-dominated band membership means that Indian bands are not normally of
fixed membership. The Mumtaz brothers, or the Jea managers assign bandsmen to jobs on a
day-by-day basis. While many of the men in a Mumtaz Band party may play together
regularly, there is nevertheless, no fixed ensemble. In contrast, when one hires the Sohni
Band in Lahore or the Kalle Khan Band in Peshawar, one is hiring a specific group of
musicians who perform together under that name regularly and consistently. The system of
fixed membership still prevalent in Pakistan appears to have been the historical norm for all of
South Asia. It is the huge growth of demand in the urban market that has forced Indian
bandsmen to hire more and more καρ⊂γαρs from where ever they may be found. The
relatively stronger influences of caste in Hindu India may have perhaps encouraged clearer
distinctions between µ⊄λικs and bandsmen in some bands as well. I will confront the
musical outcomes of the variable membership system of Indian bands in Chapter 5; for now, I
focus on the social and professional outcomes of the Indian system.
Part-time family engagement in processional music performance by members of
specific types of castes, socially and economically structured by Hindu ideals of ritual purity
and caste relations are the roots of the contemporary brass band profession. I would argue
that aside from instrumentation (which is a relatively minor matter in many ways), British
culture’s major contribution to the creation of the modern band industry was in the
urbanization of India along new geographic axes, with the consequent growth of a large
populations concentrated in equally novel syncretic cultural spaces. It is only natural that
processional musicians responded to these circumstances by establishing increasingly
capitalized enterprises. Indian society of the 18th and 19th centuries may have responded to
the British presence and the opportunities/constraints they represented by redefining and
strengthening castes distinctions as Bayly (1999) suggests. ϑαϕµ⊄ν⊂ and the concepts
behind it may be responsible in large part for the continued presence of low castes in the band
profession; but, as a system of economic exchange, it has little relevance to contemporary
urban reality. The fees that band owners demand and the wages that they must give to their
employees make this clear.

77
78
Figure 4. Abrar Band Booking Form

Figure 5. Abrar Band Booking Form -- Translation

Master
ABRAR BAND
Chata Bazaar, Garibisthan Road, Muzaffarpur - 842001
phone: Proprietor: Master Bacchan date___________
1. Customer's name and full address
2. Party’s time and date of departure
3. Party’s time and date of finishing
4. Full address of the place from which the βαρ⊄τ will depart
5. Full address of the place to which the βαρ⊄τ will go
6. The agreed number of men [in the band]
7. The agreed price in numbers in words
8. The cost of travel and the expenses the customer will have to give
9. 75% of the price given in anticipation in numbers in words
10. The remainder to be paid in numbers in words
Note: -- (1) In any circumstances, the program having been set in motion, the advance
payment will not be given back. (2) Without sufficient advance, the event will be
understood as cancelled. (3) Any disputes will be settled in Muzaffarpur High Court. (4)
If the party is slow in arriving because of any bad storm and rain, the band µ⊄λικ will not
be responsible.
Customer signature Malik signature

Band fees
One hires a band to perform during a procession. The cultural axiom, that weddings
require processions and that processions require loud music, is the fuel that drives the
economic engine of the band world. A customer hires a party of an agreed upon size, in
particular uniforms, with specified options (such as amplified instrumental soloists or
vocalists, road lights, fireworks, etc.,) for an agreed upon sum, some portion of which is paid
at time of booking as a down payment, with the remainder paid at the conclusion of the
procession. The contract is with the µ⊄λικ, not the bandsmen. Figure 4 shows a booking
form for the Abrar Band of Muzaffarpur; the accompanying translation show that band

79
µ⊄λικs attempt to specify many of the details of the engagement and invariably take an
advance from their customers. Despite attempts by band µ⊄λικs to transform the patron-
musician behaviors and relationships of the band world from those of a service economy
based on ritual exchange into one based on capitalized commerce, they are fighting the
proverbial uphill battle. I must note that I have rarely seen such forms filled out completely;
more than a few bands do not use them at all.
The labor pool contracted seasonally by most µ⊄λικs means that they can agree to
provide a party of almost any size that a customer might demand (with size theoretically
limited only by the number of musicians in their pool) by assigning their human resources
carefully or by hiring additional day laborers if absolutely necessary. The µ⊄λικ agrees to
have a party of the agreed upon size at the agreed upon starting point at an agreed upon time.
Wedding processions rarely start on time, however, so bandsmen routinely spend anywhere
from thirty minutes to two hours standing and sitting, more or less patiently, waiting for the
event to begin. During the wedding season, when demand is high, µ⊄λικs and their
managers play a constant guessing game of “musical musicians,” agreeing to as many jobs as
possible, hoping that the size of their labor pool will be sufficient and that the delays small
enough to enable them to meet all their commitments.
In many cities, bands try to impose standard lengths of time and even standard starting
and ending times on their customers, thus allowing them to plan more efficiently. Plate 2
shows an example of such an attempt from the shop of the Mumtaz Band. Naushad, the
youngest of the four brothers sits beneath the band’s “Time Table,” in accordance to which
the group attempts to make bookings. The timetable allots two hours for a wedding
procession, and divides the evening into three, more or less discrete blocks according to the
season. The benefits for band owners in terms of predictability and increased bookings are
clear; but when asked about the results, Naushad smiles and shrugs. The reality is that
wedding processions remain beyond human control and that if he does not take the job on
offer, another band will.

80
Figure 6. Mumtaz Band Time Table (Plate 2 Translation)
Winter Summer
Band Time Table
1. 3:00 to 5:00 4:30 to 6:30
2. 6:00 to 8:00 6:30 to 8:30
3. After 8:30 After 8:30

Please: At the time of booking the band you should make arrangements to pay the whole fee.

The cost of hiring a standard 24-man party of the Mumtaz Band for one of these two-
hours blocks was 5,100 rupees in 1995, slightly more than 200 rupees per man. These high-
season rates can decrease by as much as one-half in the slack months. Bands are offered in
standard size parties, twelve usually being the smallest, twenty-one and twenty-four being the
most common, and fifty-one representing a common upper limit (although if one wanted 101
men, most of the bigger bands could oblige). Larger numbers, such as 51 and 101, that have
an extra single unit in the final place are commonly understood as auspicious in South Asia,
as the old brand of Indian hand-rolled cigarette (β⊂δ⊂), 501, demonstrates. When gifts of
cash are given, or in the arrangement of other ritual ingredients, the extra unit is thus
especially significant.
Mumtaz’s price is a good average for Varanasi and other cities of similar size and
make-up during the mid-1990s. In 1994, customers wishing to hire the Jea Hindu Band
(Delhi) paid roughly 10,000 rupees for the same size party. It was even more expensive in
Jaipur, and yet again in Ahmadabad where the same group could cost up to 24,000 rupees. At
that, there are many customers for these bands that represent the pinnacle of their trade in
these cities. These rates, however, are driven entirely by demand, which is not only
seasonally, but also regionally variable, as the different Jea Band rates demonstrate. In
Mumbai, rates are much lower; 7,500 rupees would hire a comparable band. Even in a small
town, however, a band is not cheap. In the small Deccan town of Gulbarga (population <
500,000), a 24-man party would still cost 2,500 rupees. Nor is the price of a band entirely
predictable along rural-urban lines. In some rural parts of northern India, demand far
outstrips that found in regional centers. The Muzaffarpur region of Bihar, where the Abrar
band works, is an example of this phenomenon. Bandsmen and even whole bands from
neighboring Uttar Pradesh state can earn more than double the rate found in their local towns
by seeking the patronage of rural landowning families.

81
 In figures, the fees charged by bands have changed gradually and inconsistently
throughout the twentieth century, but always in an upward direction. Factoring in changes in
the cost of living, inflation, and the various devaluations of the Indian and Pakistani rupee,
however, makes it very hard to determine whether bandsmen were at all better off in 1995
than they were in 1935. Oral history relates that when the Jehanghir Band (then of Amritsar,
numbering probably 20 men at maximum) was invited to Sadarshahr (northern Rajasthan
State) in the mid-1930s, they were paid 300 rupees for a ten-day event. Similarly, a man who
claimed to have hired the Jea Hindu Band in 1959 for twenty-five rupees was quite shocked
by the prices the booking manager was going to charge for his son’s wedding in 1995. Based
on these fees, a µ⊄λικ running an average band in an average northern city might earn
18,000-20,000 rupees (gross) on a busy day during the wedding season; but the band can
easily go for weeks without an engagement during the slow periods of the year (the monsoon
season, June-October in most of northern India). Against this, one must consider some of the
expenses in operating this type of business.
Expenses
A hypothetical band staffed entirely by family members simply divides its income
proportionally as seems fit. There are a few bands in India, primarily rural, and a great many
bands in Pakistan, that still operate much of the time on this system. It seems that in the past
this was the norm throughout all of South Asia. The contemporary pattern, which one
encounters in modern India, however, is one in which the bulk of any band will be manned by
contracted musicians, καρ⊂γαρs, most of whom will have a minimal social relationship to
the owner.
Καρ⊂γαρs are either paid a fixed amount per procession on an event-by-event basis
or contracted at an agreed upon monthly salary for a fixed period (usually three to six
months), during which they play as many processions as necessary. Bandsmen who live in
the city where they work are usually paid by the procession; this includes family or local caste
mates who might be important musical contributors, as well as workers who are hired by the
day to carry signs and banners, push sound trolleys, or carry marginally functional
instruments simply to make up the required number of men. The majority of most bands,
however, are comprised of contracted καρ⊂γαρs who live at some distance from the city in
which they work. Such mobile laborers usually expect to work as many processions as are
assigned to them by the µ⊄λικ, in return for a monthly fee. Naturally, they also expect that a
reasonably equitable distribution of labor will be achieved. This practice is sometimes called
the “Army System” by brass bandsmen. As with rates, and in roughly the same proportions,

82
the wages a bandsman can expect to earn change from region to region and with the known
prestige or skills of the individual. Mobile bandsmen, the majority of the band world’s
population, do not necessarily work only in one city, or in the same city or band year after
year. If they do not get on with the µ⊄λικ, or discover that wages are better in another band
or another city, they can move from city to city on a seasonal basis. Καρ⊂γαρ contracts may
run from three to nine months, although longer ones especially are understood to include
periods in which the musician will return home during slow moments in the business. The
table below shows a number of salaries for bandmasters and bandsmen in selected cities.
These rather typical monthly wages occupy the upper half of the broader picture, since they
are all for prestigious bands; nevertheless, they offer an idea of the earnings of the typical
bandsman.
Figure 7. Bandsman Monthly Salaries
Year Months Monthly City Status
Salary
1998 6 3300 Mumbai Master
1996 6 3000 Mumbai Master
1996 3.5 2000 Ahmadabad Bandsman
1994 4 2500 Jaipur Bandsman
1993 4 1700 Hyderabad Bandsman
1993 6 2150 Varanasi Bandsman

Obviously, the profit for a µ⊄λικ in operating a brass band lies in the margin between
maintenance costs and bandsmen’s salaries on one side and the income from fees on the other.
Consequently, profit depends on how carefully the owner negotiates with both his customers
and his καρ⊂γαρs and how well he manages his human resources both before and after the
wedding season. In addition to the seasonal expenses, however, there are others, mostly
associated with what might be called set-up costs.
Instruments, uniforms, and other costs
In all the bands of South Asia, the band owner owns the musical instruments. This
appears to be a carry over from the rather older model of royal and military bands where
musical instruments were the personal or state property of the royal patron or government.
The only exceptions to this practice are found amongst senior bandmasters who are perceived
very much as soloists and who perform almost invariably on trumpet or clarinet. Some-

83
trumpet playing bandmasters and probably the majority of clarinet players of soloist caliber
own their own instruments.
To open a band shop thus requires the new owner to provide instruments to the number
and in the right distribution (so many trumpets, euphoniums, drums, etc.,) of musicians he
wishes to hire. Roughly ninety-five percent of the band instruments made in India and used by
wedding bands are manufactured in city of Meerut (Uttar Pradesh State); what is more, the
majority of Meerut band instruments are produced by, or at least sold under the name of,
Nadir Ali and Sons, who are consequently the most famous manufactures of brass instruments
in South Asia, or by their imitators, whose smaller shops surround the large Nadir Ali
compound and factory. The Nadir Ali factory is a remarkable place in many ways, and
worthy of serious study in its own right. Lying in the piles of discarded instruments and in
the hands of its artisans is a history of brass instrument manufacture in India and of artisanal
activity turned industrial. To outfit a hypothetical 24 man band with new instruments from
Nadir Ali would cost something approaching 22,000 rupees, roughly as shown in Figure 8.
To purchase one set of uniforms for this hypothetical group would cost approximately the
same amount. If a new µ⊄λικ wished to add an electronic keyboard to his set up and also a
four-wheeled trolley to carry it and an amplifying sound system, this would again double the
entire amount to a figure approaching 100,00 rupees.
Figure 8. Approximate musical instrument prices (1996)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instrument Number of Pieces Total Cost
Clarinet Four 2,200 rupees
Trumpet Four 3,100 rupees
Euphonium Seven 9,100 rupees
Brass bass Two 4,000 rupees
Percussion Seven 3,500 rupees
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From a purely economic perspective, the band business is in fact a business, one in
which musical roles and professional relationships have been integrated into a system of
mobile labor and musical sub-contracting. At the same time, elements of family- and caste-
based professional organization continue to play major roles in the provision of that mobile
labor, the regional dispersal of the trade, control of local markets, and the management of
individual band shops. In addition, the economic and social relationships between band
owners and bandsmen, and between band owners and patrons have both been transformed in

84
the twentieth century. Economic exchange between patrons and musicians, initially part of a
ritual or royal household economy, is now fixed by the marketplace and by demand forces in
a commercial system. Social and economic relations between band owners and hired
bandsmen have similarly been transformed. In most bands, (as in many other commercial
enterprises) extended family members play a role; but while some bandsmen are related to
owning families, many more are related only through caste. Still more are not related at all.
Similarly, while some bandsmen maintain the kinds of long term casual or part time
relationships that appear to have existed between owners and bandsmen in earlier times, short
term contractual relations are much more common. As a web of small individually owned and
organized businesses, the band world combines caste-based strategies for organization and
economic return with more business-like approaches. It requires significant economic
investment and the careful application of strategies and behaviors that both depend on and
supercede caste structures. Although there are echoes of pre-capitalist exchange in the ritual
of the wedding procession, these are interpreted in commercial terms in modern India.
Whether bands thus represent change or continuity in terms of pre-colonial India is
another matter. Μ⊄λικs, bandmasters, “dummies,” the whole professional structure of the
band world, exist in response to the primary demand for ritual music at wedding and other
processions. The intense concentration of demand in Indian (but not in Pakistani) cities has
allowed the trade to develop patterns of seasonal mobile labor. Indeed, movement by
µ⊄λικs, bandsmen, caste groups, refugees, colonial culture, and political boundaries all figure
powerfully in the transformation of processional music culture in India. Some aspects of
movement and space in the band world are considered in the next chapter.

85
 Chapter 3. -- Careers, Space, Location, and Movement

Searching for “The Ladies’ Band”

My use of pronouns throughout this book will have implied what I have yet to state,
that the world of brass bands is a male one. This can hardly be considered unusual; Flora
reminds us that that “women do not usually play any kind of wind instrument in India at the
present time” (1983: 91), although they did in the past. In South Asia, there is a broad
cultural pattern in the performing arts that assumes clear correlations between gender and
other variables such as genre, musical instrument, venue, audience, and status. Henry (1988)
for example, uses the distinctive song repertoires of male and female villagers as one of the
organizing themes in his study of folk music. Post writes of India’s classical music world that
until recently this “appears to have been a male-dominated profession” (1987: 97). She also
notes, “in village and urban neighborhoods, women encounter musical restrictions similar to
those experienced by women in the professional [by which she apparently means classical]
music sphere” (Post, 2000: 414). The connection between female music performances before
mixed audiences and prostitution is widely encountered in Indian music culture, although
some scholars have pointed to the ambiguities inherent in this popular (sometimes mis-)
conception (e.g., Ollikkala, 1997; Kersenboom-Story, 1987).
Certainly it is true that the women who at one time were hired to dance in βαρ⊄τs
were members of courtesan traditions. Dandekar (1986) describes the general perception of
women’s centrality to the local and household spheres of Indian life and the more recent
accompanying perception of men as the wage earners. For all these reasons, women do not
participate in the world of brass bands. There are women in bandsmen’s homes, of course,
but they play no role in the professional life of the brass band trade. For a woman to appear in
a band shop even as a customer is, in my experience, a rare occurrence. I certainly never
expected to see women performing in brass bands, and in fact have not. Nevertheless, during
one of my stays in Varanasi, Samshad, of the Mumtaz Band, insisted that there was a brass
band staffed by women, which he identified simply as “The Ladies’ Band,” in the small town
of Chalisgaon (population <100,000) in Maharasthra. Samshad could not tell me anything
about the nature of the group or give any explanation for the unusual fact of their existence,
only that they were there.
It took me five years to get to Chalisgaon in an attempt to confirm the existence of this
very unique band. I spent a day talking with the bandsmen of the town (which only has five
bands). No one had ever heard of a Ladies’ Band in Chalisgaon. The inability to find
confirmation of the presence of an object of this nature in the highly volatile oral tradition of

86
the brass band world cannot necessarily be understood as confirmation of historical absence;
forgetting and the similar results that follow from a family’s disengagement from the trade are
both common enough to make any conclusions difficult. A band staffed by women, however,
is an extremely unusual phenomenon; it would have made Chalisgaon distinctive in historical
terms. Such distinctiveness makes it less likely that bandsmen would have simply and
completely forgotten about a women’s band, if one had ever existed. My conclusion had to be
that it was very unlikely (though of course, not impossible) that there had ever been such a
band in the town. One elderly bandmaster’s comments that day allow me to make such an
assertion with a bit more confidence. He told me that there was indeed a Ladies’ Band; but
that it was in Pune, not Chalisgaon.
Some four years before that conversation took place, I had spent a month in Pune,
speaking with that city’s bandsmen about their shops, and the histories and identities of that
city’s band world. I had not actually mentioned the rumor of a women’s band to the
bandsmen with whom I talked in Pune; but they certainly did not mention what would, again,
have been a very distinctive feature of their world’s history. So, despite the rumored new
location, I did not return to Pune in search of the Ladies Band. Although I still have not been
able to return to Pune, nothing I have learned since that time leads me to suspect that the
Ladies Band is anything more than a professional myth. Such a band’s existence has since
been denied by knowledgeable bandsmen in nearby Mumbai.
I relate this story not only to make clear that the band world is a gender specific one;
as I note above, in this the band world is of a piece with the rest of traditional Indian music
culture and social organization. More importantly, this story of the Ladies’ Band confronts
the extent to which the nature of information in the band world has affected both my research
methods, the way I have written this book, and the representations and conclusions contained
within it. Many bandsmen have reasonably comprehensive contemporary knowledge and
understanding of their local or regional worlds. Most bandsmen’s contemporary knowledge
of the bands and cities outside their own area, however, is vague to say the least. Even
bandsmen who seasonally travel considerable distances, do so within fairly well
circumscribed areas, along routes that are delimited by socio-professional criteria. Historical
knowledge, even of the bands in one’s own city, is even more fragile. It is of less interest to
many bandsmen and therefore less widespread. As the story of developments in Patna’s band
world, related in Chapter I, shows us, historical information is open to dispute by other band
µ⊄λικs and thus more vulnerable to contestation in response to contemporary local-market
politics.

87
 For my research, the outcome of this general lack of contemporary or historical
information and of broad knowledge of the trade in general is exacerbated by the lack of
literature on bands. My own feelings that these lacunae required filling, combined with
bandsmen’s general inability to fill them, left me with two major practical research problems.
First, I had no way of knowing how wide spread the tradition was or to what extent
regionality (so powerfully expressed in Indian language, food, dress, and other areas of
culture), affected the tradition. Second, as my historical questions about inception, growth,
stylistic influence, etc., became increasingly insistent, I had no way of answering them on a
subcontinental scale. In other words, there was no easy way to acquire an overview, and in
both cases, the only solution that seemed satisfactory to me was travel. As in the case of the
Ladies’ Band, in order to answer the questions I had to go and find out. The need for an
overview on regional and historical questions, and my perhaps idiosyncratic method of
addressing that need has in turn affected the kind of information and the picture that I have
constructed of the brass band trade. Although I would argue that within the limits of
ethnographic “reality” the picture is reasonable, I would also admit that space, location, and
the movement of individuals, families, and caste groups all figure prominently in the picture; I
have, to some extent sacrificed ethnographic depth for cultural and historical breadth. The
world of Indian brass bands, however, is one in which geography and movement play major
roles, on many levels. In exploring some of these issues, this chapter will continue to develop
the importance of identity and professional organization as discussed in my first two chapters.
Space in urban band worlds
There are small bands throughout the villages of South Asia; but the city is the heart of
the band world and the place of its birth. For contemporary professional bandsmen, the large
metropolitan centers are the major sources of style and pay. In small villages or large cities,
bands need a place where instruments can be stored, where the group can rehearse, and where
customers who wish to hire the band may find them. Getting off the train one morning in the
small Maharasthran town of Manmad (population < 10,000), I found myself buying
πακο∈⊄s at a small stand across from the train station. The hand-painted sign on the stand
said nothing about πακο∈⊄s, however; it read “Asad Band.” Staying recently in
Ahmadabad’s modern and upscale Navrangpura area, I found that I was a mere two blocks
from the Jea Band’s new booking office on the third floor of a modern block of offices and
retail of shops.
Whether it is the µ⊄λικ’s house, a πακο∈⊄ stand, or a large elegant shop front
devoted exclusively to the band, the most important factor in a band’s commercial success is

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that customers know that the band exists and where they can go to hire it. This primary
location defines much of a band’s identity and daily life. Bandsmen may use the Hindi word,
δυκ⊄ν [shop], to identify their place of business; but often use the English translation (shop)
or the term, booking office, instead. The cities are where most professional bandsmen spend
most of their time, and where the most famous bands are located. To bandsmen living or
working in the cities, the band shops, and the streets that are home to clusters of those shops
are the center of their professional and usually social lives. An examination of band shops is
the beginning of a broader investigation of space and movement in the band world. Shops are
the urban hub of band activity and the points of destination for mobile bandsmen. The
physical location of band shops within the geography of India’s cities, however, often
contributes to popular understandings of bandsmen as marginal, as less than entirely
respectable.
Urban shops -- The professional center
As a commercial, social, and even family entity, bands are specifically identified by
their names and physically located by the shop fronts from which they operate and upon
which their name acts as their primary publicity. A band shop can be anything from a
πακο∈⊄ stand to a large multi-story concrete structure. Some band owners build small
street-side shacks in which they and perhaps one other person might sit cross-legged at or near
street level, others may rent (or even own) offices in modern prestigious neighborhoods, with
room to rehearse and store equipment. Μ⊄λικs may have two or even three different offices
or branches in different parts of the city or in different cities. Small bands may combine two
enterprises in one, their electronic repair shop or shoe store (for two examples) doubling as a
band shop, so that the owner and his sons can work at one or the other of the family’s
occupations as demands arise, and so that some one will always be present when a customer
calls to hire a band or buy a new pair of shoes. A few small family-centered bands have signs
attached to their own houses, with no separate premises at all. The front public room of the
family home in these cases becomes the rehearsal, office, and storage space. In very remote
locations or villages, there may be neither shops nor signs and the bands may not be named
ensembles. Named or not, however, there are always bands; and to say a band’s name is to
refer directly to the family that owns it.
Band shops come in all shapes and sizes; configurations tend to be fairly consistent
within cities, but vary widely from city to city. A shop or booking office is first and foremost
a retail outlet in a service economy; shops are those places where µ⊄λικs, as sellers of the
service, and customers, as consumers, interact and negotiate. In most cities, shops also tend

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to be places in which bandsmen socialize and pass the time when they are not at work. There
is some musical activity, learning new songs, practicing parts and so forth, but remarkably
little given the nature of the occupation. Managers or µ⊄λικs may fix instruments or sort
uniforms or tend to other tasks associated with the group. During the wedding season, the
shop is manned constantly to take bookings from customers; but at slow times of year, shops
may sit open and empty for hours, with only a caretaker to watch the space. The location of a
band’s shop, or more usually, of a cluster of band shops within a city has social meaning in
the band world and often has historical implications as well.
The bands of M.G. Road - Kolkata
In many cities, band shops open out onto the street from rows of two or three story
buildings. Signs or musical instruments hanging in the doorway alert customers to the name
and nature of the enterprise. The shops of the Mahboob, Mehbooba, and Sohrab Bands sit
tightly together in a row on Kolkata’s Mahatma Gandhi (M.G.) Road, where all of the city’s
bands are located. These shops were opened by the three sons of a bandsman named Sheikh
Ramzan (circa 1862-1947). Ramzan opened his band in Kolkata sometime in the late 1930s,
which he called the Hindustan Band. It was the first Kolkata band owned by a member of a
low caste Muslim βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ called Bhirain, related to the Mirasi . This particular branch of
the Bhirain βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ originated in Bihar, but members began migrating to Kolkata shortly
after 1860. There they established themselves in their traditional occupation, as small-scale
produce retailers, in a patronage relationship with other communities recently arrived in
Kolkata, especially trader communities from Marwar, in far western India. These Marwari
business and wholesale contractor households had themselves immigrated to Kolkata to take
advantage of their recently acquired access to British patronage. In Kolkata, both bandsmen
and a majority of their patrons are outsiders:
Ramzan’s three sons, Mahboob, Sohrab, and Majnu (all now deceased) transformed
their inheritance into the Mahboob, Sohrab, and Mahbooba bands respectively. The sons and
grandsons of those three men now run the three shops, but are having trouble making ends
meet. For many people, including myself, Kolkata has always had a special feeling for and
love of the arts, which it retains; but the city’s streets are among the most crowded in India, its
infrastructure among the most badly strained. Street processions are either difficult or
impossible much of time and in many places. Bandsmen also say that the police are
increasingly unsympathetic to βαρ⊄τs, wherever they take place. Further, declines in the
city’s business and industrial base mean less wealth and fewer industrial families that might
hire a band. The correlation between the erosion of bandsmen’s patronage base and the

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erosion of the region’s industrial base is hardly one-to-one; but like the Chunar Dafalis of the
mid-19th century, Kolkata bandsmen are confronting a gradual decline in demand and in the
very possibility of street processions. Unlike their mid-19th century colleagues, however,
there is no place for them to go at the beginning of the 21st century, no more attractive market
to which they might shift their operations. Despite the difficulties, the band community on
M.G. Road persists. In the blocks between Chitaranjan Avenue and Rajah Ram Mohan
Sarani, there were roughly forty-two band shops in 1997.
As in most Indian cities, these shops are owned by a relatively small number of castes,
in this case, all Muslim. Pathan musicians appear to have opened the first of the extant band
shops in Kolkata some years before they appeared in Patna (see Chapter 1); but in both cities
they played an important role in the transformation of the processional music trade along
commercial lines and in the appearance of Muslim castes in Kolkata. Today, in addition to
the original Pathan shops and the many Bhirain shops, there are also Ansari and Mirasi bands
(these are both low status Muslim ζ⊄τs) on M.G. Road. We know from Chapter Two that
individual males belonging to these groups own each individual band shop. Competition and
cooperation within and between families and ζ⊄τs is normal. Some shops, such as the three I
have mentioned, or the Punjab Band and Bengal National Band further to the west along M.G.
Road, are reasonably prosperous shops; others are quite small and hardly viable. Their
owners might be able to put together twelve men if called upon.
As places, and as places of business, the Mahboob, Sohrab, and Mahbooba bands
shops are set out like hundreds of other shops throughout India. In Plate 5, three young
bandsmen pose in the Sohrab Band shop. A desk and chair (at right) provide a setting for the
µ⊄λικ, manager, or other member of the family to negotiate with customers and make
bookings. The space under the desktop holds pictures of uniform options, engagement
schedules, and other papers. The wooden benches lining the left wall of the space offer
seating to customers; spaces under the benches hold uniforms. At the left rear, a glass case
holds some of the band’s musical instruments. Storage space is always at a premium since
most prosperous µ⊄λικs prefer to own two or three different sets of uniforms, and must have
enough instruments for all their hired workers. Typically, the shop’s walls hold pictures. In
this instance, from far left, we see a historical photo of one of the band’s more prestigious
engagements, film stars, a photograph of Master Sohrab, the band’s founder and, above
Sohrab, religious iconography (in this case pictures of Mecca and the Kabah).
In the first days of my research in Kolkata, I focused on the Mahboob, Sohrab, and
Mahbooba bands, but was constantly confused by the extent to which µ⊄λικs and bandsmen

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alike treated the three shops as interchangeable. The three bands are staffed by a combination
of immediate and extended family members, as well as by hired βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ and non-
βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ καρ⊂γαρs; but working out who belonged to which band was challenge I never
completely overcame. To a degree that is unusual in most band neighborhoods in most cities,
the men (and I) moved from shop to shop to sit, talk, drink tea, or rehearse apparently as the
spirit took them. Bandsmen from further up or down the street would appear to pass the time
as well. Μ⊄λικs would also appear and disappear; managers did most of the booking, but if
they were not present, some one from the µ⊄λικ’s family, or even from a neighboring
µ⊄λικ’s family would gladly oblige. In the evenings as groups gathered to prepare for
processional performances, the sidewalks and curbsides would spill over with uniformed and
partially uniformed bandsmen. Differently uniformed men would assist each other and the
non-uniformed bandmasters would be in and out of the different shops as the need arose. At
times bandsmen from one group would go off to play a βαρ⊄τ with another one of the bands
or, if for some reason their own group was not working, they might simply go along to listen
and watch.
The Mahboob, Mahbooba, and Sohrab band shops on M.G. Road are more or less
directly across the street from many of the µ⊄λικ family homes and the homes of local
bandsmen of the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂. Some South Asia scholars have suggested that patterns of urban
and rural residence in South India have significance for issues of caste and social identity
(e.g., Berreman, 1972; Béteille, 1996b; Lynch, 1969; etc.,). Although high levels of
immigration, overcrowding, and the general anonymity of larger cities have always weakened
such patterns of social behavior and organization, the phenomenon continues to be both
noticeable and important in South Asia. In some parts of many cities and towns, urban
residential patterns show geographic or residential demarcations based on high, middle, and
low caste, or on regionalism. The very strong sense of place and belonging that the M.G.
Road band bazaar generates is the result of the proximity of public and private expressions of
family and βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ which are simultaneously part of both traditional and modern South
Asian urban structures.
Location, status, and competition
In addition to patterns of caste-based residence, there is a general pattern in urban
organization in India, in which the shops of a particular retail or service trade will cluster
together in particular streets or areas of the city. The collective behavior may well be a
vestigial outcome of residential patterns; but whether it is or not, the result for bandsmen is
the same. In most cities, city residents can identify a particular neighborhood, street, or

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cluster of streets as their city's “band bazaar.” The term is used but rarely by South Asians,
who tend to specify the place by name, leaving those who are knowledgeable enough to make
the connection. Nevertheless, I have frequently asked after the “brass band bazaar” in
unfamiliar Indian cities and have almost unfailingly been directed to this or that neighborhood
where in fact, brass band shops were to be found. I will use the term here as a convenient
generic label for those neighborhoods, the M.G. Roads, Gowliguda Chamans, Lajpat Rai
Bazaars, and Sultan Ganjs of urban India, where brass bands cluster. Clustering is more
pronounced in some cities than in others; in many there are three to four band bazaars, each
with its historical and social implications. Prior to the modernization and capitalization of the
processional music trade, oral histories and my own research suggest that hereditary
musicians who performed processional music lived in caste-based neighborhoods to which
potential customers went to inquire about processional music services. Two associations that
often helped identify processional music neighborhoods were with low caste and with
professional female entertainers. Traditional residential patterns in Indian cities have
replicated the kind of caste-based organization that is also found in Indian villages (as
described in sources such as Berreman, 1972; Dandekar, 1986; or Fox, 1969; etc.,). Many
cities, like many villages, display or at least formerly displayed, patterns of residential
organization in which different castes, or at least different related or similar caste groups lived
and often worked in particular areas of the city which then became identified with those castes
(and occupations). Berreman, for example, informs us “urban residential neighborhoods are
often relatively homogeneous ethnically, and stable over time” (1975: 229). The specificity
and persistence of such practices naturally weakens in large relatively heterogeneous urban
populations; caste and class distinctions become blurred in urban contexts. In a traditional
sense, however, many Indians would be aware that the search for processional musicians
might well begin in those urban areas where low caste residences were to be found.
Alternatively, they would seek out those areas of the city in which the κο√ηιs [salons,
brothels] of female performers were located. This pattern of pre-modern or pre-capitalist
professional organization has largely vanished from India, but can still be found in a few
smaller remote towns and cities.
Langa Sheri -- Pre-capitalized space and organization
In Bhuj, the small urban center and old walled princely capital of the kingdom of
Kutch in western Gujarat state (population < 100,000), processional music is exclusively in
the hands of a single low caste group, called Langa. As with some similar groups (Doms, for
example) Langa musicians are found on both sides of India’s Hindu-Muslim religious divide;

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but regardless of their religious identity, Langas are of low status and are hereditary
processional musicians. Langa musicians played ναυβατ music on ⋅ηολ, ναθθ⊄ρα, and
∨αην⊄⊂ for the former Hindu Maharaja of Kutch. The term and concept of ναυβατ were
borrowed from Muslim rulers, whose military double reed/kettle drum bands were both
military and ceremonial. The stereotypical image of the ναυβατ ensemble locates these
bands, of generally four to five musicians, high above the procession in the archways of a
fortress, performing as the ruler and entourage process into or out of the royal precincts (see
Wade, 1998 for images of traditional ναυβατ ensembles). In the early 20th century, the royal
ναυβατ musicians of Kutch added European processional instruments to their
accomplishments, becoming the Maharaja’s brass band as well as his ναυβατ ensemble.
Later, when the princely states were abolished after Independence, the Langas shifted their
dependence onto the patronage of the new national state, becoming (as did some other royal
bands) the core of the local state police band.
In addition to their work for the representatives of the various local and regional states,
however, Langa musicians have always been available for hire to the general public for
private processions. But unlike almost every other city in India, there are no band shop-fronts
in Bhuj. The local residents simply know that if one wants to hire processional musicians,
one inquires in Langa Sheri, a small area of the city (outside the original walls) where the
Langas live. As would be expected in a traditional context, most Langas work at jobs other
than private processional music. A number pursue other musical jobs, either with the Police
Band or on their own. Others engage in work unrelated to music; there are day laborers and
chemists among the population. A small portable tea stall and the small square (for lack of a
better word) in which it is located mark the boundaries of the almost personal neighborhood
of Langa homes. It is a place to congregate before or after work, and a beginning point for
customers in search of a band. The tea seller, although not a Langa, knows most of the local
musicians. Potential patrons can be directed to the homes of the community’s leading
musicians, alternatively he can suggest they wait at his stall while musicians are sent for.
When musicians arrive and yet more tea is drunk, the customer can negotiate a party of the
desired size and can choose from pre-colonial (∨αην⊄⊂, ⋅ηολ, ναθθ⊄ρα) or colonial era
(brass) instrumentation. The musicians then put together a group according to the customer’s
demands and the availability of the various community members.
The Langa musicians of Bhuj are, to my knowledge, unique in urban India in that they
have not transformed their casual, social and caste based system of professional organization
into a commercial enterprise in which capital investment defines band ownership. Although

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caste-based professional organization still plays important roles in the band world, there are
almost no cities in India in which such practice has not been supplanted at the level of
customer interface, with privately owned bands represented by a named band with its own
shop front, even if that shop front is no more than a portable snack stall. There is no band
bazaar in Bhuj, only the scheduled caste quarters, Langa Sheri; no µ⊄λικs or hired laborers,
only elder and younger caste members and musicians; no shop fronts with band names boldly
displayed; no sets of privately owned band instruments and uniforms. Instruments are shared
when necessary, as are the profits.
From the perspective of Bhuj, Kolkata’s M.G. Road band bazaar reflects an
exteriorization and capitalization of the old reality, with shops located nearby residential
quarters. Despite the many differences, however, the Bhirain, Mirasi, and Ansari band
families in Kolkata are low caste Muslim, like the Langas, concentrated in a particular urban
quarter. Of course the Kolkata situation is inherently different in that the Bhirain, Pathan, and
other groups are relatively recent immigrants to a city that is itself, a colonial creation. In
such contexts, the other expected feature of a band bazaar is a proximity to professional
female performers and prostitution. Ταω⊄ιφs, courtesans, or dancing girls, are another
marginal but necessary professional or service class who were traditionally involved in
processions and who could be classed functionally in the καµ⊂ν category of traditional
Hindu caste relations, that is, as those obliged to accept the gifts and other offerings of their
superiors. I have mentioned this socio-geographic connection for the Mumbai band bazaar in
Pyadhunie. This was also true of the Kolkata street once called Harrison Road, and now
called M.G. Road, where the echoes of earlier patterns of residential and trade organization
have been transformed into more commercial structures suitable to the late 20th century. In
the Madhya Pradesh city of Jabalpur, the area called Lakkara Ganj still houses both the city’s
band bazaar and the city’s ρανδ⊂ bazaar, a term that is sometimes used by Indians to identify
areas encompassing a city’s houses of prostitution.
Out of Lakkara Γα∏ϕ- Neighborhoods, competition, and identity
In the 17th century, γα∏ϕ was a term that identified a wholesale market area; in
contemporary practice it simply identifies a reasonably coherent and discrete part of a city,
usually one whose roots are somehow explicable by the word that precedes the “γα∏ϕ” of the
area’s title. In Jabalpur, the main street of Lakkara Ganj is home to the Vijaya, Bhola,
Sashwajit, Vijaya Prem, Pratap, and Bharatiya bands. The first three of these are owned by
the families of ex-British Army bandsmen, Maratha musicians who shifted from military
bands to wedding bands after 1947. The Vijaya Prem, Pratap, and Bharatiya bands are owned

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by families belonging to a local low caste ϕ⊄τ identified as Ben-Basora, a subcaste of larger
Dom caste group, who, as we have seen, are traditionally involved in processional music
production. The Jabalpur band bazaar is, by and large, simply a smaller version of the larger
ones I have described. What is worthy of note, however, is that in addition to the three Basora
bands I have listed here, there is fourth, which adds new perspectives on the matters of career,
location, and competition.
Jabalpur’s Shyam Band was opened in 1972 by a Basora musician named Ishwari
Prasad (1931-1997). He inherited the family business from his recently deceased father and
elder brother. Shyam, being an epithet of Lord Krsna, is a name with devotional or at least
religious connotations and as such is the kind of name one would expect for a low caste band.
My observation is that low caste band owners choose devotional names with much greater
frequency than do caste Hindu µ⊄λικs, let alone Muslim µ⊄λικs. Representative examples
include the Mahalaxmi, Sri Krishna, Nataraj, and Sad Guru bands, all owned by various low
caste families.
Ishwari Prasad’s father and grandfather had been royal bandsmen in the court of
Panna, a small Hindu princely state about 230 kilometers north of Jabalpur. Like the Langas
of Bhuj and many other groups of scheduled caste bandsmen, the abolition of the princely
states shortly after Independence left the family without income. They moved to Jabalpur and
opened a band called Lok Seva [Service of the people], in Lakkara Ganj, with help from
family and other Basora caste musicians. Ishwari Prasad was the second son of the family,
however, and so as to diversify the family’s income, he moved to Mumbai and got work as an
orchestral musician in the film studios. The film music world is largely distinct from the
world of brass bands, on both a professional and social level. A job in a film orchestra carries
none of the ritual or social connotations of processional musicianship. Ishwari Prasad’s
career move was consequently quite a definite step up; it must have required enormous effort
and talent on Ishwari Prasad’s part, as well as considerable luck, to succeed in the relatively
closed world of film studios. However he managed it, his experience provided him with a
particular quality of professionalism and musicianship that is rare in the band world.
Ishwari Prasad employed both qualities to good effect when he returned to Jabalpur in
1972 to inherit and carry on the family business. On his return, he moved the family business
from Lakkara Ganj to Lord Ganj, in the city’s central market district. In addition to being a
more modern and prosperous part of Jabalpur, Lord Ganj is also free from Lakkara Ganj’s
negative associations as the city’s ρανδ⊂ bazaar. Ishwari Prasad’s next step was to use his
contacts in Mumbai to convince the Tips Cassette Company to record and release a series of

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recordings by the band. In modern India, the market for recordings by brass bands is
minuscule at best. One can find a very few cassettes of anonymous brass band groups, these
are usually made by studio or film orchestra musicians performing the standard brass band
repertoire. It is highly unusual for brass bands to make a recording that not only names the
band, but (as these do) the personnel performing as well. Undoubtedly Ishwari’s connections
in the Mumbai studios helped him achieve something that most µ⊄λικs would find
impossible, if not inconceivable. Ironically, the first cassettes attracted attention in Europe,
where street music was something of a cause celebre in the early 1990s. The Shyam Band
was subsequently invited to perform in the Netherlands and in Britain at festivals celebrating
street music. The “foreign returned” phenomenon that is still important for Indian classical
musicians (see Neuman, 1980) was also helpful for the Shyam Band, raising their local status
considerably. The success of the recordings and the European tours allowed Ishwari Prasad
to move his family into a new home, also in Lord Ganj. The band also continued its series of
recordings on an almost yearly basis.
The move to Lord Ganj was the first in a series of steps taken by Ishwari Prasad in
what he described to me as a conscious (and remarkably successful) attempt to distance his
family and his band from the reputation of Lakkara Ganj and to transform his socio-
professional image. Naturally, the physical separation of the Shyam Band and family from
the rest of Jabalpur’s band community, compounded, so to speak, by the group’s exceptional
financial success, led to a social and professional separation as well. As one might imagine,
there is considerable envy and jealousy in Lakkara Ganj over Shyam’s success. “They do
their work and we do ours” is the way Ashok Kumar, Ishwari Prasad’s nephew, describes
relations between the family of the Shyam Band and the Lakkara Ganj bands, including the
Basora caste bands.
The new Shyam shop that Ishwari Prasad acquired in Lord Ganj is a modern two-story
affair. Although he was careful not to explicitly speak negatively of other Jabalpur bands,
Ishwari Prasad was clear that his geographic shift, his recordings, his new home, were all
“improvements” (using his choice of the English term), designed to separate his family and
business from the negative implications of his old neighborhood and caste. He pointed out
that although he relied heavily on local family and caste labor, he also introduced more
modern business and musical practices that he learned in Mumbai. The Shyam shop in
Jabalpur is not overly flashy, but is very well kept and neat. The ground floor contains the
usual µ⊄λικ’s desk and benches, and a slightly larger than normal quantity of carefully

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attended religious iconography. A spacious upper floor is primarily a place to rehearse and to
store musical instruments.
For all bandsmen and band shops, location is more than just place; it is a central
component of their identities and professional lives. Ishwari Prasad’s first step in the
expression of his social and professional aspirations was in terms of urban geography. His
decision to risk alienating the other Basora bands for a chance at redefining his family’s status
within the profession appears to have been the right choice. Location and what is more,
mobility--the ability to move from neighborhood to neighborhood, or from city to city, or yet
again from village to city have figured prominently in many of the stories I have told thus far.
In the particular stories of Patna and Jabalpur, urban immigration figures prominently, as is to
be expected, although at different times and with different purposes. Perceptible patterns of
movement within the professional world, and the manner in which movement is organized
within the trade, demonstrate ongoing negotiations in which bandsmen engage, between the
world of their hereditary and traditional past and the world in which they live.
Variations in professional mobility
Triloki Nath and Rajesh Kumar are residents of Gulbarga, a city I mentioned briefly in
Chapter 2. Both come from low caste families, but taking advantage of some of the positive
discrimination programs that the Indian government supports, have acquired good educations
and work in the town as schoolteachers. They also accept part time employment as
processional musicians from a Camar-caste band µ⊄λικ named Manik Rao. Rao owns both
the Santosh Band and the Maharaja Shoe Store; in fact, to find the band one must see beyond
the shoe store’s sign to the band’s smaller sign above. Of course, shoes and processional
music go together in a particularly Indian and specifically Camar way; Manik Rao has simply
organized both traditional occupations on a capitalist basis. Rao’s sons work in the shoe
store, rather than in the band, which is staffed by hired workers such as Triloki Nath and
Rajesh Kumar.
Triloki Nath and Rajesh Kumar are widely connected and interested in the social,
civic, and musical affairs of Gulbarga. They know many of the other processional musicians
in the city, such as those groups playing ∨αην⊄⊂ and τ⊄∨α, and told me many stories of
musical happenings and concerts that had taken place in the region. They know those whose
claims to classical status add to the city’s prestige and can connect such personages to the
wider realm of Hindustani classical music. Certainly the strict separation that is increasingly
imposed between the band world and the classical world is less strict in this reasonably small
town. I suspect, but cannot say with certainty, that Triloki Nath and Rajesh Kumar and their

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families have long standing connections to the processional music trade. Playing with the
Santosh Band earns them additional income; but their involvement with Manik Rao appears
very much a matter of choice for them, and perhaps even some enjoyment. Enjoyment from
brass band performance, especially part time or casual performance, is more conceivable than
normal given these men’s situations; they have a wide range of personal connections in the
small town where the physical environment is not very crowded and where they have traded
on their hereditary status for the more prestigious life of educated public servants.
In addition to these part-time musicians, Manik Rao also hires full-time καρ⊂γαρs,
such as Muhammad Razak to staff the Santosh Band. Razak does not live in Gulbarga, but in
a village near to the smaller town of Aland, about 45 kilometers northwest of Gulbarga.
Manik Rao engages Razak, and other mobile bandsmen from Aland, on a four to six-month
contract using the Army System described earlier. Razak is one member of a large labor force
of mobile bandsmen, who leave their families for months at a time to travel from their small
villages or towns to larger towns and cities where the pay reflects the high levels of demand
for wedding bands. Like most men in his profession, Razak lives in a hostel room with other
bandsmen; this way, he saves the bulk of his salary, which represents between 60 and 80
percent of his family’s yearly income.
Living with other bandsmen is more than just an obvious economic choice. Bandsmen
keep unusual hours; if one wishes practice in the room, roommates cannot normally complain.
Younger men, who are new to the city are watched over, or can at least get advice from their
elders. The social and support aspect of the mobile community is heightened by the fact that
the mobile bandsmen in any given urban market are usually from a limited number of castes
and regions. Thus, the men with whom Razak rooms are most likely to be other Muslims of
his caste, perhaps men from his village or from nearby villages in the Aland region. Some
will certainly be known to him and may have yet other friends and family in common.
Frequently, groups of related bandsmen travel together as well; in some extreme
circumstances entire bands will travel in this fashion, to work together for a season in big
cities.
There are other benefits to collective mobility and shared residence. As Razak told
me, “If some one goes from here to my village, I can send a message to my house or perhaps I
send them some money. If there is any problem in my family, my friends may be coming
here and they will tell me.” As one might expect, mobile bandsmen like Razak have no
significant interests or acquaintances in the cities they work in beyond the men in their band
or in other bands. But because of the powerful impact of caste and locality in the

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determination of which mobile bandsmen end up where in this mobile labor network, Razak
and his colleagues effectively move about in a floating home-like environment in which many
of the musicians he interacts with on a daily basis are related through a combination of caste,
family and place of origin. He cannot necessarily count on meeting the same friends each
year; but he can be fairly sure that wherever he goes, there will be other Alandi Muslims,
some of whom he will know, if not in the band he is contracted to, then in another band in the
same city.
Musical mobility in the late 20th century
From Mumtaz to Jea to Shyam to Santosh, a host of variables alters the proportions of
mobile bandsmen to local bandsmen. Three of these particular four examples are owned by
low caste µ⊄λικs; but only Shyam is composed almost entirely of local bandsmen related to
the µ⊄λικ by family and caste, who work in the band and at other jobs. Larger, but still
different proportions of the staff in these other bands change seasonally and yearly. Bands
may have engaged relatives as well local and mobile καρ⊂γαρs, on short and long term
verbal contracts. All rely on caste relations for the professional organization that structure the
labor pools; but it is not necessarily a µ⊄λικ’s caste identity that makes this possible.
Mobile bandsmen are hired on verbal (and sometimes written) contracts for a fixed
period of time, or for individual performances. The seasonality of marriage celebrations in
India (and Pakistan to a lesser extent) consequently becomes one of the dominating factors in
bandsmen’s professional ecology. Auspicious times for new beginnings (such as marriages)
are scripturally enshrined in Hinduism. The days of mid-November through mid-December
are considered auspicious in Hindu India, but even more auspicious are the four months,
which follow the winter solstice, from mid-January, beginning with the second fortnight of
Magha (Eck, 1983), through mid-April. As the summer heat increases, the auspiciousness of
the season is generally thought to decline, although in some areas (including Gulbarga), the
months of May and June are also high wedding seasons. This pattern of auspicious-
inauspicious wedding seasons produces consequent periods of peak demand for wedding
bands, followed by extremely fallow periods. It is therefore more profitable for both the band
owners who do the hiring and the bandsmen who do the actual playing for the latter to live in
less costly small towns and villages, where they and their families normally pursue other
occupations.
There are specific regions in India from which most mobile bandsmen/laborers are
hired. These regions, mostly poorer rural districts, are in turn professionally connected to
specific large urban labor markets. This means that bandsmen from the central Deccan who

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begin their mobile careers working in Gulbarga might end up working in Hyderabad or as far
north as Ahmadabad, but would never be found working in Jaipur or Jabalpur. Bandsmen
from western Maharashtra also appear from Mumbai to Ahmadabad, but do not travel to
Hyderabad. The factors that determine where a bandsman seeks work are largely social. He
will travel to places where other members of his caste are already working. Geography and
social organization work together in the structuring of the mobile labor networks of the band
world.
Variables such as the size and location of the city, the caste identity and musical
abilities of the µ⊄λικ, the numbers of available local caste mates, and the full or part time
nature of the µ⊄λικ’s involvement produce a range of different configurations in band
personnel and µ⊄λικ-καρ⊂γαρ relations. The fundamental difference between the Shyam
and Santosh Bands (to carry on with this example) points to an important characteristic of
professional organization in the Indian band world and these cities’ locations within that
organization. Although Jabalpur, as a larger city (population < 1,000,000), might appear to be
a more important destination for mobile bandsmen than Gulbarga, which is after all, quite a
small town, Jabalpur is rather off the main routes traveled by mobile bandsmen. It is not
socially or professionally connected to other larger cities. Gulbarga, on the other hand, is in
the midst of one of the largest musical labor pools on the subcontinent and is a useful way
station on the road to the main band markets of central India, cities such as Hyderabad or
Mumbai. Bandsmen like Muhammad Razak can and do aspire in coming seasons to work in
the bigger and more profitable bands of cities such as Hyderabad, or Mumbai. Indeed, when I
left Gulbarga, Muhammad Razak told that when next I came to India, “you should look for
me in Hyderabad or Mumbai, or maybe Ahmadabad. That’s where I’ll be.”
Although Jabalpur is a large city, and is hardly inaccessible, it is not on the migratory
routes followed by most bandsmen. Small-scale migration by a few Maratha bandsmen is
related to the presence of Maratha bands in the city. Socially and professionally, however, the
band world of Jabalpur is isolated. None of the professional connections that one expects to
the north, south, or west are there. The Basora ϕ⊄τ has been well established in the city at
least since mid-century. Unlike most of their Indian colleagues, the Shyam bandsmen live in
the city where they work, depending upon a combination of salaried employment and work in
the band trade to enable them to afford the costs of living in Jabalpur the year round. Most of
the Shyam bandsmen have day jobs, so to speak, working at the city’s electric power station.
They nevertheless seem to be able to take time off when necessary, to perform at daytime
βαρ⊄τs.

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 Such behaviors are in direct contrast to the mobile labor practices of larger and more
central cities, where migrant bandsmen do no other work while they are working with their
band, although they may work at other trades when they return home to their villages. From
this perspective (and this seems to me to be the most important one), mobile musicianship is a
response to social and economic circumstances. Unlike the family that owns the Shyam
Band, many µ⊄λικs are of different social identity from their bandsmen; or to put it the other
way, these µ⊄λικs have no local castemates or extended family upon whom they can call for
musical labor. These owners must rely on mobile labor. Given the number of economic and
political refugees involved in the growth of the band trade mid-century, this may have been an
important factor in the development of mobile labor practices. Suddhir Sharma, for example,
comes from a high caste family of Kashmiri Hindus, who fled from Lahore to Agra in 1947.
Suddhir claims that his father founded the shop when he arrived in Agra as a political refugee
in 1947. Suddhir asserts that his father was not a musician at all (others contest this, of
course), but simply had the idea to open a band shop as a commercial investment. As I
understand the story, this decision was in part due to the presence of another Sharma in Agra,
Shankar Dutt Sharma. Shankar Dutt was also a refugee in 1947, but had apparently come
from Lahore, where he had learned to play clarinet from one of that city’s most famous
bandmasters, Alamghir Khan (see Chapter 5). Shankar Dutt could thus act as bandmaster in
the new band. Despite the presence of this well trained caste-fellow, Suddhir’s father had few
other castemates in Agra, of any occupation with whom he might staff his new enterprise.
The family had no choice but to hire bandsmen from a range of castes and gradually, like
other bands, shifted to the contemporary pattern of contract labor on a seasonal basis. The
story told by this family of Sharmas in Agra replicates that told by the Thadani family in
Ahmadabad and Delhi.
In modern India, however, even those µ⊄λικs who have local caste mates to recruit
cannot meet the peaks of seasonal demand with a single fixed membership group, nor can
they easily survive the economic vicissitudes of living and maintaining a full-time brass band
in India’s cities. The availability of suitable labor, social relations, the intense seasonal
demand in the large cities that allows mobile bandsmen to work three jobs a day for short
periods of time, variability in transportation infrastructure (especially relative to specific large
pools of trained mobile bandsmen), and rural-urban differences in cost of living make
seasonal migration and variable band membership economical for all concerned.
The mobile nature of musical labor in the band world, where owners with large capital
investments hire workers to meet seasonal demand, is only the most recent formation of

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mobility and professional organization in this world. By recent, I mean that, as far as I can
tell, the rural-to-urban behavioral systems I describe began after Independence and did not
approach their present magnitude until probably the second half of the 1970s at the earliest.
Mobile labor practices are a response by both individuals and groups to urbanization in South
Asia, and to changing urban-rural dynamics. Their growth specifically reflects changes in the
role of the city in relation to the countryside, and in the traveling behaviors of brass bands. In
the first half of the century, cities were sources of modernity and cultural innovation in which
rural visitors witnessed the wonders of colonial civilization and from whence bands
sometimes traveled to the countryside at the request of rural aristocracy. In the first decades
of the 20th century, brass bands appeared in small towns as representatives of modernity,
urban sophistication, and (in at least some cases) musical sophistication as well.
Baver Lal Ved (circa 1918) is a retired merchant in the small Rajasthani city of
Sardarshahr. As the son of an established business family, he traveled frequently to the
nearby urban centers, such as Lahore and Amritsar, looking after his family’s investments and
enterprises in the 1930s and 40s. In these cities, he encountered the Punjabi brass band
tradition at one of the heights of its glory, and heard the Feroze, Babu, and Jehanghir, Bands,
among others. Ved’s family was not wealthy enough to hire a band all the way from Lahore;
but others were. After one local landlord (ζαµ⊂νδ⊄ρ) family hired the Babu Band for their
son’s βαρ⊄τ, a second equally wealthy local family turned to Baver Lal for advice as to
whom they might hire so as to, in effect, “one up” their neighbors. In the end they chose
Baver Lal’s favorites, the Jehanghir Band.
Urban influences filtered into many smaller cities and towns in this musical way,
sometimes in even more aristocratic hands. It was on a visit to metropolitan Mumbai shortly
after the First World War that the Maharaja of Kutch first heard brass bands, and also heard
the dance band whose Goan leader he later hired to become the bandmaster of his own newly
acquired brass band. After Independence, although Indian cities continued to be sources of
fashion and culture, they increasingly, and in addition, became sources of employment for
rural musicians or for men related by caste to those urban or rural musicians already engaged
in the brass band trade. In modern India, thousands of bandsmen like Muhammad Razak
travel well established routes from small towns and villages to big cities each wedding
season. Unlike the more straightforward and largely permanent urban migration to which
thousands of Indians resort each month in the search for employment (see Dandekar, 1986),
mobile labor in the band world continues to be seasonal and based on traditional social
organization. These behavioral systems are dependent on the kind of complex, negotiable

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blend of traditional social structure, professional organization, and modern capitalist
investment that characterizes the tradition as a whole and, one might say, South Asia in
general. They do indeed illustrate David Rudner’s “objectification of labor” (1994: 15); but
they do so along traditional lines.
Caste level migration and historical influences
In addition to modern seasonal mobility, we have already encountered the importance
of the emigration by individuals, caste groups, families, and bands, in response to a wide
range of motivating factors, across the history of the trade. The stories are specific to those
individuals, groups, and families, in part because of the changing identities, locations, and
times, and in part because the sketchy nature of the oral tradition data imposes a great deal of
qualification upon any generalization that one might reasonably make. Collectively, however,
the stories of movement do give us an image of the development of the tradition; they do
provide a sense, incomplete though it might be, of cultural process, even if that process is
neither progressive nor sequential.
Movement has been important in the transmission of the brass band trade in a number
of different ways. It has resulted in the involvement of key individuals in a new trade; it has
brought traditional processional music castes into contact with colonial instruments and
musical models, and it has provided rural musicians with urban-based models. In western
Madhya Pradesh, the city of Mhow has been an important military training center since the
mid-19th century, and a major British garrison since the mid-18th century. Its military
importance has continued into the era of Independence. It is, in consequence, a place of much
military band activity. This activity provided the model, the inspiration and probably the
instruments for the creation of brass bands by members of a musician caste group who were
migrating into western Madhya Pradesh during the second half of the 19th century.
Members of the Sheikh-Masoodi βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ work as mobile bandsmen in bands from
Ahmadabad to Mumbai. Oral histories agree that some Sheikh-Masoodi families gradually
emigrated from northern Uttar Pradesh and northeastern Rajasthan over the latter half of the
19th century, into a region roughly bounded by the town of Nimach in the north and Mhow in
the south. Muhammad Hussain (b. 1918) is an elderly bandmaster who lives at the center of
this distribution, in the former Nawabi state of Jaora. Hussain relates that his ancestors lived
in or near Alwar, a princely state in eastern Rajasthan State, where they were small tenant
farmers as well as processional musicians. Other Sheikh-Masoodi families originated even
further north, in villages to the north and west of Delhi. When Hussain’s grandfather was a
young man (this would have been roughly 1870, according to his conjecture, but Muhammad

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Hussain’s knowledge of these events is extremely sketchy) the Nawab of Jaora offered free
land to Muslim farmers who would settle in his state.
Muhammad Hussain’s grandfather’s family took advantage of the offer. The
grandfather apparently played ∨αην⊄⊂, but Hussain’s father, born in Jaora sometime around
1895, made the transition from ∨αην⊄⊂ to Eb soprano clarinet with the help of other Sheikh-
Masoodis who had arrived earlier and who had taken advantage of the profusion of European
musical instruments and training, especially in Mhow. Hussain’s father worked for many
years in the Kalle Khan Band, itself a reincarnation of the Rasthriya Jawahar Band opened by
Kalle Khan’s elder brother around 1900. In the late 1930s, Hussain’s father returned to Jaora
and opened his own band shop, the Bismillah Band. Later still, Hussain himself turned to the
brass band trade. “I was singing vocal programs, γηαζαλs, √ηυµρ⊂s and those things,
which I learned from Shakur Ali Khansahab. But my voice became bad after some time
[circa 1948] so I could not sing any more. My father said, ‘You must start a band.’ So I did.
I went to Baroda and opened my shop which I called the Namcheen Band.” Hussain operated
the Namcheen Band until his retirement in 1972. The important point in this tale of
communally motivated emigration is that the gradual, large scale migration of the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂
placed families of traditional musicians in an environment where British military band models
and instruments were plentiful, and where traditional behavioral systems of professional
organization and information sharing led to a βιρ⊄δαρ⊂-wide engagement in brass band
performance.
The other factor in the growth of Sheikh-Masoodi musicianship was the presence of a
number of musically active royal courts. Muhammad Hussain’s maternal uncle [µ⊄µα] chose
royal patronage under the Jaora Nawab over private enterprise, playing trumpet (Hussain
says, but cornet is more likely) in the Nawab’s brass band. Other results of royal music
patronage were to be seen in nearby Mhow. Kalle Khan’s son, Abdulla, inherited the Kalle
Khan Band sometime in the 1950s. Like other bandsmen who had access to royal courts
where Hindustani classical music received strong support, Abdulla took advantage of his
proximity to musicians of the royal court of Indore, barely 30 kilometers from Mhow, to
improve his classical musicianship by becoming the disciple of a local court musician. In the
Kalle Khan Band shop there is a picture on the wall, as there are often pictures of founders or
ancestors in band shops, showing Abdulla, who also played Eb clarinet, posing with the man
his grandson identifies as Abdulla’s classical music guru. The guru is Ustad Amir Khan, one
of the greatest vocalists of mid-century Hindustani classical music. In Jaora, as he pointed out
above, Muhammad Hussain likewise took advantage of the musical atmosphere of that court,

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learning light classical √ηυµρ⊂ and γηαζαλ vocal music from Shakur Ali, whom he
describes as a court musician of the 1930s, and from Rajab Ali, a vocalist at the nearby court
of Dewas. Hussain retired from the band trade in 1972; he now teaches young men to play
harmonium and sing. He also teaches young bandsmen instrumental techniques. His name is
widely known among the bandsmen of Mumbai, Surat, Bharuch, and Ahmadabad. His son-
in-law, Muhammad Anis (circa 1960), is an active and respected bandmaster, working for
leading bands in Mumbai, Ahmadabad and Surat.
Emigrations across the length and breadth of British India had important outcomes for
band culture in a wide range of locations. The period 1915-1940 saw at least two waves of
Pathan and other Muslims musicians (as well as some Sikh bandmasters) migrating from the
western Punjab and the Northwest Frontier provinces. As a result of this diaspora, musicians
ended up in Patna and Kolkata, as we have seen, and in Mumbai, and Hyderabad as well. In a
region beyond the range of this book, Telugu-speaking scheduled caste musicians from
southern Andra Pradesh immigrated to the southern metropolis of Chennai, displacing some
of the Tamil-speaking bandsmen who had established themselves in that city. In Chennai, a
number of individual immigrant families from the north (primarily Mumbai) are responsible
for the few northern style wedding bands that can be found so far from their cultural
homelands.
Careers
Jabalpur’s Shyam Band is, as I have noted, unusual for its contemporary and quite
successful recording activity. In the early 20th century, however, quite a number of brass
bands throughout the country made recordings at the encouragement of HMV and other
companies; brass bands were, after all, a category of music making that European owned
record companies understood. I was extremely fortunate that my search for early brass band
recordings led me to record collector, historian, and enthusiast V.A.K. Ranga Rao of Chennai,
who generously shared both his knowledge and his collection on more than one occasion. On
my first visit to Ranga Rao’s home he played for me a recording by the Razak Band, Surat.
As Kinnear’s (1994) research shows, the Razak Band was one of a number of well-known
private brass bands that were recording in the early 20th century. Many of the Razak
recordings featured ϕαλ ταραγ and what sounds like a European oboe, accompanied by the
band, in performances of light classical and popular songs.
On the road to history with the Razak Band
Their recordings were my first encounter with the Razak Band. Motivated by these
recordings, I later went to Surat and learned that the Razak Band is still an active shop in that

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city, owned by Abdul Karim Razak (b. 1935), the son of the band’s founder Abdul Rahim
Razak (1878-1963). The Razak family is one of a handful of pre-20th century families still
engaged in the band trade. They resemble most other pre-20th century Muslim band families
in that they have no hereditary connections to processional music. This particular family is
even more distinctive in that it does not even have a hereditary connection to India. Abdul
Karim’s grandfather was an immigrant Arab from somewhere in the Persian Gulf; Karim is
not sure of precisely where his grandfather came from. Karim’s father, Abdul Rahim, began
his life as an artisan, weaving ζαρ⊂, the gold thread that is embroidered into Indian σ⊄∈⊂s
and other textiles.
One thing Abdul Karim does know is that there was already a band in Surat when his
father was growing up, called the Mia Band (active circa 1875 - 1920?). As in so many
instances, oral and historical evidence cannot provide a suitably solid chain of influential
figures. Rahim began his musical career in the Mia Band, where he acquired musical skills
and learned about the processional music (brass band) business. Rahim added to his musical
training whenever troupes of Marathi music-theater (σαγ⊂τ ν⊄√ακ) came to Surat.
Σαγ⊂τ ν⊄√ακ troupes toured widely throughout western India from the late 19th century,
with their actors, singers, and instrumentalists. Many of the musicians in σαγ⊂τ ν⊄√ακ
troupes were highly trained professionals with considerable classical knowledge. Some of
them played important liminal roles as transmitters of that classical musical knowledge to
bandsmen, especially in the Deccan. Following a pattern that is at the core of growth in the
brass band trade, Abdul Rahim left the Mia Band and in the latter 1890s, opened his own
band shop, which he named after himself, employing other local Muslim and Hindu
musicians to fill the band’s ranks. After Abdul Karim inherited his father’s shop, changes in
the levels of demand that went with rising urban populations, and the sharp seasonality of that
demand led, as in other cities, to an increasing dependence on mobile laborers. Abdul Karim
and his sons continue to run the business and continue to perform with the band, but the rank
and file are hired on contract primarily from the Nasik-Jalgaon regions of Maharashtra, which
is, like Aland further south, an important source area for mobile bandsmen. Karim’s sons also
perform in a pop music orchestra.
Given the relatively early date of this band, and the earlier date of their predecessors
(the Mia Band is not in existence, nor have I been able to locate the family) it is tempting to
assert connections between this band activity and Surat’s prominence as the site of the earliest
British East India Company factory in India. The lack of pre-19th century oral or
documentary evidence (for anywhere in India) forces me to resist that temptation. Although

107
they are far from providing continuity or connections with the founding of the British factory
in 1611, the Razak family business does have other documentation to offer which provides an
extremely valuable view of urban brass band activity in the first three decades of the 20th
century.
Among the prestigious bands of India’s west coast cities, the practice of publicity in
the 1930s included investment in what must have been fairly expensive pamphlets or
brochures which displayed the various ensembles a band could offer, and often illustrating a
customer’s choice of uniforms. I have located only two of these documents, both from mid-
status incomer Muslim band families (the Razak and Noor Mohamed bands). It is hard to
believe there were not others from other bands; it is easier to believe that these have not
survived. Even these two documents, however, provide a remarkable insight into the role of
brass bands in the first four decades of the 20th century. What makes Razak’s brochure
especially interesting is that it lists the various prestigious performances the band gave
between 1900 and 1933 (Figure 9). This may be the only extant document of its kind.
There are two aspects of this list that are especially insightful: the range of the band’s
travels and the range of types of events for which they were hired. Not surprisingly, the band
played for weddings, accessions to the throne, sacred thread ceremonies, and festival
processions for Hindu and Muslim aristocrats and oligarchs. In the mid-1920s the group
participated in a number of celebrations held by the Maharaja of Alwar, leading to the
conclusion that Alwar did not maintain its own royal band. Another of the Razak Band’s
royal performances was the accession to the throne and marriage of the Nawab of Janjira in
1933. Plate 6 gives us an idea of the many layers of musical sound that such a royal
procession includes. Three ⋅ηολ players lead the way, followed by what appears to be a
∨αην⊄⊂ player who in turn is followed by another ⋅ηολ (largely hidden behind the ∨αην⊄⊂
player and two τ⊄∨α players (behind and to the left of the ∨αην⊄⊂ player). Forming two
rough columns on both sides of the palace gates are the helicon-shaped contrabasses and other
instruments of the A. Razak Band. In addition to the basses, pieces of euphoniums are just
visible underneath the gates. One assumes that in between these prestigious events, the band
was playing more pedestrian βαρ⊄τs.

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Figure 9. Prestigious Performances by the A. Razak Band, Surat (1900-1933)

109
Figure 9 (continued)

Another aspect of the document shown in Figure 9 is the number of royalty who hired
the group: Shirohi, Shri Nathji, Nadiad, Dhragandra, Vansda, Kashmir, Rajkot, Sachin,
Udaipur, Ider, Indore, Radhanpur, Himmatnagar, Lunawada, Palanpur, Alwar, and Janjira are
among the princely states who apparently found it easier to rent their royal musicians than to
pay them regular salaries. (Remember that according to Muhammad Hussain, the Nawab of
Jaora, just up the road from Indore, did have his own brass band, and that there were private

110
bands next door in Mhow at this time.) Although there is no explanation for the parenthetical
“1” and “2” that appear on in this listing, the creators of this document apparently felt it
worthwhile to first list the royalty for whom they had performed along with the larger civic
events. The second, longer list, includes the σε√ηs (in the term’s original meaning, rich man)
and other prominent oligarchs of Indian society, important and rich businessmen, but not as
prestigious as the ναω⊄βs and maharajas of the first listing.
The band also had brushes with the film culture that was growing in Mumbai during
the early 20th century. The Excelsior Film Company hired the band, apparently for the
opening of a film in 1927. In 1931 they played for what appears to have been the opening of
Mumbai’s famous Olympia Cinema. Other listings only make one wish for more
information. Why, for instance, did the Islam Gymkhana require relief in 1916? What were
the outcomes of the 5th Gujerati Sahitya Parishad [a literary society for the Gujarati
language]? One of Razak’s early performances includes a meeting of what was to become the
Congress Party of India (Surat, 1907). A performance in Mumbai in 1918 is simply listed as
“Mrs. Besant,” meaning the famous nationalist theosophist and benefactress, Annie Besant,
though one has no idea how she was connected to whatever the event was. For some reason,
1918 (and only 1918) also includes two events, labelled "Gold Wrist Watch". Such listings
only beg for more research into Indian popular culture of the colonial period. What these
performances and the Razak recordings make very clear, however, is that the brass band was
very much a part of that culture.
Naturally, many of the events for which the band played were in Surat. But the list
also includes an astonishingly wide range of other places, some at distances that appear
remarkable. Figure 10 shows that during this period the band was as likely to make a journey
of between 500 and 1000 kilometers as it was to make a much shorter trip of between 0 and
99 kilometers, and that the majority of the band’s journeys were to destinations greater than
250 kilometers.

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Figure 10. Journeys of the Razak Band outside Surat, 1904-1933
Distance from Surat between: Mean Distance Number of Journeys
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0-99 kilometers 28 kilometers 11
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
100-249 kilometers 207 kilometers 34
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
250-499 kilometers 365 kilometers 36
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
500-999 kilometers 652 kilometers 12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1000-1999 kilometers 1335 kilometers 8
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unmeasured 9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Journeys out of Surat: 110
The information in this document offers a range of perspectives on the band world in
the first three decades of the 20th century. Of the 110 trips that took the Razak Band out of
Surat in the roughly 30 years that are documented, Mumbai (Bombay, 220 kilometers, 15
trips), followed by Ahmadabad and Patan (275 and 375 kilometers respectively, 6 trips each)
were the most frequent destinations. Even for the relatively short and certainly
straightforward journeys to Mumbai, the cost of transportation and the time involved in travel
must have been considerable. The band’s 1912 and 1913 trips to Sholapur, roughly 600
kilometers distant from Surat or the 1200 and 1300 kilometers they traveled to Patiala and
Bangalore must have represented at least two or three days of travel way in the early 20th
century. To travel the almost 2000 kilometers that separate Surat from Aliabad and Kashmir
(both of which are mountainous parts of northern India) represents a truly astonishing
logistics effort, even for a hypothetical party of 15 bandsmen.
Abdul Karim, who offered me his band’s brochure, had little light to shed on the
apparently prodigious amount of traveling his father’s band did. He interpreted it as evidence
of the group’s fame and popularity, which of course it must be; but the distances and the costs
these trips must have entailed for the band’s customers seem even more extreme when we
consider that there were local and often prestigious groups to be hired in some of their
destinations. Throughout this period Noor Mohamed was working in Mumbai, with Bombay

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Native (Punjab) appearing around 1920 as well; Ahmadabad’s Mustafa Band was one of at
least two bands functioning in that city by the turn of the century. In still more distant
Sholapur, the Halade Band was active from the first decade of the 20th century. Lahore and
Amritsar, both considerably closer to Kashmir or Aliabad than is Surat, could between them
offer at least six different bands by the beginning of the 20th century.
The destinations of the Razak Band in their travels, suggest that they were active
participants in the colonization of rural culture by urban culture; but it is by no means the case
that urban bands were traveling exclusively to smaller towns and villages, as is shown by the
frequency of Mumbai and Ahmadabad as destinations. Similarly, oral history tells us that
Lahore’s Sohni Band performed in Karachi and, by royal invitation, in the central Deccan
capital of Hyderabad. On the other hand, the Razak Band travelled frequently to towns,
villages, and princely courts much smaller than Surat. The vast majority of the 66 places
listed on Razak’s publicity (57), are considerably smaller than Surat. While many of these
small destinations were also princely states, they show movement away from the urban
colonial centers, towards more isolated, (might one say traditional?) locations. Razak’s
appearances in these places represent acts in the construction of an explicitly syncretic
colonial Indian culture. But the choice to hire an urban band is also more purely about
fashionability, about being on the cutting edge of popular culture. The Janjira Nawab’s
procession shows that there were (and are, for that matter) pre-colonial ensembles to be had in
the countryside, although this hardly needs to be stated. ⊃αην⊄⊂ parties and other
processional music ensembles continue to be an important part of the picture in many urban as
well as rural processions.
From a historical perspective, the Razak Band’s travels suggest changing meanings
and relations in Indian popular culture. The choice to hire a band for a wedding, birth, or
other celebration, which many people were obviously making, had a different meaning in the
early 20th century than that choice has in the early 21st century. That decision also has
different implications in the city and the countryside. Baver Lal Ved, whose oral account of
the ways in which Punjabi urban bands were used as symbols of prestige by rural Rajasthani
families, also reflects upon this urban-rural tension in the early 1940s. He makes it clear that
rural residents did have choices; it was not a matter of “city band or nothing.” As Ved tells it,
“the brothers Hira Chand and Sri Chand called the Babu Band from Lahore for a βαρ⊄τ. But
they also called the Naulghat Band from Churu [the administrative center of the district], so
both these bands were there. People knew the Naulghat Band. This band played and
everyone liked the performance very much. They said, [of the Babu Band] ‘What can these

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men play now?’ So then the Babu Band played. They had Master Sohni Khan [clarinet
virtuoso, later µ⊄λικ of the Sohni Band, Lahore]. He played αλ⊄π [unmetered, ρ⊄γα-based
improvisation] for fifteen minutes, for twenty minutes. No one had heard this before in our
town. I had heard it because I went to these places for my family’s business. Then he played
τ⊄νs [improvisations in meter] and all these things. After that, everyone said that the Babu
Band had played the best. After that, all the wealthy houses, they called bands from Lahore
or Amritsar for their βαρ⊄τs.” After the appearance of the these urban (and classically
trained) musicians, claims to elite status in the Sardarshahr region were, of necessity
supported in processional contexts, by appearances of bands hired from Lahore or Amritsar.
Some of these Punjabi bands opened year-round booking offices in Sardarshahr so that
customers would be able book performances for the wedding season. These events, together
with the Razak Band’s travels, illustrate the importance of urban bands in the first half of the
20th century, and not just in city.
The cultural colonization of rural Rajasthan by Muslim-owned urban bands from
Lahore/Amritsar lasted only for the four or five years from the Babu Band’s first appearance
in Sardarshahr to the Partition of India. At that point, the Muslim bands of Amritsar fled to
Lahore, which was politically relocated within the newly created Pakistan. After August
1947, Pakistani bands were completely cut off from access and developments in India. Like
other aspects of the two countries’ cultures, the brass band worlds of Pakistan and India
proceeded along distinct paths from their single starting point. In the few years that they were
in Rajasthan, however, the Punjabi bands, like the Razak Band in their travels, acted as
transmitters of brass band culture throughout the rural districts. Local Rajasthani bandsmen,
members of low status Muslim ζ⊄τs (including members of the Rababri ζ⊄τ of traditional
musicians) whom the Punjabi bands often hired to fill out their ranks in the region, opened
their own shops after Partition and, as their own oral histories relate, became in their turn,
major influences on the band trade further south, throughout central Rajasthan.
The story of Sardarshahr shows that by the mid-1940s, there were also local bands in
more places than I have evidence for, even if they were not as large and impressive as Razak
or Babu. Because there were always pre-colonial alternatives and, increasingly as the British
period wore on, local alternative brass bands as well, hiring an urban band for a rural
procession was ever more a particular kind of self-definition, and a matter of choice. One
could argue that Razak’s aristocratic engagements were merely cases of “keeping up with the
Jones,” if, as appears to be the case for some maharajas, those Jones were the larger kingdom
next door where the Maharaja had his own band. But, for the non-aristocratic families on

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Razak’s list, or for the wealthy business families of Baver Lal Ved’s story, the choice to hire
an urban band indicates attempts to distinguish one’s self and one’s family from one’s fellows
by means of an alliance with the urban, the new, the fashionable. Among the rural aristocracy
of early 20th century India, one hired a band because everyone else was doing it; among the
wealthy non-aristocratic landowners and business oligarchy, one hired bands because no one
else (or at least no one at or below one’s own social level or in one’s own region) was doing
it. This at first meant hiring an urban band because there was no local alternative. But, as
local rural groups began imitating the outsiders, hiring an urban band continued to be a means
of displaying superior status, not necessarily because of the ensemble per se, but because it
took much greater effort and much more money to hire an urban group. Of course, as brass
bands trickled down the socio-economic ladder, hiring a band did become a matter of keeping
up with the Jones of the merchant class, just as it had been a matter of keeping up with the
aristocratic Jones ten or twenty years earlier. In the context of urban-rural relations then,
bands are invested with a combination of (a) a kind of traditionalism and elitism, with
lingering hints of the ideal Hindu (and later Muslim) ruler as one who provides display, as
represented by rural aristocratic patronage, and (b) an urban fashionability that made them
even more attractive to other segments of the rural population that could afford them.
The colonial metropolises of India are the dominant factors in the early growth of the
brass band profession. What is more, for roughly the past 60 years they have also been at the
heart of the professional organization and behaviors of bandsmen. The stories most active
band families tell are of movement from the countryside to the city, or from peripheral cities
to more central ones. According to David Smith “urbanization in the contemporary Third
World is characterized by uneven growth and inequality” (1996: 5). He includes among
these inequalities “the imbalance between life chances in the urban and rural sectors” (ibid.).
Although “third world” is almost certainly a label most Indians would reject, it is certainly
true that imbalanced urban and rural life chances drive the mobile bandsmen of the present to
spend four to six months a year away from their rural families in order to earn better wages
than are possible in the villages. In historical terms, that imbalance also provided the stimulus
for bands’ initial development in the major urban centers. In the period represented by the
Razak Band’s brochure (and for the subsequent years leading to Independence), large cities,
including Surat, acted as “central places” as geographers define them. King and Golledge
note that central places are identified by the functions they serve. A central place function is
any “activity carried on in the urban place that derives at least part of its support from people
living in the rural area around the place” (King and Golledge, 1978: 119). In the first half of

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the 20th century, cities acted in precisely these terms. Urban bands were routinely hired by
rural customers whose local choices were either severely limited or non-existent. But, it was
more than the ensemble itself that attracted rural customers; it was the gloss of urban
fashionability. The differences in the size and pomp of the band a family hires for a wedding
certainly speak to the “economic disparity between the masses and a small wealthy elite”
found in modern cities as Smith (1996: 5) proposes. The differences between rich and poor
that some scholars attribute to urban environments, however, are present in Indian villages as
well, and are also expressed in terms of processional ensembles.
City bands are still sometimes hired to play in smaller towns and villages. But the
central place function, which cities of the early 20th century fulfilled, has largely ceased to be
an important feature of the band world. Local families in search of special distinction may
still hire an urban band; but the extent to which brass bands symbolize urban sophistication
and fashion is significantly decreased at the end of the 20th century. Although still de riguer
for most wedding processions, bands are at this point somewhat traditional and even old
fashioned. Fashion and symbolism, however, are not the only things that have changed.
From bandsmen’s perspectives, the urban-rural mobility of entire bands in the first
half of the century was an economic behavior. They spent hours and days on trains and
busses traveling to small towns because there was demand to be exploited, and because it was
possible to exploit that demand profitably. The Razak Band rarely travels outside of Surat
today. There is little need, as they generally earn enough in Surat to make such trips
unnecessary. But, there is also little demand. Unless one were organizing a very large
procession with multiple famous bands, no one in Mumbai or Bangalore would considering
paying the enormous expenses for the group’s travel when they could hire local bands.
Individual bandsmen still travel long hours; but the urban-rural direction of their travel has
largely and increasingly been reversed. The dominant behavior in the contemporary band
world is the rural-urban migration of contract bandsmen to meet the increasing demand in the
cities.
Not only are there bands throughout India’s towns and even villages, the very practice
of rural-urban migration by bandsmen has in at least one sense rendered meaningless the
practice of hiring city bands. Not only would the cost be excessive, there would be little
guarantee of a qualitatively better performance: the musical or aesthetic assessment of bands
(such as in the events in Sardarshahr in the 1940s when musical expertise allowed the urban
bands to triumph over local bandsmen) is largely a thing of a very limited and specific past.
Of at least equal importance, a village family from Maharashtra who hired the Razak Band in

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1999 might well be hiring musicians who had been working in Mumbai bands the year before,
or in Aland the year before that. They might even be hiring a band composed of men whose
homes were in the very next village or town. The rural-urban mobility of bandsmen in
contemporary India means that they, and consequently the bands they play in, are
interchangeable.
Bandmasters from Rampur - moving away from urbanization
Changes in the professional behaviors of brass bandsmen reflect one aspect of a
changing urban-rural dynamic. Contemporary competition in the band world means that
µ⊄λικs must focus their professional attention on their dominance of urban markets where
demand drives up fees even as it drives up wages for contract καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen. For
µ⊄λικs and their workers, big cities are the source of income, more than they are the source
of fashion; individual bandsmen consider the big cities their ultimate goals. Naturally, some
stories of the band world contest a simple picture of uniform change. Perhaps the most
important story in this regard is that of the economic or patronage relationship between the
bandsmen of Rampur (Uttar Pradesh State) and the wealthy landlords of Muzaffarpur District,
Bihar. Rampur is a mid-sized city (population < 250,000) that was, until 1948, the capital of
the princely state of the same name. It can readily be described as urban; but the Nawab of
Rampur’s former capital is large only in relation to the truly rural districts of northern Bihar.
An urban-rural relationship that is primarily historical, in which movement is from the city to
the countryside, is expressed in the career of Muhammad Gucchan (circa 1910 - 1986), his
son Muhammad Akram, (1965) and his son-in-law, Muhammad Bacchan (circa 1955).
Muhammad Gucchan belongs the mid-status Sheikh-Siddiqi βιρ⊄δαρ⊂. Many Sheikh-
Siddiqis in this region have connections to metal work; but as one would expect, this is seems
to be a regional specialty, rather than a caste-wide phenomenon.
Like most stories of historical or mythical beginnings in specific places, the oral
tradition of brass bands in Rampur does not reach back to the beginning. Some of Gucchan’s
near contemporaries in Rampur, also of his βιρ⊄δαρ⊂, acquired training from British Army
bands; but Gucchan acquired his training from two very different sources. His initial training
came from a man named Junda, called Junda Ustad by the few that still remember him. Junda
was Muslim bandmaster, a cornet player, in Rampur, who appears to have been active as the
leader of a private band during the period 1925 to 1940. Gucchan played in Junda’s band and
acquired his ideas and knowledge of the processional music trade from him. Like Master
Abdulla, of Mhow, whose career I discussed earlier in this chapter, Gucchan is one of the
bandmasters of the early 20th century who benefited from the patronage of classical music

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culture that was a feature of many royal states. The Nawab of Rampur was an important
patron of classical musicianship in this period. Gucchan had instruction in classical music
from Ustad Mustaq Hussain Khan, the famous singer of the κηαψ⊄λ classical form and a
court singer for the Nawab.
Despite his classical training or perhaps because of that training, Gucchan opened his
own band in 1943, which he called the Macchan Band. Plate 7 shows Gucchan (at far right,
playing the accordion) with three of his bandsmen (names unknown) posing as a pop
orchestra version (the bass drum proclaims “Macchan Band”). Gucchan, however, chose to
locate his band, neither in Rampur nor in Delhi, but in a small town called Muzaffarpur,
roughly 900 kilometers east, in northern Bihar. Gucchan’s family state that demand in
Rampur was not (and for that matter, still is not) very strong. Delhi, on the other hand, which
is the obvious major urban center of the region, is said to have already had a large and
competitive band population. In response to these considerations, and the established model
of urban to rural mobility in the band world of the time, Gucchan decided to take advantage of
the large number of wealthy rural landowners in the Muzaffarpur District, an agricultural area
in which large landholdings are owned and operated by hereditary landowning classes among
whom there was much demand for brass bands as symbols of prestige. There was also no
competition; in addition to higher demand, and hence higher fees, than Gucchan could find in
Rampur, Muzaffarpur was also without brass bands. The family’s explanations of Gucchan’s
move include the assertion that the entire Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh regions had no
brass bands in the mid-1940s and that the Gucchan was responsible for introducing the new
ensemble, which gradually took over the market previously dominated by bagpipe bands.
We have seen from other stories in this and previous chapters that Gucchan’s urban-
rural behavior was not unusual for pre-Partition India. Other bands from urban centers were
pursuing the central place function of their urban homes by touring, or by moving entire
ensembles to especially rewarding rural areas for the wedding season. What is unusual,
however, is that Gucchan’s son Akram, who naturally lives in the family home in Rampur,
continues to operate his father’s band in Muzaffarpur well after the central place function of
the urban centers has ceased to operate in this regard, and after behaviors in band mobility
have essentially reversed themselves in the direction of high capitalization and expansion of
the urban trade through the increased use of mobile καρ⊂γαρs who live in rural villages, but
who are contracted to meet the huge seasonal demand in the cities. Akram and other Rampuri
bandsmen travel the long distance to Muzaffarpur two or three times each year in response to
the continued rural demand. The strength of the rural market is sufficiently profitable that

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Gucchan’s son-in-law and clarinet disciple, Muhammad Bacchan (b. circa 1955), after serving
the usual apprenticeship in the Macchan and other bands as a mobile bandmaster, opened his
own band in Muzaffarpur (the Abrar Band) in 1999. Bacchan’s decision, however, may not
have been as economically astute as that of his teacher; his Abrar Band is struggling to
survive.
Space (whether city, neighborhood, or region) and movement (both permanent and
seasonal, by groups and by individuals, towards and away from Indian cities) are the elements
that connect these and other stories of the processional music trade in South Asia. In
traditional and non-traditional formations, space and movement are the physical variables
manipulated by individuals and groups to establish and maintain their economic viability in
the band trade and to compete with others for dominance in the local markets of that trade.
But space and movement are also theoretical elements that interact with urban-rural dynamics,
family identities, histories, and other cultural and political features (most especially the
colonial experience, accompanying urbanization, Partition, etc.,). The importance of these
elements is that they show us, in concrete ways, the mechanics of the process of musical
change as it takes place in South Asia, whether we consider the road trips of the Razak or
Macchan bands, the migrations of mobile bandsmen along socially constructed networks, or
the relocation of shops from neighborhood to neighborhood. It is movement after all, which
has enabled the spread of brass band ensembles and specialist knowledge across India. In the
travels of individuals and families searching for better locations for their store fronts, or new
towns in which to ply their trade, we see the active dispersal of new cultural symbols in the
hands of men trying to make a living on the margins of their society and their music culture.
Many of these stories possess their own sequential logic; some coalesce into regional
patterns (it is tempting to construct a larger narrative from the connections among Rampur,
Patna, and Kolkata, for example). Others readily take on narrative characteristics that are
explicable in terms of inter-caste competition or personal ambition. These may not offer
much hope for a recounting of the “whole story;” but they do suggest that a process was
underway in India during the late 19th and 20th centuries that was both cooperative and
competitive. Processional musicians were trading on, or taking advantage of, their own and
others’ knowledge of the band trade and practical instrumental skills on European
instruments; they were establishing ensembles of those instruments as the musical focus of
wedding processions on the subcontinent. The process of dispersal and musical change
depended upon movement as I have shown here; but the nature of this process was powerfully
informed by the symbolic and syncretic transformation of musical instruments and ensembles.

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The roots of the Indian brass band tradition remain in the colonial past and in a period in
which considerable cultural capital was invested in the production and consumption of a
syncretic colonial-Indian world view; but performance practice, repertoire, and performance
behaviors ultimately have more to do with South Asia than with England. In India’s embrace
of these musical features of western popular culture, the artifacts and symbols of British
colonial power were transformed into something that was useable by Indian culture, and that
had meaning in Indian contexts.

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 Part 2. Sounds, Sights, Practice, and Performance

Chapter 4. Ensembles and Fashion - The Flow and Change of Meaning

This fourth chapter sits somewhat uneasily between the first part of this book which
offers an anthropology of musicians and the second part which attempts a musical
anthropology of processional performance. The matter of musical instruments and ensembles
as musical symbols naturally focuses on cultural meaning, but can hardly ignore matters of
performance and performance practice. Nevertheless, it is only in the concluding pages of
this chapter that music performance issues finally appear at the forefront of the discussion. I
must say at this point that this seems to be as it should, given the object of study: musical
concerns seem to be secondary in the trade as well. The problematized identities and roles of
brass band musicians, the difficult nature of the performance context, the commercialization
and commodification of those performances, and the interchangeable nature of both
bandsmen and (as an eventual outcome) bands themselves all help explain this.
Brass bands are only the most recent manifestation of the incorporation of European
musical instruments, individually and as ensembles, into Indian processional rituals. The
story of that incorporation is one of changing fashions that begins before the existence of
brass bands. Change, instrumental, musical, and cultural, which has taken second place in
earlier chapters in favor of issues of marginality, now begins to appear more clearly as my
focus. Unfortunately, there appear to be at least three distinct histories that must be
considered if we are to thoroughly contextualize the modern Indian brass band tradition.
These are: the history of British military music on the subcontinent, the history of pre-colonial
processional ensembles through the colonial period, and the broader music culture in colonial
India that included other syncretic musical activities. Each of these areas is a complete book
in itself, of course, ones for which much basic research remains to be undertaken. In this
chapter, some of the stories will complement material presented in Chapter 1 (on Indian
processional musicians and ensembles); but I will focus on the British, military, and royal
aspects of the ensembles as possessions and as symbols. It is as symbols of power (first
British, but later Indian as well) that brass bands and their ancestors first appear on the stage.
It is the arrival of European culture, and especially the permanent establishment of British
culture, that introduces this new direction for musical change on the subcontinent.
Throughout this history of musical things, it will be necessary to remember that the
instrumental changes, so obvious in these stories of Indian brass bands, are only the most
superficial layer of change. They are important for their symbolism, no doubt, but to me, not

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as important as the human actors and processes that made use of them. Rather, processional
musicians, men on the margins of their culture, are at the heart of this story of musical and
cultural change. In the endless search for patronage and a daily wage, they have responded to
their own understandings of market demand, trying to “give the customers what they want,”
while offering any innovation or new development that might give them an edge over their
competitors.
We can trace patterns in the flow of European musical instruments through Indian
processional culture and Indian musicians’ integration of those instruments with traditional,
pre-colonial instruments; and, we can follow strands of meaning that are attached to those
instruments as they gradually change over time. But as with anything else that touches on the
history of this phenomenon, the lines of influence and development are often twisted and
sometimes rather faint. One of the most important meanings of which wind bands were
possessed, naturally, was their association with the British. Leppert, (1987) has described
some of the symbolism attached to British representations of their musical instruments in
India; modern Indians continue to identify brass bands as British ensembles. In some
instances (the Tanjore Band, located at that South Indian court, seems to be a good example,
see Seetha, 1981) British instruments were valued for their own sakes. The growing
economic and political power of their owners during the 18th and 19th centuries, however,
undoubtedly added to the prestige value of British instruments. I might select 1611, the date
of the founding of the first permanent East India Company factory (in Surat) as a suitable
(though arbitrary) date for the beginnings of permanent British power in India. Given that
few records of musical activity appear until the late 18th century, however, such dates hardly
matter. From the few 17th century documents that exist, it is clear that many British soldiers,
merchants, and politicians clearly understood that processional instruments were a feature of
British music culture that translated quite well into the prestige generating practices of the
subcontinent. On his way to meet the Nawab of Dacca in 1683, William Hedges, an East
India Company official wrote that he “went in a splendid Equipage, habitted in Scarlet richly
laced. ... Ten Englishmen in Blew Caps and Coats edged with Red, all armed with
Blunderbusses, went before my pallankeen … and four Musicians playing on the weights.”
Hedges’ remarks show that he had good reason for such processional splendor: “A gaudy
shew and great noise adds much to a Public Person’s credit” (Hedges, 1887: 123). Hedges
was not the only Briton to understand the symbolic importance of musical instruments. In her
1839 account of the Queen’s ball, celebrated at Simla, the pre-eminent British hill resort,
Emily Eden wrote of the place and the event with considerable insight and with unintended

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foresight of events that would take place in northern India eighteen years later. She observed
that
twenty years ago no European had ever been here [Simla], and there we were,
with the band playing the ‘Puritani’ and ‘Masaniello,’ and eating salmon from
Scotland…105 Europeans, being surrounded by at least 3,000 mountaineers,
who, wrapped up in their hill blankets, looked on at what we call our polite
amusements, and bowed to the ground if a European came near them. I
sometimes wonder they do not cut all our heads off and say nothing more
about it. (Eden, 1983: 294)
British Military Instruments in British and Indian Contexts
The British used a wide range of processional instruments before the introduction of
brass bands. In the latter 18th century British military music was provided by fifes, drums,
bugles and at times the small wind bands usually called harmonie musik. The harmonie
musik ensemble was typically composed of pairs of instruments, primarily clarinets, horns,
oboes, and bassoons. The term was suitably vague, however, as was ensemble make up: the
band of the Life Guards regiment in Britain during the 1780s appears to have included serpent
and natural trumpet in addition to the more standard instrumentation (Fox, 1967). The
harmonie musik ensemble played in military processions and for outdoor entertainments,
dancing, or simply background music. It might have been a harmonie musik that Carey had in
mind when he described the musical establishment of the Governor of Bombay, Sir George
Oxenden in 1672: “at dinner, each course was ushered in by a sound of trumpets, and his ears
regaled by a band of music” (Carey, 1980: 17). Woodfield (2000) confirms the identity of
these ensembles for the following century. “By the 1780s, bands of clarinets, horns, and
bassoons performed many of the public functions [in India] that they did in English society,
playing at open-air entertainments (p. 59). Two hundred years after Sir George Oxenden
occupied the post of Governor, a royal viceroy had been added at the top of Britain’s
administrative and political structure in India. Bands were still in attendance. Lady Elisabeth
Bruce wrote in her diary that the Viceregal band (located in Kolkata, the British capital of the
time) was an important feature of the household, playing at dinners and at dances (Bruce,
n.d.). The Viceregal musicians were Europeans, imported specifically for their musical
duties. Bruce reports that the band played compositions by Schubert, Auber, and Schumann,
among others. Woodfield makes clear the importance of European musicians in the late
eighteenth century, noting that, “the rate of ₤100 a year seems to have been about the going
rate for the services of a professional musician in India” (p. 56). He suggests that this was

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not much different for musicians in London at the time and that there was considerable
entertainment and prestige value in good musicians of all kinds.
The musical aspects of military life seem to have been of little interest to the military
themselves, if one is to judge by the paucity of information in military records. The Viceregal
bands were clearly important; part of a Viceroy’s personal entourage. Such musicians were
not part of the military structure. Instead, along with the bands of the governors, they were
special units recruited directly from abroad. In the first half of the twentieth century, the
governors’ bands were staffed by 13-15 musicians each; the Governor General’s was larger at
twenty-six musicians. The military records report, however, that these men were not recruited
easily: “difficulty is being experienced in obtaining, from units of the service in India,
experienced musicians for the band of His Excellency, the Governor of Bengal ... and His
Excellency the Viceroy” (n.a., 1937: 9).
Unlike these specialist servants, Woodfield (2000) suggests that “the first free-lance
musicians to find employment in India in large numbers were horn players. Ever since the
establishment of factories in the seventeenth century, there had been periodic engagements for
a range of wind players, ‘noise’ of trumpets, bands of cornets and sackbuts, and ensembles of
oboes and bassoons. The duties required were ceremonial ones of a conventional kind,
leading processions, announcing the arrival of distinguished guests, and providing incidental
music during commemorative feasts” (p. 58).
In the armed forces, musicians were remarkably numerous given their anonymity.
Among the few mentions of musicians in the military are the entries that appear in Greene’s
Code of Pay Regulations...(Greene, 1810). We learn that a regiment of His Majesty’s
dragoons were accompanied by “8 trumpeters and 8 Hautboys, and 1 Trumpeter Major”
(Greene, 1810: 2). Brass players will be dismayed to learn that the trumpeters received 1
shilling, 2 pounds per day, but that the oboe players (hautboys) received 1 shilling, 6 pounds.
The infantry regiments of the British Army in India carried a very different musical
establishment according to Greene: “22 drummers, 10 [pounds] per day, 2 Fife and Drum
Majors” (1810: 6). Dragoons, of course, are horse soldiers and so perhaps had less need than
infantry units for music that provided cues for physical movement by large groups. These
regular regiments of the British Army were British throughout, posted to India for specific
(although variable) periods. We have no direct information on the identities of the musicians;
they may have been British as well; if not, they were certainly Eurasians of mixed European
and Indian parentage. Whoever they were, it is clear the by the early 19th century, British
military bands and music were widespread phenomena in India. In the 1830s Emily Eden

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recorded the progress of the Governor General (her brother, Lord Auckland, whom she
accompanied) up the Ganges River from Kolkata. At each of the major stations (e.g.,
Monghyr, Patna, Ghazipur, Varanasi, Allahabad, etc.,) at which one of the King’s regiments
were stationed, there was a band to line the road as the gubernatorial party processed from
their boats to the city, and to provide music for the requisite ball.
In addition to the British Army regiments in India, there were also the soldiers of the
three presidencies of the East India Company (Bombay, Madras, Calcutta). In his History of
the Bombay Army, Cadell reports that the first (European) regiments of the East India
Company armed forces were raised in 1661 and that five year later, natives of India began
serving in the Company’s ranks (Cadell, 1938). Indian soldiers (called sepoys in English,
from the Urdu/Hindustani word for soldier, σιπ⊄η⊂) were commanded by Indian and British
officers. After 1857 and the dissolution of the East India Company and its political power,
the Company armies became Britain’s Indian Army. The native regiments of the Company
and Indian armies also had musicians, but the size and make up of the bands in the Company
armies appears to have been less consistent and the pay much worse than in the Royal
regiments. Regiments of native horse had only six trumpeters (1 rupee, 8 annas per month!)
and one Trumpeter Major. Their foot-soldier colleagues, however, were accompanied by as
many as 40 drummers and fifers (unfortunately we have no record of their pay). If the Indian
musicians of the 17th or 18th century military followed the same kinds of strategies as their
19th century cousins—retiring from the military and going into business for themselves—
there is no reason to think there were not private processional ensembles using British
instruments during this earlier period. There is no documentation of such activity, however.
Outside the military, or at least military contexts, there was a great deal of other music
making in colonial India. Leppert’s (1987) study focuses on the symbolism, but the paintings
he studies do show us that the instruments for music making were available. Written sources
(e.g., Woodfield, 2000; Carey, 1980; or Patterson, n.d.) confirm this, describing both public
and private balls as very common at least as early as 1770. Miss Elizabeth Fay, in her letters
from Kolkata in 1780 tells her correspondent that “either cards or music fill up the time
between tea and dinner” (Fay, 1925: 189). Isabella Fane, writing from the same location in
1836 is more specific about the music that is filling up British ladies’ time. She describes
Italian opera, amateur musical entertainments for charity, concerts, sacred music, and
chamber performances (Pemble, 1985). In 1853, an unknown author includes music among
the activities of the evening promenade in Bombay: “About half-past five ... everybody who
is somebody assembles on the Esplanade ... then draws up on the green to listen to the

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garrison band” (n.a., 1853: 36). By the 20th century, many hotels, private clubs, and
nightclubs, especially in the major cities, could offer dance bands. Even in a slightly less
central city, such as Allahabad there were regular dances with live music. “The Thursday tea
dance was less formal ... [but] there was always a band playing, either a military band or a
police band and sometimes Anglo-Indian bands” (Allen, 1975: 105). In addition to Anglo-
Indians (Eurasians), Goan Christians also participated in the dance band trade; but neither
they nor the Anglo-Indian musicians figure directly in the world of brass wedding bands.
How quickly did Indians incorporate European instruments in the ongoing process of
musical change? At what level(s) of society and culture did change begin? There are specific
examples of borrowings--Baluswami Dikshitar’s famous adoption of the violin for classical
music, for example--and syncretic musical activity from the late 18th century. But even into
the 19th century, most evidence regards state or royal musical activity. George Patterson, who
wrote as an observer of the political interactions between his 18th century patron, Sir John
Lindsay and the Nawab of the Karnatic tells us that on the occasion of Lindsay’s becoming a
Knight of Bath, the Nawab gave “an entertainment of Nautch to the company...then the
Minuets began” (Patterson, n.d.: 212). It is not clear who was playing the minuets, but they
were clearly occurring for the same event, and in the same company as the Indian music and
musicians.
In the 19th century, “the Nepalese army was ‘modernized’ by General Bhimsen Thapa
(1804-37). He retained the ∨⊄ρδυλϕαγκο βψ⊄νδ [a military byand (sic) of traditional
instruments which the founder of the Nepalese kingdom had created in imitation of a British
military band he had seen in Varanasi in the first half of the 18th century], and augmented it
with twelve to sixteen βα∇συρ⊂ (transverse [bamboo] flutes) in imitation of the British fife
bands” (Tingey, 1994: 32). By the mid-19th century, traditional instruments in the Nepali
army had been replaced by British band instruments taught, as Tingey also points out, by both
“British teachers and Muslim band masters” (1994: 32). In addition to describing changes in
the 19th century music culture of this South Asian border region, Tingey’s research thus
identifies some of the human actors in the process of musical change. The British teachers are
to be expected; but the existence and commercial viability of Indian Muslim bandsmen, who
were expert enough to be called bandmasters and to be used as teachers to other South Asians,
provides us with significant historical context for more contemporary practices. Bandmasters
from northern Uttar Pradesh still travel to Nepal for work in the private processional bands of
Kathamandhu.

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 In Mumbai, a place where musical syncretism might be more readily expected than in
Nepal, Rousselet observed a Parsi wedding where, at the feast following the ceremony,
“strains of English and Indian music were alternately heard” (Rousselet, 1875: 32). Rousselet
spent some months seeing the sights of northern India in the mid-1870s. This wedding feast
was apparently the same one of which he wrote, “a good military band, stationed in the
verandah was giving us waltzes and quadrilles” (ibid: 33). Whether “military” is a general or
specific adjective is a question that cannot be answered. We know already that Indian royalty
had invested in British musical instruments well before Rousselet’s tour.
The Sikh band belonging to Maharaja Ranjit Singh that played “God save the King”
for the Earl of Auckland in 1838 was probably a mixed ensemble somewhere between the
harmonie musik and a modern brass band, such as Rousselet probably heard. In 1851, for
example, the suitably eclectic “bugle band” of the King’s Light Infantry regiment in Britain
was composed of a bass saxhorn, alto horns, slide trombone, cornets, euphoniums, and the
ophicleide (Fox, 1967). This final instrument was a keyed bass trumpet found in 19th century
wind bands. In Lahore Fort, Ranjit Singh’s erstwhile capital, the museum still displays the
British-style side drums and ophicleide used by Ranjit’s band.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s 19th century band was, obviously, a royal or state band, an
appendage of an equally European (or at least syncretic) army. Royal bands were probably
the first Indian-owned bands on the subcontinent; they are certainly the earliest about which
we have definite information. They may have been no more than afterthoughts to the
pragmatic acquisition of British military technology; but afterthought or not, a European band
no doubt contributed to a ruler’s prestige, even if only in a peripheral manner. After the early
appearances of Ranjit Singh’s band and the Tanjore Band in that southern Maratha state, brass
and bagpipe bands appear in an increasing number of royal households right up to 1948, when
the princely states were abolished in India. The princes who maintained European ensembles
at their courts included (in no particular order and with no attempt at representativeness): the
Maharajas of Baroda and of Mysore, the Nawabs of Jaora and of Rampur, and the Nizam of
Hyderabad (who even had a brass band for his Bicycle Corps!). Other courts, including
Alwar, Bhuj, Bikaner, Chamba, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kolhapur, Panna, and Patiala, also had brass
bands. At the central Indian court of Maihar, the famous classical musician, Ustad Allauddin
Khan, was also bandmaster of the innovative Maihar Band.
The brass bands, or at least the brass bandsmen, in many of the courts I mention here
have some connection to the private trade that expanded so dramatically after 1947; but royal
bands or ex-royal bandsmen are only one strand in the development of the trade, and in post-

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1947 terms, hardly the most substantial. Bands like Shyam (Jabalpur), Darbar (Baroda), or
RK (Hyderabad), whose µ⊄λικs (or their ancestors) played in local royal bands before
opening their own shops, are the exceptions in the processes and phenomena I have described
in earlier chapters, such as refugee engagement or diffusion along caste lines. Royal bands
contributed an aura of prestige to the idea or image of the brass band, and to the consequent
attraction bands had for customers. Royal bands were also crucial models that private
bandsmen imitated; but their importance as sites of training for private bandsmen or as
sources of trained bandsmen seems to have been very specifically limited to particular regions
and even particular bands. The social identities of those hired to be royal bandsmen did not
always lead from royal employment to private enterprise. Nevertheless, as the possessions of
Indian royalty, brass band instruments must have acquired additional prestige; but certainly as
Indian possessions, their symbolism was already changing in the direction of indigenization.
This double layer of association, with both the colonial and Indian rulers of the subcontinent,
helps explain the fashionable nature of brass bands and their importance in Indian mass
culture at the turn of the 20th century.
Whether or not there is a direct connection between most royal bands and the
musicians and families in the private trade, the processional or military bands of Indian rulers
are another piece in the transformational puzzle. As symbols of Indian prestige, they were
elements of processional practice that other Indians employed in their imitations of an
indigenous aristocracy. Perhaps even more than the presence of brass bands in British civil
and military processions, it was the presence of bands in royal Indian processions that helped
change the fashions in processional culture. Placing brass bands in the context of royal
processions may also make clearer the debate on interpretations of the economic exchange
that takes place during the procession. I again make use of the correspondence of Isabella
Fane, who after meeting Ranjit Singh’s band in 1832, attended the wedding of Ranjit’s
grandson celebrated in Amritsar that same year. Of one of the numerous processions that
took place that March, she wrote: “Today great things went on, connected with the wedding.
Quantities of money were to be thrown amongst the assembled multitude” (Pemble, 1985:
197). According to Miss Fane, there were at least two such episodes in the wedding
festivities. To the extent that we can see contemporary wedding processions as adoptions of
royal practice by the middle and other classes, we can similarly see the tips given to
bandsmen and (as I have noted) still sometimes thrown to the assembled multitudes. This
explanation for contemporary tipping at wedding processions is an equally satisfactory
alternative to the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-based explanation discussed earlier.

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 Regardless of which Indian hands held the first European instruments, those
instruments (and the knowledge of their use) trickled down from those hands and from British
hands into the hands of hereditary and non-hereditary processional musicians. Following
their Indian debut in British processions, British processional instruments began to appear in
Indian processions in those hands. The instruments and ensembles changed as the trickle
from British sources turned into a steady stream of locally produced musical instruments.
The concomitant changes in processional music culture offer a host of different examples of
the various processes of musical and instrumental change. Two terms here have special
significance for understanding the process of musical change as it took place in Indian
processions.
The theory of fashion “trickling down,” was first developed in 1904 where Simmel
used it to describe the phenomenon of clothing styles which begin as costly symbols of
prestige and elite status as one-of-a-kind items, but which are then incorporated into mass
production to be sold in larger quantities, until finally, when the style has trickled far enough,
it becomes a common, inexpensive item of mass culture which the elite would no longer
consider part of their world at all (Simmel, 1904). Aspects of this process of trickle down
fashion are unquestionably part of the band world; one can properly describe the vertical
movement of brass instruments through Indian society in these terms. “There was a gradual
extension of this kind of musical symbolism into the population at large. Just as the Company
used ceremonial individuals to advertise its wealth and political power, so it became
fashionable for individuals to express their status in musical sound. The least expensive way
of doing this was to hire a pair of French horn players. These ‘musicians’ would normally
double as ordinary servants, but would always be on hand to sound their instruments”
(Woodfield, 2000: 58).
Simmel’s theory of trickle down consumption, calls for constant change at the top of
the waterfall from whence fashion descends, as the elite seek to remain one step ahead of the
middle and lower classes who are busy imitating them. “According to the theory, those at the
very top are just as active in protecting their privileged status as those in any stratum below.
Motivated by the continuing need to differentiate themselves from imitators snapping at their
heels, they are constantly pushed to invent new fashions a that set them apart and redefine
status at the summit” (Fine and Leopold, 1993:138).
The incorporation of bands into a traditional ritual context has partially detached brass
bands from the influence of fashion, or (to put it another way) has somewhat slowed the rate
of invention at the top from which fashion trickles. The parameters of social class and fashion

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have been limited to the size of the band party, the presence of electronic amplification, the
number of bands, the number of road-light stands, and the other attributes of the wedding.
Some elite families in India (especially those who are foreign educated) no longer hire bands
for their weddings. This book must be understood as describing particular chapters in an
ongoing story, which will no doubt at some point include the demise of the tradition.
Bandsmen themselves are at the mercy of popular trends: fashions in music, fashions in
uniforms, fashions in musical instruments, and fashions in processions (or for processions)
themselves. Bandsmen sometimes offer rather fatalistic perspectives on musical change.
“What can I do? If I don’t use this thing, people will think I am old fashioned. They will call
some other band.” Mallari was a new µ⊄λικ in 1993 when he explained (using the
Hindustani word, µαϕβυρ, compulsion) why he had to offer an amplified keyboard to his
customers (and play it himself) even though he was not very comfortable or skilled at playing
it. His customers expected keyboards because other bands in his city (Hyderabad) had them;
if he wished to compete, he was compelled to do his best. The best bandsmen can hope for is
to be able to anticipate, or at least follow closely, changes in the various aspects of
processional (and musical) fashion so as to not be left behind when their current incarnation
becomes obsolete. Although they have been around since the early 20th century at least, my
discussion at the end of this chapter regarding pop orchestras will be especially relevant to
this matter of changing fashions in weddings and processions.
In addition to the commonly understood term, musical change, I also employ the term,
instrumental change, to help distinguish the range of different possibilities that the former,
broader term encompasses. Some contemporary bandsmen, for example, whose ancestors
might have played bugles at Indian weddings in the 19th century, point out that bugles are
really not very different in structure from older Indian natural trumpets, such as σι∇η⊄ or
κοµβυ. Some suggest that their ancestors probably transferred the repertoire of the pre-
British instruments to bugles. This, it would seem, is instrumental change, with either no
change in repertoire or an addition to an existing repertoire.
Thus, depending on when and where we look, brass bands may embody either
instrumental or musical change or both. Bagpipes, played by many bandsmen at different
points in the early and mid-20th century, combine both changes even more clearly. They
provide an example of instrumental change compelling musical change. Although individual
bagpipers might perform Indian raga or other traditional music on this instrument, as a band,
bagpipes may have been rather inflexible from a repertoire point of view; the choice appears
to have been Scottish marches or nothing. The few bagpipe bands still functioning in India do

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in fact play the rather tattered remnants of the Scottish military repertoire (oddly enough,
Pakistani bagpipers seem to have been more innovative in this respect). Finally, the growth
of Indian popular mediated music—especially film music—led to changes in Indian musical
culture that, while unrelated to processional culture, have helped to drive instrumental change
in the processional world. The stories in this chapter highlight different processes,
motivations, and outcomes in the broader process of musical or music-cultural change. They
help us make the distinctions necessary for a careful inquiry about the nature of musical
change and for an understanding of what precisely it is that changes in musical change. They
show us bandsmen at the forefront of changing fashions; their marginal identities and position
in the musical universe of India leave them no choice but to move with the times.
Musical instruments are objects, whose musical properties are complemented, and
sometimes superseded by the ideologies and identities they may symbolize, ranging from
tradition versus modernity to regional affiliation or political orientation, as John Leppert
(1987) has shown. Such symbolism is subject to a process of reinterpretation and
transformation that often appears continuous. The European musical instruments of India
processional music culture obviously carry the symbolic weight of their colonial origins.
Indians acknowledge the British colonial origins of brass bands. Indeed their British origins
have more than once been a cause for concern on the part of friends and casual acquaintances
who found I was studying this tradition. One helpful gentleman in Kolkata suggested that
instead of investigating brass bands, which were foreign, I should study a more Indian
instrument. He suggested the harmonium. Although their foreign origins disqualify them, in
some eyes, as objects of study for foreign ethnomusicologists, few Indians are troubled by the
potential tensions of brass bands’ foreign or colonial symbolism when it comes to internal
consumption. One must say “potential” since in everyday terms my perception is that most
Indians do not understand brass bands as problematic in a symbolic sense. To be sure, the
foreign and colonial origins of their instruments are one of the standard replies to questions
about bandsmen’s low musical and social standing; but that clearly does not prevent Indians
from hiring bands for weddings. In ways that are demonstrably more significant than their
colonial origins, British instruments occupy important niches in the fashion of processional
ritual and in Indian culture.
Brass bands, the generic ensemble and in some cases specific band shops, have
survived long enough in their ritual roles and have figured prominently enough in Indian
culture of the colonial period that they have established their own sense of place and tradition.
It is not uncommon for fathers of the groom to hire for their sons’ weddings the same bands

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that played for their own weddings. There are certainly enough long-established bands to
make this is possible. The attraction of venerability, or tradition, may complement as well as
compete with the need for novelty and innovation that drives instrumental change in
processional culture. Transformation on the instrumental level interacts with local histories
and conditions to produce quite a diverse set of rates and directions of change. Combined
with the potential venerability of individual family shops, and taking into account distinct
attitudes on the part of both musicians and patrons towards British instruments, the
symbolism of processional instruments and ensembles can be quite dense.
The casualness with which South Asians may accept European instruments can be a
source of frustration for the ethnomusicologist, since such attitudes tend to thwart any highly
symbolic reading of what appear to be unusual phenomena. The point is worth making given
some of the basic themes of this book, in which such readings play a fundamental role.
The city of Amritsar is home of the Harimandir (the Golden Temple), the devotional
focus of Sikh worship. As the religious center of the Sikh religion the city is witness to a
regular series of religious processions celebrating important Sikh holy days. One of the more
unusual and (potentially) historically exciting ensembles to be found in India. Throughout
India, these processions almost invariably include brass bands (see Chapter 6 for a discussion
of Sikh processional repertoires). In Amritsar, only Sikh-owned bands take part in these
processions; but music is also provided by σηαβδ κ⊂ρταν groups and by the bands of the
local Sikh schools. Sikh religious processions are often tests of devotion and endurance that
may last for eight to ten hours and cover considerable distances.
Intermediate-level schools include boys and girls together; but usually secondary
school bands are, like the schools, single-sex institutions. Sikh school bands are clearly
modeled on British military ensembles (or on historical Indian adaptations of British bands).
The models that are subject to imitation, however, are not the brass bands that have been the
focus of this book, but rather the drum, bugle, and fife bands that preceded brass bands in the
British military, and that may have been employed commercially by at least a few South
Asian processional musicians in the latter 19th century.
In Sikh practice, the instruments themselves are organized by gender. In mixed-sex
schools, girls play fifes while boys play bugles and drums. In all-girl schools the drums are
played by girls as well, but the bugles are omitted. While some schools use actual fifes,
others use a modified version that includes a horizontal mouth-piece protruding from the
fife’s barrel to make the instrument easier to play.

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 The presence of bands composed of fifes and drums (as well as the bugles that some
of these bands also carry) in Sikh devotional processions in the first years of the 21st Century
raises fascinating possibilities of historical continuity; these instruments are certainly the
oldest layer of European musical culture (or at least military music culture) in India. Except
for the early career of Muhammad Jehanghir (who seems to have learned to play fife with the
military of the 1820s) and the speculations of a few bandsmen about times well beyond their
knowledge, however, the oral history of the band world is silent on the existence of private
fife and drum bands anywhere in India. What is more, to the extent that local oral history can
offer an insight into their presence in Amritsar, the fife and drum bands appear to be relatively
recent innovations, rather than extremely old perdurations from the late 18th century. Nor
does their existence appear remarkable to Amritsar residents. One Sikh observer of
Amritsar’s 1994 Guru Govind ϕ⊄ψαντ⊂ offered a devotional rationale, suggesting that
questions regarding their presence could not be answered by reference to the British or Indian
origins of processional instruments. Any instruments could play devotional music, and since
that was the purpose of these bands and their performances, the instruments simply did not
matter. That the bands do not actually play devotional music was apparently also beside the
point for this individual. From a cultural, or perhaps regional perspective, Hardev Singh,
principal of the Guru Ram Dass High School (which also has such a band) asserted, “After
all, we are Punjabis. Whatever seems good to us, we use it. We’re not worried about such
things [the British origins of fife and drum bands]”. One of the oldest European-style Sikh
educational institutions in Amritsar, Guru Ram Dass High School has had its own fife and
drum band since roughly 1938; but neither the school’s principal nor anyone else associated
with the practice, could offer historical explanations.
In the melodies and rhythms that they play, their accoutrements, and in the marching
formations that they display, the Sikh school bands clearly show that their roots are, as one
would suspect, in British military practice. The conclusions from this story, however, are
more methodological than historical, and are primarily cautionary. Sikhs have been a major
source of military support and personnel since 1857, when they sided with the British against
the Indian forces of the “Mutiny.” I might suspect that Sikh schools in the early 20th century,
from their culture’s powerful and long-standing connection to the British military, sought
musical ensembles that would reflect such connections for their students. But a pragmatic
rationale may be more realistic. Fifes, drums, and bugles are practical choices after all. They
are relatively simple to play and maintain. Since the British military establishment was
playing brass instruments by then, the instruments were probably quite easy and inexpensive

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to obtain. Many seem to view school bands, especially in girl’s schools, more as a branch of
physical education than of music. As Hardev Singh suggests, there may have been very little
thought given to the potential symbolism of the instruments, either as regards their origins or
their antiquity. Certainly in the present, those involved in the practice reject, or at least
minimize the importance of such symbolism. In the face of such rejections it is hard to attach
great significance to these ensembles, no matter how tempting it may be. At best, I can
propose that like the rest of the scanty evidence from the first half of the 20th century, the
decision to field a band and choice of ensemble were pragmatic. That such pragmatism
resulted in a surprising manifestation of the syncretic nature of culture in late colonial India,
can itself, hardly be surprising.
Symbolizing Change and Tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries
The idea that a particular musical style or instrument can be considered modern at one
point in its existence and traditional or old fashioned at another point is hardly a revelation.
Bagpipe bands or brass bands are both more “old fashioned” than they were in 1900. Many
stories of instrumental change in the band world clearly demonstrate the need for change and
for the modern on the part of both bandsmen and customers; but ensembles can also assume
the mantle of tradition. Indeed, the sound of the brass band could easily be said to be a
marker of the traditional in the sound tracks of Hindi films, where it is inevitably employed in
wedding scenes, with and without the physical presence of the band on the screen. This is the
challenging aspect of the brass band as an ensemble, that it may simultaneously embody both
modernity and tradition, or at least may represent both to different viewers/listeners at the
same time. The bewildering complex of meanings that British instruments have taken on in
their 200 year Indian history forces me to an understanding of tradition and modernity in
which those terms loose all but the most relative of meanings, and in which the very idea of
musical change must be seen as problematic. A 19th century painting from Bihar and a short
musical ethnography from 20th century Kolhapur will serve as bases for a consideration of
these issues.
‘Muslim Βαρ⊄τ’ in Patna
The original version of Plate 7 is a watercolor painted on mica by an Indian artist in
Patna, between 1850 and 1860. Of a genre called ‘Company paintings’, it is one of the many
watercolors that were being produced and marketed to the English in response to the growing
interest in things Indian. Company paintings were produced by Indians, rather than by
Europeans, and so were subject to less transformation in their production, than were their
musical contemporaries, the ‘Hindostanee Airs’ that Farrell (1997) has investigated.

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Nevertheless, both paintings and European revisions of Indian melodies are components of
the 19th century marketing of Indian culture to the West. They were part of an export trade in
cultural tourism. This particular painting is titled ‘Muslim wedding procession’; it does not
depict a specific procession, but rather a colorful hypothetical, intended for its artistic and
exotic appeal. Nevertheless, and within limits, there is no reason to suppose that the painting
does not represent contemporary processional practice as understood by its Bihari painter.
The musical forces in this hypothetical βαρ⊄τ include two ∨αην⊄⊂ and a
ναθθ⊄ρα pair, who immediately precede the groom, who rides on horseback and whose face
is covered by the same flowered veil that many Indian grooms still wear today. The ∨αην⊄⊂
group is preceded by a natural trumpet that might or might not be a British bugle, a large
barrel-shaped ⋅ηολ and two small kettledrums called τ⊄∨α. At the very front of the group of
musicians, and just behind the elephant are two more drummers. On their heads they wear
cylindrically shaped shakoes, the standard headdress of the European and Indian military of
the period. Below the shakoes, they wear a fantastical, but unmistakable version of European
military dress that contrasts very definitely with the dress of the other musicians. Whereas the
others wear white or other light solid colors, the two drummers wear bright yellows and blues,
in angular patterns. What is equally (but not necessarily more) important, these musicians are
playing British side drums in the standard vertical position. The real drummers, drums, and
uniforms upon which these colorful images were modelled, might well have been borrowed
for this procession from a local native military establishment.
These drummers were playing British military cadences, Indian rhythms, or both; the
watercolor, of course, gives us no clue in this regard. Their very presence is one kind of
musical change: the addition of new instruments played in novel fashion (vertically with two
matching sticks, instead of horizontally with either hands or unmatched sticks which is the
practice with almost all barrel drums in India). If the drummers were playing British rhythms
(hardly unlikely) we have a more profound level of change. But, if those rhythms on those
drums were to the same purpose as other rhythms and drums, we have a level of cultural (and
music cultural) continuity that might well have more weight than the mere change from one
kind of drum to another, or even a change of rhythm.
It is also tempting to be concerned about the actual identity of the bugle shaped
instrument in this watercolor. Is it a bugle or not? The question points once more to the
great appeals which the brass band tradition and its antecedents (such as the drummers—at
least—in this watercolor) appear to offer to those concerned with historical process. Despite
the limited accessibility of the processes of change at the heart of this trade, against which the

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low status of the profession, the anonymity of the musicians, and political considerations all
conspire, the practice itself seems to have a definable beginning. Although these two
drummers are fictitious, the models from which the painter worked were real. It often seems
to me that if we could know what part, which component of the human, social process of
cultural change these men represent, we might indeed know something worth knowing. To
what economic pressures were these men responding? Were they in fact military drummers?
Are they among the first to incorporate these musical and visual signs of colonial Britain into
Indian ritual? Are they the second (or third) generation of processional musicians engaged in
acting/carrying out this process of instrumental and perhaps musical change?
Having succumbed to the temptations of these questions more times than I can count,
however, I am sure of at least one thing, and moderately convinced of another. First, and
most clearly, the process of change in Indian processional music is a human one. It involves
individuals and groups whose position in their societies is peripheral, both socially and
professionally, going about their business with motivations that are almost always highly
pragmatic, introducing incremental or abrupt changes because they are able to do so, and
because it is to their advantage to do so. The pressures to which Indian processional
musicians have responded over the past two hundred years are certainly economic. The
incorporation of new instrumental fashions gave them a competitive edge in the hunt for
patronage. That competitive edge was, in its turn, founded upon a growing awareness, on the
part of their customers, of increasing British political, military, and economic predominance.
The drummers in this painting are symbols of a new political and cultural order on the sub-
continent.
Musical change also seems to be founded upon the very human desire on the part of
band patrons, for a comfortable mix of tradition and novelty in their ritual accoutrements.
The only information we have about the hypothetical patrons in this painting is that they are
Muslim. This makes it less likely that the father of this groom was a commercial agent to the
East India Company (δυβη⊄ση, more literally, “translator”), most of whom were middle
status Hindu Bengalis; but given the time frame of this painting and the location of its
production, this class is nevertheless worth investigating briefly. “In the later eighteenth
century many Bengali dubashes moved up country from the colonial port cities. … As they
did so, they too began to involve themselves with Brahman ritualists, investing ... [in] life-
cycle rituals ... which mark successive stages in the life of the conformist twice-born ‘caste
Hindu’” (Bayly, 1999: 72). Patna, of course, was a very important commercial center in the
East India Company’s scheme of things, especially in the opium trade. Patna was also the

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major port city up-river from Kolkata. Is it going too far to imagine (if not assert) that it was
Bengali δυβη⊄ση families from Kolkata who introduced the fashion for British instruments
into processional rituals in Patna? Whether they did or not, the conjunction is especially
powerful (and potentially ironic) for understanding instrumental change in processional
music. Bayly notes that, in addition to greater concern for life-cycle rituals, a by-product of
the British presence was “the creation of tighter and more castelike affinities among trading
and banking groups” (1999: 81). It is perhaps logical (although by no means demonstrable
with current data) that families from these groups, who were dependent on the British for their
increasing wealth, might have been transforming themselves in two directions simultaneously.
On one hand, they were moving towards a clearer definition of caste based ‘tradition’ by
developing their investment in high caste ritual and solidifying their place in a more strictly
demarcated caste structure. At the same time, might they have been investing in ‘modern’
manifestations of their British connections, by incorporating British musical symbols into
their processional ritual? Processional rituals, after all, are marginal aspects of the broader
ritual framework; innovation in processional might be less threatening than if it were located
in more central aspects of the ritual process. Processions are also public manifestations of
ritual, most visible to the British and to other Indians.
The irony in such a hypothetical scenario, of course, is that the same classes and
developments that produced the powerful understandings of caste, especially among 19th and
20th century merchant groups (a reinforcement of tradition, if you will) also resulted in
musical or instrumental change. It is additionally ironic that in Kolkata itself, from whence
these musical changes may have originated (at least in eastern India), the band trade is not
heavily patronized by the Bengali (that is, the native) population. Instead, the most important
single patron community for brass bands is the merchant Marwari community. Marwari
traders, whose origins are in western India, appeared in considerable numbers in Kolkata
immediately after the Indo-British conflict of 1857-58, taking advantage of a vacuum in
intermediary commercial roles. Like the Bengali merchants before them, Marwari families
advanced their own financial positions through a willingness to deal with the British and
through British trust in their community. The well-known Marwari predilection for brass
bands may thus be one more manifestation of a correlation between trade, British colonial
power, social change, and musical change.
Much of this discussion is purely speculative, warranted, perhaps, but beyond the
abilities of current scholarship to confirm or reject. We will obviously never know why this
painter chose to label this fictional βαρ⊄τ, with its multi-cultural instrumentation, “Muslim”

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or for that matter whether it was the painter who so identified the painting in the first place.
What is clear, however, is that the painting depicts a local acceptance of instrumental change
in the practice of processional music in the years before 1857. The social and economic
means by which such change is introduced, transmitted, and accepted within a culture, and the
motivations of the innovators are the process of musical change. But in this instance at least,
(and probably in many other cultural instances as well) the beginnings of the process are
beyond our reach. Even in this almost ideal circumstance, the motivations are subject to
endless reinterpretation by all concerned. Music, especially this music, is not important
enough for there to be records, and oral history among such consistently low status families
and in such a low status trade, simply cannot be maintained thoroughly enough to answer
these questions however important they may be.
My second, more tentative conclusion is more in the nature of a question. In the realm
of musical change, is this seductive inaugural rupture (imposed by the arrival of European
instruments) real in any event? Because we might safely say that there were no British
military ensembles in India before 1600 (that is, eleven years before the first British factory at
Surat), do we automatically and concomitantly assume that British cultural colonialism was
somehow different in a qualitative sense from the earlier arrivals of the Portuguese, the
Mughals, or the Afghanis? In other words, do the racial or cultural identities of those
imposing their culture on another lead to different kinds of musical change? In addition to the
presence of the side-drummers and their British implications, this 19th century βαρ⊄τ
demonstrates the process of musical change, just as clearly, in the presence of the ναθθ⊄ρα
and ∨αην⊄⊂. These instruments are both west Asian musical imports, with some of the
same kinds of military and high culture associations as the brass band. Thus, even if we
hypothetically remove the horn and the drummers from the parade, we still have a
representation of musical change. Even if we could be sure that the natural trumpet in this
painting was intended by its painter to be British bugle, we would possess merely one more
incremental piece of a very long chain, in which the pieces were only loosely linked together.
It would be a piece what is more, that indicates at best a change of direction or perhaps, a
change of cultural orientation, in an ongoing process.
As it happens, my suspicion is that the instrument between the ⋅ηολ and the ναθθ⊄ρα
is not a bugle. If this were a British military instrument, one would expect that the musician
playing it would be dressed in uniform similar to the drummers and that he might be located
near them, rather than amongst the other pre-British instruments. Oral history does suggest
that there were a number Indian drum and bugle bands being run privately and

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entrepreneurially at least in Mumbai and Surat as early as 1830; but I cannot think that we
have here a representation of one. This instrument’s appearance, however, does raise yet
other possibilities for the range phenomena that may co-exist under the banner of musical
change. There were bugle-shaped natural horns of Indian origin and manufacture in central
India in the 19th century. One such instrument, found primarily in Rajasthan, is called
β⊄νκ⊂ψα. It is not likely that a Rajasthani horn is being depicted in a procession over 1000
kilometers from its home; but some bandsmen’s understanding about the origins of the
β⊄νκ⊂ψα suggest that whatever we might call this instrument, it may still be an example of
musical change. Muhammad Usman, an elderly bandmaster and µ⊄λικ in Jodhpur asserts
that “Bugle δεκη κε, το β⊄νκ⊂ψα βαν⊄ γαψα.” That is, “having seen bugles” Indian
processional musicians, (re)fashioned Indian horns into the more compact shape; “then they
made the β⊄νκ⊂ψα.” Β⊄νκ⊂ψαs are in fact, large Indian natural trumpets in the shape of
bugles, as is the instrument in this painting. If we can accept what might be a folk
organology, this company painting could be said to harbor three different instances and types
of musical change within its frame: 1) an acceptance of West Asian instruments within the
‘traditional’ complex of South Asian music culture, 2) the innovative addition of European
instruments to the processional musical melange, and 3) a cultural attempt to refashion an
Indian instrument to resemble a British one.
‘Rotos’ in Kolhapur
I spent my first and only week in Kolhapur in December of 1993. This small city in
southern Maharasthra is off the beaten track in the band world. The mobile bandsmen of
modern India travel neither from nor to Kolhapur; it is a little too small and a little too far out
of the way. The bandsmen of the city are in consequence all local men, and rather out of
touch with other places. There is a famous Lakshmi temple complex in Kolhapur, which is
associated with the Chitrapati Maharajas, of whose kingdom Kolhapur was the capital until
1948. The royal court and the temple both figure in the story of brass bands in Kolhapur in
that they were sources of patronage for the two processional music families who later opened
the first private band enterprises in that city.
Kolhapur also has a small shrine to a local Muslim π⊂ρ [saint] named Baba Jamal.
The area surrounding that shrine [δαραγ⊄η] is the city’s main Muslim neighborhood and the
home of the Mangal Music Band (a remarkable name for a Muslim band), one of Kolhapur’s
two oldest and most influential bands. I was somewhat confused when I first entered the
Mangal Music Band shop since despite the sign on the outer wall it is not a band shop at all.
Instead, I was confronted by the radios, tape recorders, televisions, and other appliances--

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whole and in pieces--that are part of the family’s electronics repair business. High on a shelf
in the corner, however, I eventually noticed a number of ναθθ⊄ρα, the variously sized
kettledrums that have figured prominently in Indian processional since the advent of Islamic
culture (at least). I also saw that hanging at the end of the shelf were a number of ∨αην⊄⊂,
thus completing a standard pre-British processional ensemble. These are two of the important
instruments of the Muslim βαρ⊄τ depicted in the 18th century watercolor of Plate 7.
⊃αην⊄⊂-ναθθ⊄ρα ensembles are still heard at βαρ⊄τs one hundred and fifty years later;
but those in the Mangal shop had been sitting untouched on the shelf for a long time, by 1993.
A thick layer of dust covered the instruments, most of which had heads that had long since
split.
The founder of the Mangal Music band, a ∨αην⊄⊂ player named Ibrahim, was the
grandfather of Muhammad Sabir who was managing the band in 1993. Ibrahim and his
relations played the ∨αην⊄⊂s and ναθθ⊄ραs on the wall for private processions and so may
have participated in many processions similar to that depicted in the painting. Ibrahim also
enjoyed the occasional patronage of the Kolhapur royal court; but in 1934 he converted his
family ensemble into a brass band, as the pictures on the wall of the Mangal shop attest. Sabir
told me that his family still provided a brass band when customers requested it, but that they
had to hire local καρ⊂γαρs to fill out the family ranks. The ensemble that Sabir and his
brothers preferred was a uniquely modern version of their grandfather’s pre-colonial
ensemble.
The preferred Mangal Music Band ensemble is built (literally) around an amplified
electronic keyboard. Such keyboards used to be called “casio” regardless of the brand name
of their manufacturer, but bandsmen are too sophisticated for that these days and more
commonly say keyboard as in the west. To provide mobility, which is crucial for
processional musicians, electronic keyboards are mounted on variously shaped four-wheeled
carts or trolleys, that usually include a space for the musician playing the keyboard to sit and
for the amplifier, speakers, and automobile batteries that run the whole system. Singers or
other instrumentalists may also make use of these mobile amplification systems; speakers are
often large horns mounted on the upper body of the cart. Τελ⊂ψα is one name given
generically to such carts. Τελ⊂ψα can often be quite large; but they do not have motive
power. Instead, they are pushed along by bandsmen or καρ⊂γαρs hired specially for this low
skill job.
Sometime in the early 1980s, the brothers of the Mangal Band added a unique
sophistication to their τελ⊂ψα. To the trolley’s metal frame, they welded holders for what

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they call ‘rotos’, shallow circular metal frame-drums with single plastic heads. Roto-toms, of
course, are a kind of drum manufactured in the west beginning in the 1960s, widely used in
drum sets in a variety of musical genres. The Mangal Band’s rotos are manufactured locally
in imitation of these instruments. In procession, the drummers walk alongside the τελ⊂ψα,
accompanying the keyboard melody with their drumming.
The family’s motives in the use of their casio-plus-roto creation are pragmatic. With
this creation, the four men of the immediate family plus a few friends form a complete
ensemble. The combination is very attractive to customers and was said by Sabir to be in great
demand. Customers come because of the group’s name and stay because the ensemble is
cheaper than a full band (in 1993 this version of the Mangal Music Band cost a mere 1200 -
1500 rupees for a full day’s program). Ironically, in their unusual and unusually modern
formation, the Mangal Music Band has in one sense recreated the ensembles of their
grandfather’s time. The ∨αην⊄⊂-ναθθ⊄ρα ensembles that Ibrahim led before 1934 featured
a single, or single pair of melody instruments accompanied by vigorous and active drumming,
exactly as does the combination of rotos and keyboard. Thus, while the instruments
themselves are quite different in sound and appearance, and while the rotos-plus-keyboard
arrangement is both intended and received as modern (a number of the participants at a
βαρ⊄τ I attended were very clear about this), the musical nature and function of this modern
ensemble are easily understood as traditional.
An ensemble composed of electronic keyboard and drums is not a brass band, any
more than the two side drummers of the “Muslim wedding procession” are a brass band.
These two phenomena, isolated by time, geography, and instrumentation as they are, are
nevertheless both individual instances in the ongoing strands of musical change in which
western music culture and instruments were incorporated into Indian processional ritual.
What is more, they are both modern. There can clearly be no causal or even influential link
between the Mangal Band’s innovative ensemble and the fictional drummers of a 19th century
watercolor; but if one begins with the ‘traditional’ ∨αην⊄⊂ and ναθθ⊄ρα ensemble also
depicted in that painting, progresses to the head of the procession where the modern
drummers are, moves on to Ibrahim’s Mangal Brass Band (which was a local innovation in
1934, but a well established tradition in Mumbai and other cities by that time) and finally
arrives at his grandsons’ roto and keyboard ensemble, it becomes clear that ideas of sequential
musical change are problematic in this history, and that tradition and modernity can only be
fragile and relative concepts at best. What is of special importance in the stories of

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instrumental change is the manner in which Indian processional musicians construct notions
of tradition and modernity in reference to the western instruments they adopt.
The band party
There are historical and regional variations in wedding band instrumentation and
equally diverse paths by which contemporary conditions have been reached. Within
contemporary Indian practice, however, and contemporary Pakistani practice with slightly
different emphases, there is a broad consistency of instrumentation, formation, and structure.
In physical terms, a band (which is to say, the family firm) is represented on the streets by a
group of musicians called a band party. The specific group assigned to a particular
performance may be the sum total of the band’s personnel (inevitably the case in Pakistan) or
they may be 25 men out of the 100 or more καρ⊂γαρs contracted to the shop for the season.
Μ⊄λικs who can do so often send out two to three different parties at the same time; so that,
for example, on a busy night in Delhi there might be three different band parties performing in
different parts of the city all under the name of the Master Band. In my examination of the
mobile labor practices of modern India, we have already seen that a band party may
demonstrate a wide range of variability in terms of personnel from performance to
performance. Naturally this affects the details of instrumentation, to some extent. One
Master Band party (to continue with this example) might have a few more or less trumpets
than another, a slightly different weighting of drums, or be led by a clarinetist instead of a
trumpeter; but these are not usually significant differences.
Instrumentation
All band parties must have certain instrumental components. They must have a lead
instrumental voice or voices, supporting instruments, and percussion. The lead voices in a
traditional Indian brass band are clarinet and trumpet. The clarinet is most commonly the
standard Mueller system (sometimes called Albert system) 13 or 14 key instrument pitched in
Bb. Oral histories suggest that the Eb soprano clarinet was also very popular in the early part
of the 20th century, especially in ensembles that combined that instrument with pre-colonial
instruments, that is, in ensembles where the clarinet was replacing or supplementing pre-
colonial double reed oboes. Eb soprano clarinets are still played by some bandsmen in west-
coast cities from Ahmadabad to Mumbai, and by some musicians in western Madhya Pradesh.
Otherwise a gradual process of instrumental transformation has largely replaced this
instrument with the lower pitched Bb instrument, which is, nevertheless, invariably played in
its very highest register.

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 Clarinets are probably the most important voice among the European processional
instruments of India. They have complemented and replaced ∨αην⊄⊂ in processional
ensembles for longer than oral history can record and consequently can have greater prestige
than other European instruments. The photograph shown in Plate 8 was probably taken in
1913 or ‘14; it is one of a set of 40 published in Britain in 1915, as part of a yearly series of
picture books, designed to represent India’s quaint, exotic, and beautiful attributes to the
British public. The caption below the photograph reads, “Music in the Deccan.” Ensembles
of similar configuration were commercially recorded during the first half of the 20th century,
and are still extant, although in more marginal roles and locations than previously. This
particular group includes most of the core instruments of stigmatized processional music
culture: the ⋅αφ, a circular frame drum; ταβλα; Eb soprano clarinet; possibly Bb clarinet,
bagpipes; triangle; and µυκηαϖ⊂∧α, a small double reed oboe. Clarinets thus figure(d)
prominently in more than brass bands. They are, for example, the central melodic voice of the
ensemble identified as a “Gunset Party” which featured clarinet and percussion, and which
appears in the documented history of the southern Deccan region. A Gunset Party is one of
the host of ensembles featured in the many-sided murals of the Wodeyar palace in Mysore
depicting a royal accession to the throne. They also appear in very early Gramophone
Company recordings (circa 1910-1930), where their repertoire appears to connect the
musicians to the classical traditions of South India. Clarinetists are, in fact, the musicians of
the band world who are most likely to have knowledge of and connections to the world of
classical music, although in the brass band world that I describe here, that means Hindustani
rather than Karnatak music. On the job, clarinetists are often musical leaders and soloists,
although as I describe in Chapter 2, clarinets often are more musically successful when they
work in conjunction with trumpets. Although trumpets can be louder, and although one might
say that a clarinetist by himself must work much harder than a trumpeter in order to lead a
group, the high register in which clarinetists most frequently play gives the instrument a
remarkably competitive and piercing tone quality. I also cannot help but feel that the
instrument’s organological connections to the double reeds of pre-colonial processional music
give it a certain privileged status as well.
Bandmasters who are not clarinetists are almost without exception trumpet players
(there are naturally exceptions who play euphonium or even drum); both instruments tend to
run in families where a hereditary connection exists. But, where hereditary double reed
families have transformed themselves into brass bands, the trumpet is much less frequently a
choice. There are a number of trumpet (and at least one cornet) players alive in India who can

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demonstrate a certain level of classical knowledge on their instruments, but these musicians
are invariably older men, who have not transmitted that knowledge to a younger generation.
As in many things, the Pakistani version of the tradition is slightly different in this respect.
The lead voices in Pakistani bands are invariably “teams of clarinetists, who play the main
melody” (Malik, 1998: 77). Three is the common number of clarinetists in a Pakistani band,
of whom one is understood as the principal soloist. The cornets of Pakistani bands invariably
form part of the supporting group.
In modern India, amplified instruments are often lead voices. Electronic keyboards
have been part of brass bands since the late 1970s or early 1980s. In addition, amplification
means that with a microphone, any instrument can become a lead instrument. In different
bands one encounters amplified trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, and even accordions.
Amplification also allows singers to take leading roles in brass bands, which they do,
although more so in Hindustan than in the Deccan.
The supporting instruments in a brass band can include other trumpets and clarinets;
saxophones also figure occasionally in some groups. Most of the chorus in a brass band,
however, is composed of lower pitched instruments that most bandsmen call simply “brass”,
that is, the euphonium or less commonly the valve trombone. Brass contrabasses are carried
by some bands. These are generally circular instruments worn over the player’s shoulder,
with the direction of the bell at right angles to the direction of the tube leading to it. Brass
basses in modern Indian bands are not consistently functional; generally, however,
functionality is more and increasingly likely in Hindustan than in Rajasthan. Deccan bands
rarely if ever use functional contrabasses. Pakistani bands consistently use contrabasses
although like the rest of their instrumentation, these are in the earlier helicon-shape in which
the bell continues in the same direction as the tube leading to it.
The percussion section of a brass band normally includes at least two standard types of
drum. One is the instrument called “⋅ηολ” by bandsmen, which in this case is a very shallow
double headed drum played with a single padded beater on one head, and usually with the left
hand as well. The other drum corresponds roughly to the western snare drum, although it is
both smaller in diameter and shallower than the snare drums heard and seen in western
marching bands. Bass drums are not used as consistently as ⋅ηολs and snares; this means that
some bands simply do not own a bass drum (and probably feel no special need for one) while
others own them, but use them only for larger parties and special occasions. In still other
parties, a bass drum is a regular part of the ensemble.

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 Many bands in the Deccan use τ⊄∨αs, the shallow metal kettledrum, played with two
long thin wands in a characteristically over-hand grip that together allow very fast stroking
patterns. This particular instrumental variation has musical implications as well. Bands with
τ⊄∨αs often have distinctive and active percussion sections; such bands often play at faster
tempi than bands with more conventional percussion sections. A comparison of the same
songs played by northern and Deccani bands shows that differences of 20 beats per minute are
not uncommon. Large metal shakers are quite widely used in Indian bands in the north and in
the northern Deccan; cymbals are more common in Kolkata bands and in Pakistan, where
some cymbal players achieve high levels of rhythmic virtuosity. Cymbals are a requisite
feature of Rajasthani percussion sections, which characteristically use only a single small
snare drum, large bass drum and cymbals.
Indian bands play what bandsmen call “high pitch” instruments, although they are not
entirely clear about what this means. Aftab Ahmad of the brass instrument manufacturers,
Nadir Ali & Sons states that in India this means that instruments are tuned to a British
military standard. Ahmad explained that in this system, the reference pitch A has a frequency
of 446 cycles per second (unlike the more common European and American tunings in which
A has a frequency of 440 cycles per second). The instruments of choice in India remain those
manufactured by Boosey & Co, the Hawkes Musical Instrument Company, and by the later
merged Boosey & Hawkes. There are in fact few functional British made instruments in
contemporary Indian bands. Well over ninety percent of the instruments in modern Indian
bands are manufactured by the Nadir Ali Company in Meerut.
In one of the more historically remarkable instrumental variations, Pakistani
bandsmen perform on the brass instruments of the earlier twentieth century. In addition to
Mueller clarinets, common everywhere in South Asia, this means that cornets, rather than
trumpets, are the norm in Pakistan and that the brass contrabasses are helicon shaped. In
some bands the instruments are actual Boosey & Hawkes instruments from the first half of the
20th century. There are a number of small factories in Sialkot that continue to make new
instruments in this old style, but bandsmen prefer old Boosey instruments to new locally
produced ones, and repair rather than replace whenever possible.
In the very early stages of the trade’s development, bandsmen acquired their
instruments from British bands as those units upgraded to more modern instrumentation. This
was a wide spread practice that reached its apotheosis in 1947, when some British Army
bandmasters apparently felt it more convenient to sell their instruments to Indians than to ship
them back to Britain, or where ever their new posts were located. The practice of purchasing

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second hand from local British units was sometimes supplemented by the more
straightforward, although certainly more costly practice of purchasing new European-made
instruments. According to Zafar Ali, Nadir Ali’s son, the Nadir Ali Company began importing
instruments from Europe in the late 19th century and continued doing so at least through the
1920s after which they began manufacturing their own. At times, especially prosperous band
families managed to import their own instruments directly from Britain. When the Jehanghir
Band family and bandsmen had to flee Amritsar in 1947, they were forced to leave behind a
complete set of brass band instruments, still in their crates, that the family had recently
purchased from the Boosey Company.
Elements of visual style
I have been at pains to point out that the two drummers of the Patna watercolor (Plate
7) represent more than the borrowing of musical instruments. Their distinctive dress is as
important as their instruments for understanding the flow of meanings from European to
Indian culture and the transformations of those meanings in Indian hands. Unlike the other
musicians, who are dressed in South Asian fashion, these two are dressed in an Indian
interpretation of European dress. They are in uniform; it is not too hard to imagine them
playing the same marching cadences they played as regimental drummers and trying to march
along in step and formation in the midst of their less structured colleagues.
Brass bands are visual, as well as musical spectacles, of course; they and the spectacle
of which they are a part collectively point to the incorporation of a whole package of
European symbols, ideology, and behaviors. Musical instruments, repertoire, visual
appearance and physical behavior are all matters for cultural negotiation and transformation.
The British military band is an accurate manifestation or extension of the regimented aspects
of European military practice in general, with its devaluation of individual identity. Indeed,
with a certain stretching the metaphorical credibility of my argument, I could propose that this
regimentation could be extended to similar aspects of broader European culture and perhaps
even the regimentation of the industrial revolution and mass-market capitalism as well.
Individuals are indistinguishable in military uniforms, formations emphasize control of
random movement; even the music and carefully structured marching, the human physical
response to that music, are well regimented. In the dress and practice of Indian bands, we can
observe at first hand Indian culture’s negotiation of these cultural symbols and behaviors.
Brass band uniforms are property of the µ⊄λικ, like all other aspects of the business.
Any µ⊄λικ who can afford it owns two or more sets of uniforms in different styles. Most
uniforms consist of a jacket, trousers, and hat or παγ⋅⊂ (turban). Puttees are sometimes

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included as well. Uniform styles change from region to region and within regions and cities
across time. I have already suggested (Chapter 2) that the investment for uniforms can be
significant.
Indian brass band uniforms display a range of responses to British military culture.
Straightforward reproductions of reasonably modern military uniform and typically older
style of military dress (including turban) are plentiful as are more creative adaptations of the
basic model that reflect the transforming power of individual creativity and fashion. In a
complete departure from military dress, some northern bands have introduced what are
sometimes called “dancing bandmasters.” Unlike their rank-and-file colleagues, dancing
bandmasters wear costumes whose origins can only be attributed to the Hindi cinema. In
addition to their musical contributions, they add a distinctive visual element, which they
emphasize through rehearsed dance movements. There is also a modern trend to put
identifying information on band uniforms. Many bandsmen walk the city streets with their
band’s name and more commonly, the shop’s telephone number on their backs. Uniforms,
whose origins are unmistakably European, have undergone transformations in contemporary
Indian culture. From some earlier published photographs of commercial band uniforms,
however, it is clear that the transformations of band uniforms away from the explicitly
military style are not a post-1947 phenomenon.
Uniforms are not the only spectacular aspects of the fictitious βαρ⊄τ shown in Plate
7; the banners and other visual symbols add to the overall effect. The triangle-shaped banners
at the front of the procession have their antecedents in the military standards and flags used by
both European and Indian armies. We can no more be sure of the origins of the banners than
of the drummers; but according to at least one witness, we can suppose that these banners
might also be military ones, borrowed along with the drummers.
In 1894, Lady Elisabeth Bruce, newly arrived in Kolkata, recorded her first experience
with an Indian wedding procession. Lady Elisabeth wrote that the procession was “headed by
standard bearers of a native regiment [in uniform] ... followed by about twelve stands of glass
...then came a carriage shaped like a boat in which was a band” (n.d.: 22-23). In the
procession that Bruce witnessed, explicit European military symbols, and adaptations of
European (but perhaps also Muslim) chandeliers contribute to the complex of meanings
combined into a single wedding procession. Like many of her contemporaries, Lady
Elisabeth was frustratingly vague about the actual nature of the “band”. All she tells us is that
the group in the boat-shaped carriage was “playing without any music” (ibid.), although

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whether this is a value judgement or a technical description of performance practice is
impossible to determine.
The banners at contemporary βαρ⊄τs, if there are any, are produced by µ⊄λικs to
identify their band; most µ⊄λικs of stature consider this essential. The banners of most bands
in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Kolkata are large roughly rectangular pieces of velvet or
similar cloth with the band’s name, location, and sometimes telephone number embroidered
on it in large ornate gold letters. Often, one side is in English, the other in Hindi (or a
regional language in some cases). Some bands from Delhi and most of those to the west
through Punjab tend to use solid signboards of wood or even metal which are large and round
in Punjab, but often quite small in Delhi itself. Further south, bands tend not to use
signboards as such; but µ⊄λικs often have the relevant information painted on the bells of
brass contrabasses. These instruments, which are not musically functional, are carried in the
front rank of the formation and so serve the same purpose as the banners of the north. In
Pakistan, brass bands use no banners or standards at all.
The final physical element of the band party, the τελ⊂ψα or trolley, displays yet
another version of the process of cultural change. Those encountered from Ahmadabad south
come in two different styles, neither of which appears in the north at all. In Gujarat
especially, one finds rather small carts similar to those used by produce retailers who cart
their goods from neighborhood to neighborhood, with large wire wheels and a flat tabletop on
which amplifier and batteries are placed and onto which a superstructure is built to hold
loudspeaker horns. These carts carry electronic keyboards, microphones for singers and
instrumental soloists (especially clarinets) as well as the necessary batteries and amplifiers.
South of Gujarat are small purpose-built vehicles that often resemble automobiles or
sometimes airplanes. These are specifically designed to seat a keyboard player and do not
offer microphones or amplification for other instruments. Hubcaps, or imitations of hubcaps
are commonly used as loudspeaker covers, which are located above the seated musician. In
the north--that is, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh--τελ⊂ψαs are much larger and are
prominently equipped with large conical loudspeaker horns. Competition between bands
naturally leads to increasingly large and ornate τελ⊂ψαs. The large bands of Delhi have
produced a further innovation. Since τελ⊂ψαs are traditionally located at the back of the
band, the Master and Jea bands have created smaller satellite speaker towers on wheels, which
are connected to the main trolley by speaker wire, but which are located at the head of the
band formation. The logistics of keeping the two units connected and the speaker wire free

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from obstructions can assume nightmare proportions as processions move through narrower
city streets and large crowds.
Amplification trolleys have no ancestry in European military processions, and can
only be understood as an ingenious Indian invention to allow amplified instruments to
participate in processional ritual. In spite of their recent appearance, however (mid- to late
1970s?), it is almost impossible to watch the large northern trolleys force their way through
processional crowds without being reminded of the huge wheeled carts (most stereotypically
represented by the vehicle of Lord Jagganath of Puri) of Hindu processional culture. One
could perhaps argue that τελ⊂ψαs are also borrowed transformations, but of Indian rather
than European processional culture and symbolism. Τελ⊂ψαs have been a gradual
development in Indian bands, probably beginning in Delhi and/or Mumbai, and spreading
from there. In 1984, most northern bands outside Delhi were without τελ⊂ψαs or were in the
process of acquiring them; they only appeared in Amritsar in the mid-1990s.
Fashion, tradition, and cultural change
In the period from 1987-88, the Varanasi band world was the scene of considerable
competition to determine which band would be able to first offer a functional τελ⊂ψα and
amplification system to their customers. The winners in the field were the Munna Band; their
τελ⊂ψα was already functional. The two most successful bands in Varanasi throughout the
period of my fieldwork were probably the Munna Band and the Punjab Band, both Hashimi
owned. Right behind them, however, were the brothers of the Mumtaz Band. Bandmasters,
µ⊄λικs, and cousins (see Figure 3, Chapter 2), Mumtaz and Munna are contemporaries and
friends, who in their younger days traveled together to larger cities as καρ⊂γαρs in order to
acquire a broader perspective on their trade. Although they compete with each other
professionally, they socialize together on a regular basis.
A functioning τελ⊂ψα requires the actual cart or trolley itself, an amplifier, speaker
horns, batteries, and in most cases, a microphone as well. Under Mumtaz’ direction, these
pieces were slowly being collected by the brothers at a time when imported goods were only
just becoming readily available in the larger cities of India and were very expensive. They
were anxious to get the entire thing working for a large procession in honor of the birth of
Guru Govind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru. I have earlier noted the importance of the
celebration of Guru Govind Singh ϕ⊄ψαντ⊂ in the Sikh community. Such processions often
require multiple bands in a long parade through the city streets. This particular procession
wound its way through Varanasi streets from roughly 1:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 that
night. The procession included the Munna and Mumtaz Bands, two bagpipe bands, and many

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other processional elements. Since they were appearing on the same stage, so to speak, it was
especially important for the Mumtaz Band that they have the same technological and
fashionable features as their major competitors. In the event, the Mumtaz τελ⊂ψα did appear
about an hour after the procession began. With three assistants working feverishly, they got
the amplifier and speakers wired and working in time for one of Mumtaz’s nephews (younger
brother Naushad’s 10-year-old son) to be a featured vocalist for much of the procession.
Except for processions of this sort, which are yearly events at best, two or more bands
rarely appear in the same event. Nevertheless bandsmen are usually very much aware of what
their competition is up to in both a musical and technological sense. Any fashion innovation,
musical or otherwise, that can help a band attract more customers is valued. Novelty is
nevertheless a short-lived commodity in the band world. When I first appeared in Hyderabad
in 1989, my photographs of bands from Kolkata (from where I had just come) were of special
interest to some Hyderabadi band µ⊄λικs, who quickly adopted the unusual (for Hyderabad)
costume styles in order to attract customers. Given the public nature of their profession,
fashion innovations such as τελ⊂ψα, keyboards, repertoire items, or new uniform styles,
spread very quickly within an urban band market. Most bands within a city and region offer
the same kinds of visual, musical, and technological features. The more successful shops
simply have more and better of whatever element is considered. Although competition
among bands can sometimes be quite intense, especially among a city’s leading bands, who
have more both to gain and to loose, bandsmen also understand that any advantage is
temporary. In the band world, however, the need to change with the times, to remain
fashionable may interact with claims to venerability in the competition for customers.
The sign on the shop of the Noor Mohamed Band in Mumbai specifies 1840 as the
date of the band’s inception. Some µ⊄λικs who feel that they have special claims to
venerability and tradition do choose to advertise themselves in this fashion. Although their
claim is both more specific and more extreme than most, the family owning the Noor
Mohamed Band is now in its seventh generation and certainly appears justified in its claim to
a special and historical place in Mumbai’s processional music culture. According to the
family, 1840 was the year in which their ancestor, Abdulla, first went into business for
himself as a processional music provider (obviously the band was not called Noor Mohamed
at this time; it was probably not called anything at all). The family’s oral history, however,
states that when Abdulla first came to Mumbai, he got a job in another processional ensemble
until he had learned the trade and saved enough money, in the way that bandsmen are still
doing 150 years later. The band that employed Abdulla was a “drum and bugle band”,

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according to Anwar Hussain, the current Noor Mohamed manager and brother-in-law of the
current µ⊄λικ, Muhammad Hanif.
In 1840 Ranjit Singh’s band was still playing “God Save the Queen.” It is very early
in the history of this tradition, which did not spring to life full blown as one in which brass
bands played a central role. Indian musicians acquired European instruments by buying or
borrowing when they could; as more instruments reached the level of processional street
musicians, regular private ensembles were gradually established. The typical military
musicians of the 18th and early 19th century were drummers, buglers, and sometimes fifers;
one must assume that those Indian musicians involved in the trade in the first half of the 19th
century most commonly began with some combination of these instruments. Subsequent
instrumental change proceeded within families, within particular areas, and across the
subcontinent as a whole, often with minor (or sometimes major) divergences in speed and
direction. Change was driven by fashion and affected by accessibility. The instruments of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries eventually came to be perceived as old fashioned by both
British and Indian listeners, even if the perceptions of the latter changed with some degree of
delay relative to British perceptions. Ultimately, the way in which Indians viewed the British
Raj itself played a role in how musical change proceeded. Banerjee, for instance notes that
“by the turn of the nineteenth century, as the Bengali upper class of Kolkata came to realize
that the British were firmly entrenched as rulers in the country, they sought to improve their
prospects under the patronage of the new rulers and were ready to adopt their language”
(Banerjee, 1989: 42). The turn of the nineteenth century may, perhaps, be a bit early for the
Indian adoption of British processional ensembles, but not by much. After the turn of the
twentieth century, perceptions of the British were changing again; Kolkata was again a city at
the leading edge of the changes that were to culminate in Indian Independence in 1947. Even
in the midst of the nationalist upheavals, however, brass bands appear in Indian processional,
even in explicitly political processions: “The Hindu Arya Samaj [a Hindu nationalist
organization] held its annual procession in North Calcutta on 2 April 1926. It was led by a
band” (Moorhouse, 1971: 203). Instrumental change, and an accompanying change in
perceptions regarding musical instruments must have been fairly well established for a
nationalist procession to employ the musical symbols of the colonial power in a
demonstration against their presence.
Instrumental Fashions
The instrumental resources available to Indian processional musicians increased
during the first half of the 20th century. In part, this was due to the importance of cities such

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as Bombay and Kolkata in international trade and shipping. Established families often
changed instrumentation from generation to generation as availability and fashion offered
them new options and new compulsions. Figure 11 shows the business cards of four brass
bands. In themselves, business cards offer a range of interesting perspectives on the trade; but
I have selected the four shown here to further my discussion of fashions in musical
instruments. Most µ⊄λικs, even if they are very poor, will have business cards printed at
some point in their careers. While they are constrained by economics and available
technology in the production of their cards, µ⊄λικs nevertheless do make choices about how
they will represent themselves to their potential customers. In each of these particular cards,
their creators have chosen to define their professional identity through reference to specific
instruments or through the actual images of important musical instruments. The period in
which a µ⊄λικ purchases his cards naturally influences the images he chooses; whether or not
he updates them over time depends on a range of factors including his success and his
perceived need for such items. Of the four cards in Figure 11, my suspicion is that Card 3 is
the most recently printed (I believe in the early 1990s) and that Card 1 is the oldest (at a
guess, I would suggest mid-1970s). As we move down the page, however, we encounter
discrete, and collectively more modern moments in processional music fashion.
The Seena Band (Figure 11, Number 1) is one of a number of bands owned by a group
Northwest Frontier Pathans, the first of whom migrated to Hyderabad late in the 1930s. The
first migrants had experience in traditional double reed and British military bagpipe
performance. The “Banarasi Shahnahi” ensemble, which the group offers, is highlighted on
this card with red lettering that gives it equal status with the bolder “Seena Band” in the center
of the card. Although demand for “Banarasi shahnahi” was probably waning (at best) when
this card was printed, fashions in Hyderabad, a city on the southern border of the brass band
world, were ambiguous enough for this instrument to carry prestige, even if no one ever hired
the group for this purpose.
The Punjab Band card (Number 2) displays no investment in pre-British instruments,
even though this group’s founder, like the founder of the Seena Band, was a Northwest
Frontier Pathan with military and traditional double reed experience (see Chapter 1). Instead,
Card Number 2 shows us a British bugle, probably one of the earliest British processional
instruments to be incorporated into Indian processional practice, still closely connected to the
Police or Army (Fau-ji) style bands. Fau-ji bands are bagpipe bands; but in most such bands,
the bagpipers also carry bugles on which they sometimes perform military-style bugle calls.
Since the Punjab Band was originally a bagpipe band, the bugle’s image connects the band to

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its military and instrumental past. In conjunction with the reference on the left of the card--
”Oldest shop”--this reinforces this family’s own notion of itself as a long established, indeed
traditional band.
Card Number 3 is an updated card representing one of Hyderabad’s most successful
bands during the 1980s and 1990s. The Prabhat Band card makes a major step forward in
instrumental fashions. The featured line drawing shows us the σε√η (or µ⊄λικ), Tukaram
Jadhav, seated in the band’s τελ⊂ψα, playing an electronic keyboard. Unlike the two cards
above it, this image emphasizes the modern as a feature of the Prabat Band’s appeal.
Customers seeing this card will know that the band they might hire is a modern, up-to-date
ensemble. It is worth noting the tri-lingual nature of this card (the band’s name is printed in
English, Telugu, and Hindi) since the group hopes to appeal to a wide range of communities
in their multi-lingual city.
Finally, the card of σε√η Jagannath More makes an important departure from the
images of the first three cards. While the first two cards more or less explicitly refer to
processional instruments, and while Card Number 3 depicts the cultural solution for the
inclusion of electronic keyboards in processional settings, the Tansen Band card suggests
orchestral possibilities. Both the dominant keyboard image (without a τελ⊂ψα) and the
silhouette of the saxophone player (not a standard band instrument in India but important in
film and pop orchestra contexts) refer ambiguously to more than a modern brass band. With
this card, the Tansen Band becomes not only a supplier of processional music, but of pop
music orchestras for receptions and other functions as well. As I make clear later in this
chapter, pop orchestras appear to be an increasingly important musical fashion in India.
Each of these cards, of course, represents a specific moment of fashion in a particular
city. Collectively, with others, and with other kinds of information, we can make out a sub-
continental drift in processional music fashions. This is a story that I tell based on the many
individual stories that data such as these cards have to offer. More evidence of this
instrumental drift is found in oral histories and in rare pieces of documentation. One such
document is the publicity brochure of the Noor Mohamed Band (circa 1930), especially useful
in conjunction with the comments of some of the family’s senior members.
A remarkable number of musical ensembles, with various configurations, filled the
instrumental spaces between founder Abdulla’s drums and bugles in the 1840s and the brass
band-with-amplified-keyboard of his descendants. There was in fact some sort of
instrumental progression from 1840 to 1980. Ghulam Ahmad (1927-1989), a member of the
fifth generation since the beginning of the family’s involvement, told me that at one time the

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family played bagpipes; but he was not sure about when this might have been. Ahmad further
suggested that probably only a generation or so after their beginnings in the processional
trade, members of his musical family were playing Eb soprano clarinets, probably still with
pre-European percussion. He further noted that by the time Abdulla’s son, Muhammad, took
over the business, European instruments were increasingly accessible. The family adopted
full brass instrumentation sometime around 1900; this change is associated in the family’s
history with the latter career of Muhammad’s son, Nur Muhammad (1860-1920). Comparing
the chronology of instrumental change reported by the family owners of the Noor Mohamed
Band with that reported for the Hashimi bands of Varanasi (Figure 3, Chapter 2), we see a
similar instrumental progression, but at a remarkably different pace. This should not be too
surprising. Mumbai and Varanasi, after all, are two cities characterized by very different
histories and by distinctive social and economic conditions, during both the colonial and
Independent periods. The West, so to speak, was and is much more physically and culturally
present in India’s major western port metropolis than it has ever been in one of the oldest
living cities of the subcontinent.
Like the Noor Mohamed Band family and like hundreds of other older band families,
the Hashimi extended family shown in Figure 3 incorporated a wide range of musical
instrument configurations in the 150 traceable years of their processional music activity.
Figure 3 locates musical change in Varanasi processional music in relation to the major
figures active in the trade within the family. Along with the ⋅ηολs, τ⊄∨αs, and ⋅αφs of their
Daffali roots, members of the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ also played ∨αην⊄⊂ and later exchanged those
instruments for Eb soprano clarinets. They shifted with the times to bagpipes in the period
between 1930 and 1955. The importance of bagpipes for this group is much clearer and more
extended than it is for the Noor Mohamed Band. Indeed, the branch of the family resident in
Telia Nala and the descendants of Muhammad Siddiq, who are distant cousins of the Mumtaz
brothers, still cling to bagpipes. This persistence is in spite of the demonstrable
improvements in the fortunes of those of their relatives who now play brass. Certainly, as the
diagram shows, brass bands are in the majority within the family. Brass bands first appeared
among Varanasi’s Hashimi bandsmen at roughly the same time they appear Patna, that is, a
good twenty-five to thirty years after the appearance of the Macchan Band in Muzaffarpur,
and at least fifty years after Nur Muhammad converted his family to brass instruments. This
might suggest the later appearance of brass bands in eastern Hindustan, but for the usual
complication. There is no question that the Varanasi Hashimis have the longest involvement

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with processional music of any social or professional group in their city; the oldest extant
brass bands in Varanasi, however, are not Hashimi owned.
The Saraswati Band belongs to a family related to the Hindu sweeper, or Bhangi ϕ⊄τ,
whose ancestors first acquired their skills in the military, transferred those skills to a circus
band, and finally (circa 1900) transformed themselves into a private brass wedding band.
Like most low caste families, this group bypassed the bagpipe stage, which seems to have
been a largely Muslim fascination. (The relative absence of Muslim band owners in the oral
histories of the Deccan may help explain the apparent absence of bagpipe bands in that
region.) The early arrival of the Saraswati and later the Bhagwan Dass brass bands in
Varanasi offered the public a choice of ensemble for their wedding processions. What is
more, these were sometimes rather extreme choices between ∨αην⊄⊂ based ‘traditional’
ensembles played by the Hashimi and novel, modern, urban, and consequently fashionable
brass bands, manned by the Bhangi. What is surprising about this story is that it took the
Hashimi so long to begin transforming themselves into more modern ensembles, after the
arrival of brass bands on their turf. The persistence of older ensembles among Varanasi’s
Hashimi processional musicians may speak to the robustness of the Hashimi professional
organization, or to what some describe as Varanasi’s innate conservatism. While they may
have come fairly late to the party, however, the Hashimi musicians were revenged on those
who had led the movement for change. When change within the Hashimi βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ finally
began, it took the most successful families in the βιρ⊄δαρ⊂ slightly longer than a single
generation to move through Eb clarinets and bagpipes to brass. The Hashimi thus completely
diluted the initial novelty value that the Saraswati Band may have enjoyed. Further, once they
had made the change, the greater numbers and superior professional organizational strategies
of the Hashimi musicians, and no doubt their established patronage networks as well,
completely overshadowed the scheduled caste bands that they had originally been forced to
imitate.
Early 20th Century pictures of the band and their uniforms suggest more than a simple
progression of musical instruments. Looking at the uniforms and settings, one has a powerful
sense of a successful and prestigious enterprise that is located at the very cusp of the syncretic
forces at work in colonial Indian culture. This is yet another side, so to speak, of the band
trade, one that is specifically urban and apparently most powerful in the relatively small
region from Mumbai to Surat (and possibly Ahmadabad). In addition to the traditional
aspects of the band world, and their obvious historical connections to royal prestige, bands
from the early 20th century, such as Noor Mohamed, clearly have developed the British or

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colonial side of their image more than many of the poorer hereditary groups. And, the image
is one of musicians who offer entertainment for a range of cultural and social functions in
addition to what one assumes remained their major source of income as processional
musicians. As the brochure tells us, these smaller, perhaps more sophisticated, and certainly
more novel ensembles performed for garden parties, birthdays, etc. They were the
appropriate entertainment for Mumbai’s Indian elite. Plate 9 shows members of the Noor
Mohamed Band accompanying an unidentified film singer for just such a social function that
took place sometime in the late 1940s in Mumbai. The clarinetist just behind the singer and to
her right is another Muhammad (1914-??), this time the youngest son of Nur Muhammad. In
this sense, bands are the epitome, not only of urban culture, but of colonial urban culture as
well, which simultaneously embraces and transforms the symbols of western culture. The
successful urban bands of the first half of the 20th century, such as Noor Mohamed, the Razak
Band in Surat, and perhaps the Babu Band of Lahore are thus symbols of the modern, the
novel. They were the ensembles of choice for young educated Indians growing up in, living
in, and engaging with British India. Their entire image is one designed to appeal to the urban
elites and their middle class and/or rural imitators.
Of course, fashion itself is not a one-way progression, as any consideration of western
clothing fashions will attest. The re-appearance of fife and drum bands in the hands of
Punjabi school children in the first half of the 20th century emphasizes that Indian
processional fashions are equally unpredictable. By replacing the fifes with bugles (or
perhaps by simply adding bugles, which also are used by Amritsar school bands) and
reducing the overall size of the group one can imagine that this might have been the kind of
band in which Abdulla found his first processional music work. The very idea of fashion, of
course, includes a specificity of time and place. In Figure 11, the business card of the Seena
Band in Hyderabad displays similarly mixed messages about fashion and the meaning of
musical instruments and ensembles. This is certainly an old card; it was not updated (as was
Card Number 3) once the Seena Band fell on hard times in the 1980s. Thus, while these
symbols may not generate prestige through an appeal to the modern sense, as does, for
example, Card Number 3, they do indicate a connection to heritage and tradition (surely other
forms of prestige) that the Seena Band family is more or less compelled to value. In these and
other stories of the band world, fashion, instrumental change, and musical change appear to
by synonymous. In the oral and contemporary stories of the brass band trade, one of the most
recent changes in processional music fashion and instrumentation during the 20th century has

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been from bagpipe bands to brass bands. The following two stories show change in both
directions, driven by new musical influences in one case and by cultural change in the other.
Bagpipes in the Purab and the Punjab
Fau-ji bands, composed of bagpipes, drums, and bugles, and sometimes identified as
police or army bands, were prominent features of Indian processional life during the mid-20th
century. The introduction of these instruments into the processional trade seems largely
attributable to ex-military bandsmen from the northwestern areas of the subcontinent, men of
almost exclusively Sikh or Muslim backgrounds. To the extent that I can determine, the vast
majority of active and influential professional bagpipers in the processional trade were
Muslims who, once established in that trade, changed to brass instruments only after local
competition (often from Hindu or low caste Muslim groups) forced them to do so. We have
seen this reluctance among Muslim bandsmen in Patna and Varanasi, for example. In each
location where bagpipes were replaced by brass, we see the impact of social organization on
the dynamics of musical or instrumental change.
The Universal Band, for example, was opened as a bagpipe band in Pune in 1927 by
Sheikh Rahim; he was apparently an ex-military or police bandsman. Rahim migrated to
Pune from his village in northern Maharashtra for this purpose. His son, Sheikh Muhammad,
transformed the group into the Darbar Brass Band around 1951. Pune is about as far south as
bagpipes seem to have traveled a commercially owned police-style band instruments; oral
histories further south make no mention of bagpipe bands (except for the Nizam of
Hyderabad’s military bands that attracted the original members of the Seena Band family
discussed above). Plate 8, which I discussed earlier, suggests that the instrument may well
have traveled further south in syncretic ensembles. As usual, of course, the vague quality of
the label, the Deccan, makes it impossible to be certain where this photo was taken. It might
have been taken in Pune for all that I can tell.
When Sheikh Rahim’s family changed from bagpipes to brass in 1951 they were
responding, if rather slowly, to changes in local processional fashion, which were in turn
naturally dominated by metropolitan Bombay, 160 kilometers to the north. Brass bands
(Noor Mohamed at least) had been functioning there from roughly 1900. There had also been
brass bands in Pune since at least 1937. Approximately 15 years separate the opening of
Pune’s first brass band shop (Prabhat) and Universal’s transformation into the Darbar Brass
Band; but we should by now be used to delay in changes by established musical
configurations. Perhaps Sheikh Rahim’s family was waiting to see if the change would be
popular in their city, or were accumulating money for the new instruments.

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Ultimately, it is the newcomers who initiate the process of change in almost every instance.
Instrumental change, the introduction of a new processional fashion, is a way of making room
for one’s self, so to speak, in the marketplace. It is a strategy for those whose social identity
gives them no automatic access to established patronage networks, for regional outsiders, for
those acting under compulsion. Each individual story of families involved in change shows
us the human, and usually financial motivations behind this process.
One of the proudest claims that his family makes for the late Muhammad Gucchan
(the Rampur clarinetist and founder of the Macchan Band whose career is outlined in Chapter
3) is that he was responsible for introducing brass instruments in Bihar and eastern Uttar
Pradesh. They see him as an innovator or fashion leader who showed the musicians of eastern
Hindustan the model for a more modern version of processional fashion. This perspective is
better understood when we remember that Gucchan’s family and Sheikh-Siddiqi caste-mates
consider most eastern Muslim bandsmen to be of lower social status than they are.
Muhammad Gucchan appeared in the Purab (literally east, used to identify eastern
Uttar Pradesh, parts of Bihar, and West Bengal) with his brass band in 1932. The response of
bagpipers in nearby Patna to this brass presence, if that is indeed what they were responding
to, was as slow as that in other cities. The earliest converts to the new fashion, the Musa
Band, did not appear until 1947; they remained the only brass band for 10 years, when a
second brass group appeared, influenced by brass bands in Kolkata. After 1957, new bands
that appeared were brass bands, and the remaining bagpipe bands began to transform
themselves into brass bands.
As I made clear in the previous chapter, Gucchan was an outsider in eastern India, a
resident of a princely city much further west, where royal and private brass bands were
already present. Whether he was the author of the change to brass instruments in the Purab,
or whether his arrival in Muzaffarpur simply coincided with the beginnings of change in the
region’s processional fashions is not a resolvable issue. What evidence there is does not
strongly support Gucchan’s case; the low-caste Muslim brass bands in Kolkata seem to have
also had some impact. Certainly, none of the extant brass bandsmen in Patna or Varanasi,
whose fathers did in fact play bagpipes, acknowledge Gucchan’s influence; but such
admissions might give more credit to Gucchan than these men find acceptable. As is so often
the case in the oral and contested stories of the band world, a lack of supporting evidence is
not necessarily damning. Nevertheless, musical change at the broad level of social or ritual
practice is rarely attributable to a single individual. The broad trend, professional competition
for patronage between bagpipe and brass bands owned by different social groups, is at least

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clear, however. It is also true that the shops, which were opened as bagpipe bands in the
1930s and 40s, or which were operating as bagpipe bands in the three decades leading up to
Independence, did find themselves forced to change their instrumentation in the first few
decades after Partition. Those who did not suffered a severe loss of patronage to the new
brass ensembles.
As the 20th century progressed, bagpipe bands had more factors working against them
than just their increasingly old fashioned image. Unlike their brass cousins, bagpipe bands
still play the marches of the standard British/Scottish bagpipe repertoire almost exclusively.
To be sure, brass bands also played items from the military repertoire (see Chapter 6); but
almost from the beginning seem to have expanded their repertoire to include a wide range of
indigenous musics, folk, classical, and popular, as suited their long standing place in global as
well as Indian popular culture. Pathe Khan (b. 1933) is an elderly bandmaster in central Uttar
Pradesh. He reports that his great-grandfather, who was active during the last 30 years of the
19th century, played what he called “Hindustani σαγ⊂τ” on cornet during the latter portion
of his career. Pathe Khan explained to me that by this he meant classical or light classical
ρ⊄γα music transferred from ∨αην⊄⊂, the instrument that his great-grandfather played
before changing to cornet. Pathe Khan said that his family also played locally popular folk
songs.
By the time his father, Buddim (b. 1910) was well established in his own musical career (still
playing cornet), this family, along with the rest of India, was responding to the increasingly
loud voice of the Hindi cinema.
Bagpipes, are largely incapable of playing Hindi film songs, or of producing the solo-
chorus or call and response style of most such songs. In the end their image and their music
were too inflexible; they were unable to produce the increasingly celebratory and
participatory atmosphere that βαρ⊄τs were assuming and to which film songs, very sing-able
and danceable, known by the whole family, contributed. Brass bands responded
appropriately; but the military nature of bagpipe bands’ visual and musical content was
significantly less amenable to transformative influence. Bagpipes lost their appeal as
processional ensembles in part because they could not adopt the new popular repertoire. In
contemporary India, there remain a small number of private bagpipe bands, all located in
eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; the total number of bands might well be less than one
hundred. They are rarely hired except for very large processions where one might want a
representative bagpipe band or two along with everything else.

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 Urban influences (urban-based brass bands, the growth of the cities as patronage
centers) on smaller cities and towns, together with the growing dominance of films and film
music (themselves rooted in the metropolises) were collectively responsible for the demise of
bagpipe bands in India. The music culture and the ritual culture both changed, leaving
bagpipes in a largely untenable position. Brass bandsmen, who had also been playing military
music as part of their repertoire (many still play at least one march at βαρ⊄τs, see Chapter 6)
were able to adapt musically (by focusing more heavily on film song), visually (in some
cases, by de-emphasizing the military aspects of their uniforms and adding more festive
elements), and behaviorally (the addition of τελ⊂ψα, the encouragement of dancing and
tipping) in ways that bagpipe bands could not.
It is perhaps ironic that Lahore, the capital of the pre-Partition Punjab and one of the
most important cities in the history of brass bands, is currently the center of a very decided
“comeback” on the part of bagpipe bands in the Pakistani Punjab, Sindh, and the Northwest
Frontier. Fau-ji Bands in Pakistan actually share many more professional characteristics with
India’s brass band trade than do Pakistani brass bands. Bagpipe shops cluster in caste related
neighborhoods, social and professional distinctions are at least sometimes found between
µ⊄λικs and καρ⊂γαρs, and bagpipe καρ⊂γαρs are frequently seasonal migrants from
smaller towns and villages. Like their brass band colleagues India, but unlike their brass band
competitors in Pakistan, bagpipe καρ⊂γαρs work on seasonal contracts.
Private commercial bagpipe bands are largely a post-1947 phenomenon in Pakistan,
inaugurated, or at least enlivened by the influx of ex-Indian Army bagpipe playing refugees
from eastern Punjab and Harayana. In Lahore, where brass bands played such a prominent
role, Fau-ji bands had a difficult time initially. Famous brass bands and their clarinetist
leaders played popular and classical music with great virtuosity and vigor. Gradually,
however, the virtuoso generation of clarinetists was replaced by their somewhat less gifted or
well-trained students and sons. More recently, in the early 1990s, the Nawaz Sharif
government enacted laws that limited the amount of food and drink families could publicly
offer to wedding guests, and generally discouraged the kinds of conspicuous and excessive
consumption that βαρ⊄τs have come embody. This attitude resulted in fewer wedding
guests, less dancing, and a lower standard of general merriment; these changes, together with
the somewhat damping effect of religious fundamentalism have all contributed to a
weakening of the cultural factors that make brass bands compulsory in India. Thus, the
fashion in processional music, driven by changes in the surrounding Pakistani culture, is

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gradually moving away from brass bands and towards bagpipe bands. In contrast to the
roughly 40-50 brass bands in Lahore, there are now well over 100 bagpipe bands.
Pop Music Orchestras
Aside from this peculiarly Pakistani shift, the present instrumental configurations and
choices of Indian processional culture appear reasonably stable in the immediate term. As I
will explain in my final chapter, I suspect that the implications for change arising from the use
of amplified voices are considerable. But to some extent, one either has a brass band or one
does not; until processional practice, and especially ritually motivated processional practice
disappears, it is unlikely that the bands will disappear. In this sense, pop music orchestras in
South Asia are really part of another study; they are not part of processional practice.
Nevertheless, contemporary Indian practice and historical documentation both tell us that
popular music orchestras are sometimes owned and operated by µ⊄λικ band families and that
brass band µ⊄λικ families have engaged in this sideline throughout much of their history.
This is especially true of band owners in urban centers boasting an active social life.
Throughout the Razak Band’s 1930s publicity brochure, the term “concert” is used in an
antiquated sense to mean ensemble or band. To quote their own text, Razak’s “Indian Piano-
Styled Concert” (I have added the hyphen to make more clear the label’s meaning) “imparts
real entertainments to the Ladies and Gentlemen at Garden Parties, Exhibitions and Wedding
Parties, greatly enhancing the charm of such occasions.” This collection of xylophone shaped
percussion instruments blends many images. The two small xylophones enclosed within
automobile shaped holders are certainly images of the modern. Many of the remaining
instruments appear to be relatively standard metalophones, although perhaps the three at
center right are wood.
The two larger instruments at the extreme left and right of the group together with a
smaller version in the center back posses unusual resonators that appear to have tassels
beneath them. It may be a coincidence that these resonators resemble Chinese or East Asian
gongs; but among the other ensembles in this brochure, the Razak family includes a “Chinese
String Orchestra” which includes such typically East Asian instruments as the banjo, the
mandolin, and what looks like an acoustic Hawaiian slide guitar (although the instrument
appears to have additional strings added to it and so may be an early version of the
modifications contemporary classical Indian guitarists have pursued). In front of the seated
group are the only instruments that might actually be “Chinese.” These are trapezoid-shaped
zithers, almost certainly either the Chinese yang chin, or the South East Asian version of this
instrument such as the Thai kim. Whatever the precise origins of any of these instruments

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offered by the A. Razak Band, they are clearly presenting an image of urban sophistication,
exotica and worldliness. The international flavor is no doubt superficial. But, along with
their bandsmen’s clean and unostentatious uniforms, these “Chinese” instruments are clearly
designed to appeal to the global sense of those Indians (and perhaps British as well) who
viewed themselves as part of the global culture of the British Empire between the world wars.
The brochure offered by the A. Noor Mohamed Band, from which we have already
seen a wide range of ensemble choices, also focuses on novelty. Their brochure notes, “we
have recently added many Modern Novelties in our instruments and display, and the same
have proved very interesting to the Public.” Among the novelties offered was a junior band.
“This Band is composed of little children from 7 to 12 years of age who play at concerts some
of the latest pieces of music in a manner that will surprise you.” The instrumental
configuration of the junior band is certainly novel. In addition to the banjos and mandolins,
are a number of τ⊄ρ−∨αην⊄⊂ with their characteristic metal horn-shaped resonators
attached, in the manner (and one suspects imitation) of phonograph horns. At the center of
the ensemble, a young Muhammad, youngest son of µ⊄λικ, Nur Muhammad, plays a
xylophone that appears for all the world to be a Thai renat ek. If in fact the instrument is
imported from Thailand, the instrument’s distinctive tuning must have made it all but useless
for actual music making in India.
Both the player and the instrument appear in the background of f 9 (above).
Muhammad is seated behind and to the right of the singer at the microphone. He plays
clarinet. To the left of the mandolin player, however, one can just make out the renat ek,
although it does not appear that anyone is playing it. Ensembles such as those in these
brochures help us put the entire matter of brass bands in greater perspective. Here they appear
as simply one additional component of a global music culture that was possible in places
where the commercial and political results of the British Empire allowed the combination and
merging of cultures on a level that was, in historical terms, unprecedented.
A modern pop music orchestra, which might comprise four to five instrumentalists,
two drummers and two or more singers, is an ensemble that has a more evenly distributed and
consistent patronage base, unlike the highly seasonal demand for processional wedding bands.
In this way orchestras make the perfect complement to a band owning family’s musical
business. After the wedding season is finished and the καρ⊂γαρs have returned to their
villages, the family and a few hired associates can operate a pop orchestra quite successfully.
In at least some of the families that run both bands and pop orchestras, the family only plays

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in the orchestra. In this way they avoid any negative ritual and musical implications of the
processional context, for which their καρ⊂γαρs perform.
Bagpipe bands and pop orchestras are two trends that show us related pasts and
possible futures for bands and bandsmen in South Asia. One represents a processional
alternative, for which demand has arisen in a changing social and religious environment, the
other an alternative to processional activity altogether. Neither will completely overshadow
brass bands in the immediate future.
It is among the inconsistencies of brass bands in modern South Asia that for some
bands, their meaning, their selling point, is not their up-to-the-minute fashion, but their
venerability, their connection to the colonial period of Indian history, as shown in the
brochure images above. Lahore’s Babu Band is a very old shop, begun under the name of the
Special Military Band in Lahore in 1885 and maintained by a single family for this entire
length of time. As I sat one day, speaking with the µ⊄λικ Haji Muhammad Baluch (?-1997),
a customer came to the shop in search, as he said, of The Babu Band. He had heard or read of
the band’s reputation and age and wished therefore to hire them for a wedding. My presence,
and the fact that a foreigner had specifically sought out the band because of their fame,
confirmed Baluch’s status (at least in this customer’s eyes) as owner of the band in question.
That Baluch’s asking price (12,000 rupees for 24 men) was a bit high for this particular
customer does not change the fundamental meaning that this customer attached to this
particular band. The appeal of the Babu Band was their great age; they represented tradition
in the urban world of Lahore bands. Like many things that begin by symbolizing innovation,
novelty, and urban fashion, bands can now be understood to offer traditional accompaniment
to the processional ritual. They are symbols that have been transformed from icons of British
superiority and sovereignty to components of traditional Indian processional culture. The
final three chapters of this book will examine the more musical and performance based issues
of processional practice, musical repertoire, and musical performance, in which the cultural
symbols described here become the tools of a musical profession.

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 Chapter 5. The Practice of Processions and Processional Music

Waiting on the margins

I begin my discussion of Indian processions and processional practice with an 18th
century watercolor simply labeled ‘Hindu wedding’ (Plate 10). Although weddings do figure
prominently in this study, the painting may seem a strange choice for an exploration of South
Asian processional music and culture; in it, no one processes. Painted in Lucknow around
1775, the scene nevertheless depicts threads of continuity in India’s processional music
traditions. It also offers a fictional historical instant with which to contrast late 20th century
practice. The painting superimposes a number of different asynchronous events and
components of the wedding ritual upon a single time and space. In the large center section of
the painting, (the present, so to speak), the bride and groom circumambulate the sacrificial
fire. The seventh and final circumambulation will complete their marriage. The scene has
been the focus of many suspenseful moments in the popular Indian cinema, as the hero rushes
to prevent the fateful completion of the ritual that will separate him finally from the heroine
(who is, of course, being married to the wrong person). At the upper right, the men of the two
families await the conclusion of the ritual so that they can begin the post-wedding
celebrations; there will be food and drink and probably singing and dancing by ταω⊄ιφs
(courtesans) for entertainment. Below them, in a scene from an earlier part of the wedding
festivities, the bride listens to pre-wedding women’s songs sung by her friends or by
professionals, while they wait for the βαρ⊄τ to arrive.
This is a study of the margins, however, and the major sources of interest for one so
concerned are in fact found on the margins of this painting. There, evidence of processional
events that have already taken place outside the roofless walls of the house can be found. We
see the horse upon which the groom rode in procession with his friends and family to his
bride’s door. In the lower left hand of the scene, in a corner formed by two walls, two
σ⊄δδηυs--wandering religious mendicants--are seated on a deerskin having a smoke. They
are as necessary and as marginal as the persons on the carpet next to their deerskin: the
musicians who are resting in the shadow of the walls after their exertions in the procession. It
is hard to tell who is who, because none have instruments in their hands, and unlike their
contemporary cousins, they do not wear uniforms. On their carpet, however, we see the
paired kettledrums, the ναθθ⊄ρα, with a pair of beaters above them, linked with processions
and with prestige throughout the northern areas of the subcontinent. To the left of the
ναθθ⊄ρα can be seen a pair of brass hand cymbals (called ζιλ or ϕαλρα). The most

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important instrument of the ensemble can only be inferred; but to anyone who has observed or
been part of the processional music world, its presence is obvious. To the right of the
reclining figure lies a small cloth bag, the fabric of which stands out against the carpet, and in
which the instrument’s owner has stored his ∨αην⊄⊂. Indian clarinetists still use bags of this
sort to carry and store the instruments that have most explicitly replaced ∨αην⊄⊂s in the
wedding processions of northern India. The musical trio may be waiting for their payment, or
for a meal to be sent out from the bride’s house; they may also simply be resting. Yet another
alternative is that they may be waiting lead the return procession when the groom takes his
new wife to his family home. Any or all of these explanations are possible. The focus of this
painting is the wedding; the musicians are a marginal afterthought.
Over two hundred years after this painting was created, novelist Balraj Khanna
depicted modern wedding musicians waiting to welcome home a new bride in similar terms:
Twenty-odd men in red and gold regimental uniforms crowded the
back street of the Pall Mall in Sector 23. The cut of their tunics was old-
fashioned but it didn’t matter. For those who wore them weren’t aware of it,
nor were those who watched. Cradling shiny brass musical instruments, they
sat on their haunches in the shade of dusty mango, jamun and tahli trees; …
they chewed paan and pulled at beedis and looked around them anxiously.
They waited and waited, but nobody moved away. The uniformed men were
paid to be there. ... Suddenly, a cloud of dust rose at the street corner, and out
of it blared the shrill horn of a Punjab Roadways bus. This sight worked like
electricity on the men in red and gold. They grabbed their instruments and
sprang to attention, falling in twos, parade-ground style. Their leader, a portly
little man with a fierce Rajput moustache, expelled a stream of orange-
coloured paan spittle from the left corner of his mouth and waved his baton
about briskly. His men and their brass came alive and the sultry summer air of
Sector 23 of Chandigarh rang out with ‘Here comes the bride’. (Khanna:
1993: 9)

In both these representations, the artists manage to create a clearly marginal atmosphere about
the musicians; Khanna’s is fondly derisive, which is often about the best one can hope for in
representations of Indian bandsmen. In both scenes, the musicians are engaged in an activity
that in its own way is an important part of every bandsman’s life. They are waiting on the
margins of the painting, the ritual, and their society, for other people (almost always
understood as their social superiors) to get on with it. These two images show us much
change between 1775 and 1993. The instruments have changed. Most bandsmen wear
uniforms such as those described by Khanna. Male-only audiences and courtesanly
entertainments have been largely replaced by pop orchestras and tape decks at dual-gender
receptions. But bandsmen still sit outside their patrons’ homes smoking, chewing π⊄ν,
drinking tea, chatting, and either waiting for the processions to begin or recovering from their

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exertions afterward. In between the waiting and the travelling to-and-fro throughout one’s
city or region, musicians are engaged in music performance in wedding and other street
processions. These may last anywhere from a few hours to all day. It is a tedious life in
many ways, and although clearly a life of music, it is not one in which music or musical skill
play major roles or receive much acknowledgment.
The contrasts and conjunctions of business and pleasure, ritual exchange and
commercial enterprise, socially structured cooperation and exploitative migrant labor, and
auspiciousness-inauspiciousness, that are all inherent in bandsmen’s socio-professional
organization and identities are equally present in the work that they do and the processions in
which they perform. In this chapter I consider the nature of the work in which bandsmen are
employed, as work, as ritual, as celebration, and as musical practice. I begin with the
processions that are the primary source of bandsmen’s income and the reason for the demand
that leads to a wedding band industry in the first place.
Making music on the street
Bandsmen are processional musicians; the size and breadth of the present-day brass
band tradition in South Asia is a straightforward response to cultural demand for processional
music. A procession is generically identified as a ϕαλ⊆σ. Wedding processions (βαρ⊄τ)
are the largest source of income for private bands; but processions unrelated to weddings may
also be accompanied by bands. Henry suggests that “processions are always connected with
sacred activities” (1988: 218) and while this might be a slightly too sweeping generalization
outside the village context for which Henry wrote it, all processions do have ritual aspects.
The demand for processional (and therefore ritual) music is the source of bandsmen’s income;
it also leaves them to confront the difficult and often discouraging realities of a street music
tradition. The range of possibilities as to what constitutes a ϕαλ⊆σ, and the impact that these
may have on a bandsman’s daily life are often quite wide, as the following two instances
demonstrate.
Processions
One of the largest processions I have witnessed (and for that matter, the largest I have
ever heard accounts of) took place in Meerut in 1995. This religious procession was
sponsored by a local Jain businessman to celebrate his donation of a large quantity of gold to
a local Jain temple for the construction of a new µ⊆ρτι, or idol. Accounts of the size of the
donation, which I could not confirm, ranged from five to fifty kilograms. Given the size of
the procession, I would think the amount was closer to the latter than the former. The
procession included 15 brass bands, many hired locally in Meerut, but others from as far as

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250 kilometers away. Included amongst the group were many of north India’s most famous
brass bands: Jea, Shiv Mohan, and Master (Delhi), Janata (Ghaziabad), Great Janata
(Modinagar), Milan (Haridwar), Altaf (Dehra Dun), and Suddhir (Agra). Each band had
brought its largest τελ⊂ψα. Together with the other musical components of the procession
(religious songs sung by devotee participants, who rode on trucks), the bands constituted an
enormously long and loud musical event that wound its way throughout Meerut city. The
procession required over an hour to pass any particular point and did indeed produce a “most
unearthly jargon” as Beck (n.d.) writes below.
The entire day in Meerut had been carefully organized as a religious event. Beginning
from roughly 7:00 in the morning, Jain devotional music blared from loudspeakers placed
throughout the center of the city for that purpose. Greene (1999) has described similar
combinations of live and recorded music in South India for the production of what he
describes as a sonically saturated environment at religious events; Babb (1975), writing from
a more traditional perspective, reinforces the importance of overwhelmingly loud music in
Hindu (and here Jain) devotional contexts. In Meerut, the size and volume of the event
produced an environment appropriate to both prestige and devotion.
The bands and other processional participants gathered and organized themselves near
the Jain temple in which the µ⊆ρτι was to be installed, and from which the procession began
by roughly 10:00. It was not until almost 9:00 that evening that the last of the participants
returned to the grounds from whence they had begun that morning. The Jain community itself
then proceeded to the temple for the more specifically religious activity of installing the
µ⊆ρτι. During its ten hours, the procession moved through most of Meerut’s various
neighborhoods, publicizing the event, the generosity of the contributing businessman and by
extension, contributing to the prestige of his community and his religion. Such processions,
like the βαρ⊄τ writ large, convert public space into ritual and private space. The intensity of
the music, the devotional content of the recorded music (the bands were playing film songs),
the lines of uniformed musicians, and the size and itinerary of the ϕαλ⊆σ itself all changed
Meerut city into a ground for the expression of religious (Jain) devotion.
The explicitly devotional nature of such processions makes their ritual qualities self-
evident. Nevertheless, the procession was also a celebration of identity and success (social,
political, or in this case, financial) both individual and collective. One could argue that all
processions in which musicians participate have these qualities and that the specific purpose
of the procession changes in relative proportions only. In contrast to the thorough planning
and devotional nature of this Jain procession, others may be much more concerned with the

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success and celebration ends of the spectrum. They may also be less carefully planned. In the
same year as the Jain procession I have described, I sat in a Varanasi park with bandsmen of
the Punjab Band who were in the midst of a rehearsal. Rehearsals are rare events in the band
world, as I will make clear in the next chapters. Much of the basic work is done in villages
before the group ever gets together. Consistency of instrumental roles and each bandsman’s
knowledge of his particular musical duties make extensive rehearsal unnecessary. Bandsmen
do rehearse, however, especially early in the wedding season, or on the arrival of large
contingents of mobile laborers. The park was a large sunny place to sit in the middle of this
early February afternoon, and quite near to the Punjab Band shop. The 30-40 men of the
Punjab Band were dispersed in a loose semi-circle, working out the parts of the latest film
song.
The band had been rehearsing for nearly two hours, sometimes collectively and
sometimes in small groups and pairs, when two young men rode up on a motor scooter trying
to get the attention of anyone in the group. They finally engaged the µ⊄λικ’s son and one of
the senior bandmasters in extended and obviously excited conversation. It turned out that a
local business leader had that moment been released from the city jail, where he had been
placed for leading a strike against city taxes. The city government had relented on its tax
policy, making the jailed businessman a hero to his colleagues. His supporters wanted to
celebrate his release with suitable pomp and the jail being only a short distance away, they
had more or less stumbled upon the Punjab group by accident. An agreement was hastily
reached; the men picked up their instruments and more or less ran the 150 yards up the road to
the jail and immediately began playing as the business leader emerged. There was no
formation to speak of and no uniforms; leadership and direction were all quite tentative. The
men’s professional experience nevertheless allowed them to perform adequately in what
quickly became a dancing, singing mob. The entire event lasted less than an hour.
It might be argued that even such an obvious celebration of political victory as the
successful conclusion of a strike over taxes had a ritual aspect since its focus was an
individual released from jail. The event could quite easily be understood as marking a
transition for this individual from a place of impurity or defilement to a place of status and
prestige as a leader of his professional community. Despite the appeal of this interpretation,
any such ritual considerations did not appear to be part of the scenario for those participating;
they were celebrating the release of their friend and the agreement he had helped secure.
Celebration and happiness are in fact the explanations that most Indians give for the existence
of processions (especially βαρ⊄τs) and their participation in them, and for the dancing and

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tipping that take place during βαρ⊄τs. For the victory celebration of local business interests
over city government, a band helped generate the appropriately celebratory environment for
spontaneous dancing and gaiety. In this instance, while I could make an argument for the
ritual re-integration (transformation) of the newly released leader into the free world, I would
be doing so in direct contradiction to the statements of participants in this event. Celebration
was clearly uppermost on everyone’s minds. In the Jain dedicatory religious procession, on
the other hand, the sheer size of the event, and the procession, its more formal nature, and the
fact that members of the community at large were far more observers or recipients of a sub-
culture’s religious devotion than they were participants ensured that the event was received
more explicitly as a ritual and prestige generating exercise than as a party. Somewhere in
between the extremes of an explicitly religious and devotional procession and an
unquestionably celebratory and political procession lie the processions that form the bulk of a
bandsman’s life. These are the processions that are part of wedding rituals.
The βαρ⊄τ
Almost all Hindu and Muslim families include some form of public procession in their
celebrations of a son’s marriage. Theological or regional variations may affect the location or
timing of the procession within the larger wedding package or may limit the presence or type
of music chosen for accompaniment, as will the chronological context. In the late 16th
century, one of the first Englishmen to see much of the country, Ralph Fitch, wrote of a young
newlywed couple in south central India that “they both do ride upon one horse, very trimly
decked, and are carried through the town with great piping and playing” (Locke 1930: 101).
His wording suggests that the procession may have taken place after the wedding (as it still
does in many weddings in the southern Deccan, although no modern South Asian bride would
be seen riding on a horse). The procession in some form, however, is almost non-negotiable.
Most will feature “great piping and playing” although this turns out to be one of the more
complimentary characterizations applied by Europeans to the music heard in Indian wedding
processions. Noise is a more common choice, followed closely by clamor, clatter, and tumult.
Jean de Thevenot described a remarkably diverse band leading a βαρ⊄τ in 1666; “first appear
a great many people playing ... flutes, others on timbals, and some have a long kind of drums
…others hold copper cups which they strike together though these instruments together make
a great noise” (de Thevenot, 1976: 142). Theodore Beck, a schoolteacher in Aligarh (in
modern Uttar Pradesh), visited Delhi in February of 1885, at the height of the wedding
season. Wandering late at night near that city’s great congregational mosque (the Jama
Masjid) he encountered a procession carrying gifts from the groom to the bride. This

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procession, called σανχακ, is much less commonly acted out in public in contemporary
India, but can occasionally still be seen, sometimes complete with band. Beck was somewhat
more creative if no more appreciative than de Thevenot, writing in his personal diary that the
∨αην⊄⊂s and the “drummers and trumpet blowers” were “making the most unearthly
jargon” (Beck, n.d.: 45). Like many European descriptions, Beck’s organology is weak. We
are left wondering whether the “trumpets” were pre-British natural horns, bugles, or cornets,
all of which might have been possible in 1885.
Throughout the northern two-thirds of the subcontinent, the most common wedding
procession is the βαρ⊄τ, which begins at the home of the groom and proceeds to the home of
the bride. The groom, mounted on a horse, carriage, or automobile, is accompanied by his
family and friends who walk and dance in front of him as the procession moves through the
city or village streets. They in turn are proceeded by a band of musicians; if the procession
takes place at night, lights (electric, gas, or flame), are usually also hired. Fireworks are a
further, optional element of the procession, anything from strings of small crackers to larger
pieces that soar into the night sky. The βαρ⊄τ journey may be actual, as when the two
houses are blocks apart, or symbolic, when the distances require other mediating forms of
transportation. Then, like the return procession that Balraj Khanna describes, the βαρ⊄τ may
process from the groom’s home to a waiting bus that carries the celebrants to the bride’s
home. If the band goes as well, they will have their own transport. If the distances are great
enough to make bringing the band all the way too expensive, a second band may be hired in
the bride’s city. They symbolically complete the βαρ⊄τ as the out-of-town groom’s party
assembles at a hotel or relative’s home and processes to the bride’s home.
A βαρ⊄τ is a family ritual performed in public; but it should be clear already that the
βαρ⊄τ, as a procession, is subject to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, “from the
viewpoint of the actor, rites can alter the state of the world” (Hicks, 1999: 180). Using a
fundamental definition of ritual, as any kind of action in which symbolic activity or exchange
is the focus, whose goal is a healing, transformation, or other kind of active result, one can see
that the βαρ⊄τ “alters the state” of the young groom into the head of household which he is
(at least theoretically) about to become. In some regions, Hinduism also proposes the
groom’s transformation into a semi- and temporarily divine figure. Also from a Hindu
perspective, part of this transformation may be the removal of accumulated sin or
inauspiciousness through the process of ritual exchange (ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂). In this view, as I have
discussed, negative influences are transferred during the βαρ⊄τ from the groom and his
family to the low-caste bandsmen (καµ⊂νs) by means of the prestations, in this case, cash
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notes, that are dispersed by the groom’s family. Bandsmen thus occupy a crucial ritual role as
recipients of monies that are “poisoned gifts” in Raheja’s (1988) colorful interpretive scheme.
Two fundamental points must be clear regarding this interpretation of the Indian (or at
least the Hindu) βαρ⊄τ. First, the transformative or purifying ritual aspects of the βαρ⊄τ are
the foundations of the ritual in historical, symbolic, and explanatory terms. To that extent,
these aspects are an important explanation for the ongoing presence of live musicians and the
ongoing low-status identities of those musicians. This ritual aspect of the βαρ⊄τ seems to me
to be fundamental to the pervasiveness or longevity of the phenomenon. Second, however,
although Indian scholars may agree that this interpretation of the βαρ⊄τ is historically
accurate, it is not an interpretation that has much currency among the contemporary Indians
who practice it; for them the explanations are simpler.
Despite the obvious importance of an interpretive schema based on ritual, βαρ⊄τs
must also be understood as demonstrations of prestige and socio-economic status, in non-
caste terms. The grandeur of a wedding procession is, after all, what Donald Pitkin has
described as “an expression of the interaction between personal [in this case family] aspiration
and assessment by others” in which the family publicly “burnishes the image of self for the
consumption of others”(1993: 98). The number of men in a band party, the sheer volume of
sound they produce, the glitter on their uniforms, are significant prestige generating factors in
this social equation. Sometimes the actual identity of the band may add to a family’s prestige,
although most people are at best marginally aware of potential distinctions in quality between
one band and another. When such distinctions are expressed, they are made primarily on the
basis of venerability, as I discussed in the previous chapter. Venerability, however, is a
distinction made most commonly by the elderly, for whom the long established bands possess
a pre-1947 nostalgic quality. In the 1920s, ’30s and even ‘40s bands were rare enough to be
markers of truly special and obviously prestigious occasions. In this early period, what is
more, a classical or light classical repertoire was still part of the more famous bands’
performance practice, making judgements about musical quality and skill part of the prestige
generating social practice. For the majority of their modern patrons, however, one band’s
performance of film songs is the same as another’s and consequently, one band is as good as
another; not identity and musical skill, but price and availability are the primary deciding
factors when it comes to choosing a band.
Most contemporary βαρ⊄τ participants describe brass band as producers of prestige
and celebratory noise, necessary to reflect the happiness and of the families involved and (as
some also note) to reflect their own view of their status. Βαρ⊄τ participants frequently

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appeared to consider the need for a band self-evident, something they had never thought about
or questioned. When pressed to describe the social differences between bandsmen and
participants, most offer a loose class-based differentiation rather than a description based on
caste. The gifts of money given during the βαρ⊄τ are also explained by both participants and
bandsmen as tips, expressions of happiness. Although I might make some allowance for the
reluctance that many Indians exhibit in discussions of caste with strangers, it is nevertheless
clear that the highly developed ritual interpretation of the βαρ⊄τ, which I offer above, must
be seen as historical or at least old fashioned. This issue is at the heart of my vision of the
synecdochal power of brass bands and their roles in relation to changes in Indian culture; this
vision, however, seems to suffer from three distinct levels of interpretation. Surrounding a
core set of perduring behaviors we find changing social content and changing interpretations
of those behaviors by those who enact them. Firstly, and most superficially, we see musical
and cultural change, in musical repertoire (as I will show in the next chapter), dress,
instrumentation, and professional organization. Secondly, the fundamental behaviors and
identities that structure the expressive culture, the actual βαρ⊄τ, appear to demonstrate
cultural continuity. Low caste processional musicians still perform for families who are, or
who position themselves as belonging to a higher status than the musicians they hire.
Prestations are symbolically offered to the musicians during the event by their patrons. At yet
a third level of understanding, the explanations of these behaviors and the definitions of social
identity offered by both patrons and bandsmen present marked opposition to theories of
ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ and caste-based exchange. Thus, the functions and identities of brass bandsmen
demonstrate: ambivalence towards social identity and organization, the interaction (I might
almost say conflation) of ritual and consumer based economies, a syncretic blend of western
and South Asian symbols in traditional ritual, and finally (although this will only be made
clear in the following chapter), a subservience to and cultural interaction with the mass media.
These characteristics, writ small in the band world, can be found throughout the subcontinent,
at a range of cultural levels from small details to major trends.
The βαρ⊄τ, and the band’s participation in it, developed in “the early urbanscape
where private and domestic mediated by the exigencies of social and public afforded a
crucible for the selection of an exteriorization” of the family (Pitkin, 1993: 98 says “of the
self”). In burnishing their image for external consumption (as Pitkin suggests), Indian
families and groups did and do engage in conspicuous consumption. In his handwritten
manuscript, another excerpt from which opens this book, Hobes offers a suitably early-19th
century British critique of this process: “it is probable that they [the bride and groom] are

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very poor, and that the savings of many years are exhausted by their parents in this glittering
pompous display” (1832: 222). Like Hobes, Jean de Thevenot indicates that the wedding
procession was as much a cross-class requirement in the 17th century as it is today,
“weddings must have processions, both rich and poor do it” (de Thevenot, 1976: 142). Such
descriptions suggest that bandsmen are part of a long tradition of processional wedding music.
It is both significant and unfortunate that most of the descriptions one finds are by foreigners.
Like their modern day counterparts, 18th and 19th century local inhabitants, for whom
βαρ⊄τs were normal events, may not have thought them worthy of much comment. As we
have seen, the descriptions that are available focus on the colorful and the exotic, the “flags,
flambeaus, and music ... the costly equipage and pompous train” as the “bridegroom and bride
... are marched through the principal places of the city” (Ovington, 1976: 146).
Ovington’s description, written in 1690, reinforces the image of music, lights, and
color employed in the display of excessive consumption; such descriptions were often
contextualized as responses to the activities or presence of important British figures. In this
way, British individuals representing the East India Company or the British Crown, often
became entangled in Indian processional behaviors. In 1770, George Patterson noted in his
diary a description of Sir John Lindsay’s procession to pay a visit to the Nawab of the
Carnatic; Sir John was accompanied by “the Nawab’s seopys and the Country Musick
consisting of an immense number of people playing on different instruments, some on foot
and some on bullocks, tom-toms, kettle drums, horns, and trumpets of various sorts and sizes,
flutes, clarionets, cymbals etc., etc., etc., all together making a most intolerable noise”
(Patterson, n.d.: 22). As brass bands became integrated into various levels of indigenous and
colonial culture, they were the natural musical accompaniment for social or ritual events that
involved the British. Over one hundred and fifty years after Sir John’s procession, the
ensembles and the music had changed, but Indians were still marking British arrivals with
loud music. “In the villages we were greeted by a brass band which always played ‘Up with
the bonnets of Dundee’ with one bar missing” wrote Decima Curtis in 1939, as she traveled
across the mountains of Himachal Pradesh with her husband, an Indian Civil Service
administrator (Curtis, n.d.: 40). Further south, “some [English] brides arrived in …style, as
did Rosamund Lawrence when she married the newly appointed Commissioner of Belgaum in
1914: When we got to the station there was a band playing and banners …and rows of police
on arabs” (Allen, 1975: 66).
Dancing in the streets

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 Amongst bandsmen, some caste or regional groups have special reputations for either
their enthusiastic or their restrained approaches to the βαρ⊄τ. One Bijapur bandmaster,
whom I questioned regarding his band’s lack of τ⊄∨αs, the shallow kettledrums that are so
common and so rhythmically effective in nearby Hyderabad bands, responded that these were
found only in Hyderabad because “only the Hyderabadis like all that drumming. They are
great drinkers and like to have lots of noise and rhythm.” In northern India, on the other hand,
Bengali families have a reputation amongst bandsmen for being very restrained in their
processional behaviors. Participants walk soberly along behind the band, rarely dancing or
exhibiting overt celebratory emotions. These are obviously generalizations, from a culture
which, I would generalize, lends greater credence to such approaches to cultural interpretation
than western scholarship finds palatable; naturally there are many exceptions. Nevertheless,
bandsmen’s assessments in this area are at least founded on long experience, and I must say
that from observation, they do carry some weight. At many βαρ⊄τs, however, celebration
and a party-like atmosphere do prevail among at least some members of the family group. In
many cities besides Hyderabad, by the time the procession actually begins, many of the male
participants will have consumed a significant quantity of alcohol, adding levity to the event
and enthusiasm to the dancing. Processional participants are engaged in expressing overtly
the joyous emotional state that these processions are understood to embody.
In contemporary India, dancing is the norm during a βαρ⊄τ procession; it is widely
encountered in Pakistan as well, but with less consistency and perhaps somewhat less
enthusiasm as well. Pakistani public culture appears increasingly affected by the abstemious
voices representing that side of Islamic thought, as the sumptuary laws regarding wedding
receptions show.
It is the younger single men, who often take great pains with their dress for such
occasions, who are the most predictable and enthusiastic dancers. Older married men may
also dance, but unless under the influence of alcohol, I have sometimes thought that they
dance because of social or ritual expectation rather than from any particular desire to do so.
In some processions, in some communities and some families, it is not only men who dance;
young girls and even married women sometimes also participate. Outside the fantasies of the
popular cinema, dancing in the street, and especially dancing by women, is remarkably
antithetical to normal public behavior in India, let alone Pakistan. Confronted with this
behavior, I am tempted to propose the temporary transformation of the urban public setting
into a family or “village” space. Surrounded physically and sonically by the band and its
music, in the presence of their friends and family, and in the context of this celebratory ritual,

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the behavioral norms demanded by a city full of strangers may safely be relaxed. It thus
seems to me that one of the most important functions of a brass band is to enclose, both
sonically and physically, public space for private purposes. Whether one defines those
purposes in ritual or celebratory terms (or in the combination of both which seems more
reasonable) the band is one of the primary means by which space is redefined for those
purposes, a possibility which Prato (1984) suggests is one of the primary functions of street
musicians.
Dancing is not necessarily the norm for all members of the βαρ⊄τ, all families or all
communities; nor is dancing consistent across historical periods. In fact, it is an important
barometer of transformational tendencies in Indian public culture. Dancing at βαρ⊄τs was
originally the job of “public dancing women,” as part of the auspiciousness-producing and
inauspiciousness-removing nature of the ritual. It may also have occurred communally as part
of village wedding celebrations. While elderly Indians may have childhood recollections of
witnessing ταω⊄ιφs or other female entertainers dancing in βαρ⊄τ processions, such
recollections seem to be limited to the late 1920s and 30s. Public dancing women are
certainly not part of contemporary wedding procession practice; but ταω⊄ιφ culture, so to
speak, is one of the many lacunae in research on colonial India. With the disappearance of
professional dancers from the urban βαρ⊄τ, which apparently happened no later than the
middle of the 20th century, there may have been a period in which there was very little
dancing at middle class βαρ⊄τs throughout India. Dancing gradually reappeared, however,
as an amateur expression of exuberance and celebration by procession participants, rather than
in a ritual connection with auspiciousness. Various communities (that is linguistic and
regional sub-cultures) suggest that other communities, ones described as more given to
“vulgarizing tendencies”, began the practice of dancing by βαρ⊄τ participants rather than
public dancing women. Certainly, some sub-cultures are more given to public and exuberant
expressions of happiness; but it seems to me that an equally likely suspect in the
transformation of βαρ⊄τ dancing is the popular cinema. When it first appeared, dancing was
largely the province of young men, and in a style that reflected the gyrations of popular film
heroes, who danced in the celluloid streets. As bands turned increasingly to the musical
repertoire of the popular cinema in the mid-20th century, it seems reasonable to suggest that
βαρ⊄τ participants similarly changed their processional behaviors under the same cinematic
influence.
It is especially important for bandsmen to encourage their customers to dance, because
this is the context in which tips are distributed. Notes of small denomination are most

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commonly distributed as tips by adult males of the family, the groom’s father or uncles by
preference. They are first waved in a clockwise/circular manner over the heads of dancing
family members; younger sons or nephews are preferred. The notes are then raised high over
the giver’s head and finally handed directly to a bandsman. I have seen occasions where the
notes are not handed to a bandsman but tossed into the air for the bandsmen (or others) to pick
up from the street; but this is unusual in modern India. It is still regular practice in Pakistan;
but only at the end of the procession, after the bandsmen have already been given the largest
proportion of the tips. Although the approximate amount that will be forthcoming from tips is
relatively easy to predict, µ⊄λικs do not consider them in their fees or as part of the income
they expect from the event. Instead, tips are shared out among the bandsmen who actually
played the procession. In the language of the βαρ⊄τ, the concept of δ⊄ν has been
transformed into the western concept (and even the English word), tips. Μ⊄λικs’ avoidance
of this income, however, may be grounds for some suspicion on the origins of the practice,
especially since some µ⊄λικs, those who perform with their bands, admit to having collected
tips themselves in their less economically successful days.
Whatever their ritual implications may be, bandsmen do everything they can to
encourage tip giving. This encouragement includes musical behaviors, but also includes other
performance behaviors. If the customers are not forthcoming with their tips, senior members
of the band will imitate the tipping behavior, making circling motions over the dancers’ heads
and raising their hands in the air. Usually one senior bandsman, often one who is not
performing musically, or who is not musically crucial, will come prepared with a small bag to
collect the tips for later distribution. After the first tipping episode, this individual will often
encourage a repeat episode by raising the notes already given over his own head. In the
βαρ⊄τ, bandsmen’s actions reinforce their interpretation of these prestations as economically
advantageous tips rather than inauspiciousness-bearing δ⊄ν; they call into question, as other
scholarship has done, the Brahmanical interpretation of ritual actions. I would argue that as
with many other aspects of (South Asian) culture, dual and conflicting interpretations are not
only possible but in a sense necessary to each side of the exchange, however that exchange is
conceptualized. Opposing interpretations of social status and meaning are themselves one
way of understanding Indian society. Whether one thinks of them as tips or δ⊄ν, this activity
must be located within the larger context of the performance practice and behavioral structure
of Indian processions and bandsmen’s particular roles in that context.

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 Βαρ⊄τ performance structure - All in a day’s work
There are a variety of motivations for processional events, some of which I have
described, that encourage or compel families and social groups to hire bands in order to help
produce the event. The social distinctions I have described in previous chapters only
emphasize the separation between the musicians, who contribute sound, spectacle, and spatial
definition to the production of the processional ritual and the consumers of that procession.
From a personal and experiential perspective, I must also make it very clear that processional
music performance is hard work for bandsmen. Bandsmen are paid, of course, for their
efforts. What is more, the pay is enough to keep them coming back year after year; but theirs
is a trade in which the long periods of waiting I described at the beginning of this chapter are
separated by equally long periods of hard work. I offer an extreme example of this life of
music.
In the search for music-culture difference one does not always, as the song goes, get
what one wants. The ways in which bandsmen approach their performances and the nature of
those performances are profoundly different from those demonstrated by most musicians
involved in “western” music culture. In my research in the world of brass bands, I have
frequently felt as if I would not survive those differences. In the middle of one Hyderabad
wedding season, most of which I had spent attending βαρ⊄τs with the Prabhat Band, the
owner’s son mentioned that the group was scheduled to take part the following evening in the
birthday celebration of an important religious figure, who dwelt near the large village of
Homnabad, in northern Karnataka State, about 150 kilometers from Hyderabad. Raju asked if
I wished to accompany them. I agreed and we arranged to meet at the Prabhat shop around
midnight on the following evening to make the journey. I went to one βαρ⊄τ the following
morning with the band, attended to some personal errands, and returned to the shop around
7:00 p.m. as they left for the third procession of their day. I returned again at midnight to the
shop to find that they had not yet returned from that procession. I knew that the owner’s
younger son was asleep inside, but no amount of hammering on the shutters produced any
result, and so sat on the stoop watching the street become quieter and colder.
Around 1:30 a.m., the band returned; their bus, which had a nominal capacity of 20 or
so, also appeared. Most of the men had been up since early morning; in two different parties
they had already performed at three βαρ⊄τs that day. Nevertheless, the bus was loaded with
instruments, uniforms, and finally with 25 bandsmen, together with the µ⊄λικ (or σε√η, as
owners are more commonly called in the Deccan), his two sons, one nephew, and one
ethnomusicologist. An hour later we drove off into the dark of the Deccan night. Like most

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forms of transport used or owned by bandsmen, this bus was hardly a comfortable place to
spend the night; but we all dozed for a few hours (falling over was physically impossible for
most of us) until we left the main roads and the bumps made further sleeping impossible.
Around 8:00 that morning we reached Homnabad. After a cup of tea and a morning wash at
the river, the band once again donned their uniforms and led the first procession of the
celebration around the village, which concluded about two hours later. Thereafter, the men
were free to find something to eat and a place to sleep (the bus, the ground, the steps of the
village temple, etc.,) until mid-afternoon when the celebrations resumed. The Guru
distributed his weight in rupees, participated in a series of religious rituals in the temple, and
around 8:00 that evening led another grand procession mounted on an elephant. Decorative
electric lighting was strung through the trees, fireworks and ancient muskets were set off,
dancing horses, the Prabhat Band, acrobats, and camels with mounted ναθθ⊄ρα players all
participated. Around 3:00 a.m., roughly twenty-four hours after leaving Hyderabad, we got
back on the bus for the return journey, reaching Hyderabad late that morning. Many of the
bandsmen would be back on the streets that evening. By the time they finally got to their
beds on that third night, many of them would have played in five or six processions in three
days, with no real sleep and two six-hour bus journeys in between.
This event in Homnabad was enough to make any tour operator drool. It was the stuff
of the thousand glossy brochures that sell “Exotic India” to the west: colorful, religious,
fantastic, traditional, exciting, and so on. For the villagers and devotees as well, the event was
an exciting and enjoyable religious celebration. Even for my friends in the band, the
procession and accompanying festivities were more interesting, if more exhausting than the
processions they usually accompanied. A bandsman’s life and work are defined in large part,
by an ongoing chain of travel-delay-procession-travel. If this particular isolated series is
somewhat more extreme than normal, it only serves to amplify the daily realities of the
processional music trade, in which the typical βαρ⊄τ is rather more pedestrian.
For a family, of course, the βαρ⊄τ is their βαρ⊄τ; they are the centers of attention in
a public way that is unique in Indian culture. For the bandsmen who perform at between
twenty and thirty βαρ⊄τs a month during the wedding season, however, the production of the
event is a tiring, physically demanding and repetitious undertaking; as a musical life, the band
trade can be both exhausting and boring. In this consideration of musical and ritual
performance practice, differing perceptions and concerns engage those who produce the ritual
and those who consume, or participate in it.
Musical structure and ritual structure

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 In most band shops, preparation for a βαρ⊄τ is a process that is both gradual and
casual. Καρ⊂γαρ musicians appear at the shop, to change into their band uniforms, or put
their band uniforms on over whatever else they happen to be wearing. In bands where turbans
are part of the uniform, these must be wrapped, often a time-consuming process. Instruments
and other paraphernalia (banners, standards, etc.,), all property of the µ⊄λικ, must be
distributed. The men check to ensure they know where they are going, and leave for the site
from which the procession will begin. The majority of the rank and file will ideally leave the
shop so as to reach the site slightly before the βαρ⊄τ is scheduled to begin. Feet, public
transportation, and hired or private transport may carry the bandsmen to the site, depending
on distance and on the money available. If the band is bringing a sound amplification cart
(τελ⊂ψα), this must either be transported in a truck hired for the event or pushed by hand. At
a βαρ⊄τ I attended in Kolhapur with the Mangal Music Band, three members of the family
left their shop at 3:00 a.m. in order to push their τελ⊂ψα to the site, which was 4-5
kilometers distant. They reached the groom’s house around 7:00 a.m., which was the
scheduled time.
Well after the majority of the party’s bandsmen have left, the higher-ranking
musicians, the bandmasters and perhaps the µ⊄λικ will gradually leave the shop. While some
may be sent along to supervise the other bandsmen, professional rank carries with it the
privilege of arriving late for all sorts of musical events. If the band’s µ⊄λικ is not a
bandmaster, and consequently has no musical responsibilities, he may appear half-way
through the event, or may not appear at all.
At many of the βαρ⊄τs I have attended, a period almost equal in length to the
procession itself has been spent waiting for things to get started. Special guests arriving late,
the need for everyone to be dressed in their finest clothes, rituals that must occur before
setting out, any number of factors may delay the event. In consequence of these frequent
delays, bandsmen often wander off in search of food and drink. At more than one βαρ⊄τ that
I have witnessed, some members of the party have wandered far enough so as to be caught
some distance away when the βαρ⊄τ finally begins. Small groups of bandsmen can often be
seen running back to the site as their band plays its first few tunes. Waiting is not especially
arduous; some families will send out tea or sweets to the waiting bandsmen, although this is
by no means common practice. Waiting is simply part of bandsmen’s lives; one can say that
it makes little difference to their incomes and is less strenuous than the actual music making.
For µ⊄λικs, however, the implications are more serious, since a βαρ⊄τ that starts one or

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even two hours late may seriously disrupt a µ⊄λικ’s arrangements for other customers,
leaving him shorthanded or forcing bandsmen to literally run from one βαρ⊄τ to the next. A
band can spend as little as two or as many as four hours at one βαρ⊄τ, depending on the
length of time they must wait and the distance they must process.
The prototypical βαρ⊄τ begins at the groom’s family’s home. For βαρ⊄τ parties that
have traveled from out of town, an agreed upon staging area serves as the starting point. This
might be a hotel or other public space or perhaps the home of a family friend. In
contemporary Mumbai, some wealthy families hire large tented enclosures (ση⊄µι⊄ν⊄) on
public grounds adjacent to Marine Drive, a busy six-lane road with limited access that runs
parallel to Mumbai’s inner city beach and harbor. A small access road leads to the public
grounds, which during much of the year are home to local cricket players and (at one end) to
the city’s aquarium (Machli Ghar [the Fish House]). The βαρ⊄τs of such families process
only the half-kilometer or so of this small access road as it runs parallel to Marine Drive. A
bus brings the family to the Machli Ghar end where they are met by the waiting band. They
then process to the other end of the road where their hired tents await. Such processions and
the larger wedding packages of which they are a part offer the kinds of competing
perspectives that we have encountered more than once in this study. There can be no question
that these weddings are exercises in ostentation and public display on a grand scale. Families
who arrange their weddings at such visible venues count the cost in καρο∈s, rather than
λ⊄κηs of rupees (a λ⊄κη being 100,000 and a καρο∈ 10,000,000). At the same time, it
must also be said that throughout much of Mumbai the streets are simply too crowded and too
busy (and too business-like) for street processions to be possible. The “Machli Ghar option”
allows an otherwise impossible event to take place even as it commodifies that event almost
beyond recognition and probably beyond viability in the long term. In the Machli Ghar
βαρ⊄τs I have witnessed, the perfunctory quality of celebratory behavior (especially dancing)
was very apparent. It is hard, after all, to develop a suitably enthusiastic “dancing-in-the-
streets” atmosphere in these obviously contrived settings and in the short periods of time these
βαρ⊄τs require. Such a solution decontextualizes the event, removing it from the
neighborhood of the families involved. Witnessing βαρ⊄τs of this nature, I frequently find
myself wondering precisely for whom such displays are intended. Nevertheless, the
indispensable ritual elements (the procession itself, the music, the dancing, the tips) are
present, even if condensed into as small a physical and temporal space as possible. If nothing
else, they demonstrate the ongoing importance of the βαρ⊄τ, as ritual and/or social
expression, in the almost impossibly crowded reality of contemporary Mumbai.
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Formations and Performance Behaviors
In circumstances less crowded than those of central Mumbai, a βαρ⊄τ procession
normally begins at the groom’s home. When their patrons indicate a suitably advanced stage
of preparedness, bandsmen form a single long line opposite or in front of the home. Almost
always, the musicians play facing the family home, rather than away from it. The formations
in which bands habitually arrange themselves appear to me to be counterproductive to musical
performance in some ways. In their stationary single line, musicians at one end may be as
many as six or seven meters from those at the other. Visual and aural contact are both
challenged, as is the group’s sense of ensemble. Nevertheless, bandsmen are familiar with
this formation and do not view this or their other formations as problematic. It is certainly
true that this first introductory performance by a band is usually the musical highpoint of a
βαρ⊄τ. There are fewer processional distractions, everyone can stand still, and there is no
traffic, either automotive or pedestrian, to interfere. Although their elongated formation does
not help, bandsmen are usually able to produce solid coherent performances in this context,
sometimes ones that are full of flourish and ensemble virtuosity. The band normally
concentrates on its newest and most well-rehearsed tunes. Soloists may produce extended
improvisations in this context, although this practice is extremely limited. This is also the
point in a βαρ⊄τ where bandsmen may have something that vaguely resembles an audience,
in the sense of a group of listeners. Gathering guests, interested neighbors, and children are
often standing about in the family’s courtyard or other semi-public space. Performing in front
of the groom’s house calls the area’s attention to the event and builds a suitable atmosphere.
Although preparations have been going on inside the groom’s home for some time, the band’s
initial performance begins the transformation of external space for the continuation of ritual in
public outdoor space.
When everyone is ready and all the important family and guests have arrived, the
groom appears at the door of his house and is mounted on whatever mode of conveyance the
family has chosen. A horse is the most traditional; but practice varies with socio-economic
class, city and even locale within a city. Horse drawn carriages are another choice, as are
automobiles. The band continues to play and then leads the procession out into the public
street towards the bride’s home. I have already noted that processions are only completed on
foot in some circumstances; whether this is the case or not, however, the nature of the
processional components (although not the number of occurrences) is the same. There may
be some dancing in front of the groom’s house; but usually the procession begins
immediately. The band forms itself into two columns. This is another awkward formation

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from a musical perspective, but the band’s elongated formation does enclose a large portion of
the street within itself, which is one important purpose of the band in any event. On the
street, however, the musical standards that the band is able to maintain deteriorate
significantly; distractions—in the form of pedestrian and motor traffic, narrow streets,
impediments in the street, and the sometimes vigorous and inebriated dancers—increase
markedly.
In smaller towns and villages and even in some urban neighborhoods, the procession
may stop at the local temple before proceeding to the bride’s home. One way or the other,
however, the βαρ⊄τ makes its way through the streets to the bride’s home. The varying sizes
of Indian streets, the prominence of some shops or houses, and the presence of pedestrian and
vehicle traffic all require a flexible formation. The streets, of course, also include a variety of
hazards to a bandsman’s wellbeing. The brass players especially, with their mouthpieces to
their lips, must be on the look out for collisions with dancers, other bandsmen, or passers-by.
Lips and teeth are all vulnerable to significant damage in such contexts. One must also give
attention to the ground over which one is walking. Many families arrange for fireworks as
part of the procession, requiring bandsmen to walk especially carefully and to risk their
hearing at the same time. In the biggest cities, the sheer size of the major streets and the
amount of traffic on them makes them inaccessible to βαρ⊄τs. Some municipalities, such as
Kolkata, actually prohibit βαρ⊄τs from using the main thoroughfares, to the detriment of
bandsmen’s livelihoods.
The most consistent marching formation observed in private bands is of two long
columns, formed by καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen. Spatial location and behavior during the
procession are directly related to musical authority and autonomy; but to understand the
dynamics of musician behaviors during a βαρ⊄τ, we must remember that, in the early stages
of the βαρ⊄τ, the band precedes the focus of the entire event, the groom and his party. At
night, the columns of bandsmen may themselves be enclosed by two columns of portable
lighting, usually called “road-lights.” Road-lights are elaborately arranged stands of plain and
colored neon and incandescent lights, together with cut glass crystal carried on the heads of
workers hired for this purpose. The lights are powered by a generator carried along on a cart
with the procession. The individual stands are strung together with electrical cable. Just
inside of each row of road-lights is a row of bandsmen.
One outcome of the social, ritual, and structural norms of processional practice is that
the important part of the band formation (the drummers, the best band-masters/soloists, the
amplification) is normally to be found at the rear of the double column, closest to the band’s

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patrons. Bandmasters move up and down within the columns, helping to maintain musical
cohesion, keeping the formation together (when possible) and playing parts to encourage their
uniformed colleagues. Given the distances involved in many processions (from the front of
the band to the rear) the role of bandmasters as musical and technical supervisors is vital to
the success of street performances. Senior bandmasters may choose the items that the band
will play (from available repertoire), announce the next song, give audible signals for
attention to stop a song, and generally try to maintain performance continuity.
Within these two rows of light and sound, is the wedding party itself, the groom,
together with his family and friends. Most βαρ⊄τ processions are bi-sected lengthwise by
another component of the band. At the center of this procession, the loud-speaker horns and
superstructure of the band’s τελ⊂ψα are just visible. It is here that the band’s drummers and
senior bandmasters will be clustered, playing directly to the dancers, who are clustered in
front of the τελ⊂ψα. Behind the τελ⊂ψα we find the groom himself, along with some elder
males perhaps, and following him, the women of party.
In the interests of melodic and rhythmic cohesion, high status bandmasters tend to
cluster near the percussionists at the rear of the column. This also locates the best players
closest to the patrons. Some bandmasters may take advantage of the amplification available
in the τελ⊂ψα to play an especially inventive and dominant version of the melody into a
microphone. Thus, the musical heart of a band party, composed of the percussion, the
primary bandmasters, and the sound trolley, is normally found at the rear of a column that
may be quite long (10-15 meters) if the party is a large one. The musical and social distance
between bandmasters (at the rear) and lower class day-laborer bandsmen (in the front) is often
acted out physically as well.
This invariant processional formation thus has its own musical drawbacks. In many
instances, one of the more unlikely outcomes is that most sound comes from the rear of the
formation, where the drummers, the better bandmasters, and the amplification are found. The
front ranks of a wedding band are often the least musically functional and the most silent. In
crowded conditions, the front of the group may actually become separated from the rear of the
band, leaving the low brass players in the front almost completely out of the musical
happenings. The potential time-delay and echoes that may develop between the front and the
rear (where the drummers are) can also prove musically disastrous.
In a typical βαρ⊄τ procession, the band leads the family down the street, followed by
younger males, followed by the elder (married) male family and friends, who immediately
precede and surround the groom. Women tend to follow behind the groom. This stereotypical

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sequence is, like most stereotypes, important largely for the wide range of variation that one
finds; the formal divisions, based on age and gender, tend to break down in any event, as the
procession continues. The younger men in the βαρ⊄τ may walk or dance as they process, but
after perhaps ten minutes, the entire procession stops while an episode of more organized
dancing occurs. This allows the dancers to enjoy themselves without having to keep moving
forward and of course, thus offers more opportunities for tipping, which does occur mostly
during these dancing episodes. The original sequence of processional groups—band, young
men, older men, groom, and women—rarely recovers from this first dance episode.
Thereafter, the various groups usually merge into a single formation. Some of the band may
still precede the rest, but at other events, less interested (and less patient) participants may
well precede the band.
Participants may walk along with the groom or may dance along. I have recently
noted a trend towards group dancing in circle formations, folk-dance style, by men and
women. In Gujarat, for example, that region’s well-known γαρβα circle dance and its
accompanying characteristic rhythm have been increasingly heard during βαρ⊄τ dancing
episodes. The number of dance episodes that occur in the course of a βαρ⊄τ will depend on
the inclinations of the participants, the distance, and on whether the βαρ⊄τ will be completed
on foot, or whether the party will use hired transport. There is inevitably less dancing in this
latter circumstance. Usually a single dance episode occurs before the party disperses to its
transport. Dance episodes in this context are, from my perception, a clear response to
expectations rather than emotions, often enacted with the hired video cameras in mind.
In a largely historical practice, more commonly recounted in older western cities of
the subcontinent, bands whose bandmasters had classical music expertise sometimes stopped
for purely musical interludes in which the clarinet soloists would perform classical
improvisations to their band’s accompaniment. The classically trained clarinetists of Lahore
in the mid-20th century, Master Alamghir and Master Sohni, were both especially famous for
this. Halts in the procession also used to occur in the smaller roads and alleys of old cities
when two bands (accompanying two different βαρ⊄τs) met at a city intersection. The two
bands then began a musical competition for dominance that was based at times on the
virtuosity of the groups’ soloists, and at times on the sheer amount of sound each group could
produce. Saeed Malik, a long-time observer of Lahore’s musical culture describes these
competitions in that city.
A musical confrontation took place between the Jehanghir Band and the Sohni
Band in a narrow street of the Walled City. Music blared incessantly from

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 both sides for several hours until a few elders accompanying the baraats
intervened and separated the “warring musicians”. (Malik, 1998: 81)
Bandsmen play for almost the entire length of the βαρ⊄τ. They may stop
briefly as they end one song and begin another, but under normal circumstances the
rest of the procession is accompanied by their music. The only conventional
exception to this rule is culturally enshrined in some cities. When a βαρ⊄τ happens
to pass next to a mosque, the band stops playing for the length of time it takes the
procession to pass by the mosque, after which they begin again. Bandsmen explain
that they do this as a sign of respect for the widely perceived Muslim sensitivity
towards music. In the cities where this custom is practiced, it is adhered to by bands
regardless of their own or their patron’s religious identities. This is the only
circumstance that seems able to routinely silence the sounds of a βαρ⊄τ, although I
have seen men with herds of buffaloes being milked run up to a band asking for quiet
so that their milkers are not kicked by the disturbed animals.
At night, βαρ⊄τs include an additional element that is both festive and functional.
The two columns of bandsmen, and the entire procession are themselves enclosed within two
columns of what are termed “road-lights.” Road lights are lights in fact, originally torches,
but in modern practice kerosene lamps, chandelier-shaped stands of glass, electric neon tubes,
or strings of small colored lights bulbs mounted in moving designs and patterns onto boards.
Road lights are carried on the heads of persons hired by the road light owner; it must be clear
that however unrewarding a bandsman’s life might be, that of a road light carrier is worse.
Electric road lights are mounted on a small wooden base and connected by the wires carrying
the current that illuminates them. Most commonly, electricity is produced by gasoline or
diesel generators, mounted on a cart and pushed along behind the band. Enclosed within a
column of light and sound, the family processes, with the outside world, if not completely
shut off, then certainly distanced.
A βαρ⊄τ ends when it reaches the bride’s home. This traditional destination is
sometimes replaced, in modern times, by a hotel or a marriage hall. Marriage halls are large
commercial facilities purposely built to accommodate the ritual, the crowds and the feasts of
weddings; they are most commonly a feature of Gujarat and the Deccan. The band stands
outside the entrance to the wedding space, whatever that may be. They continue playing
while the groom and his party enter the house or grounds or hall for the actual marriage and
the reception that follows, events that can easily go on for another three to four hours. In
some cities, and among some families, the young men of the βαρ⊄τ must literally (although

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symbolically) fight their way into the bride’s home. Alternatively, the bride’s female relatives
may demand a fee before the βαρ⊄τ party is allowed entrance to the house or hall. In this
regard, a ribbon may be strung across the entranceway, to be cut or removed when the
receiving group is satisfied.
Once the βαρ⊄τ party enters into the wedding space, any relationship between band
and customers that might be said to have existed as a result of their joint engagement in
processional behavior is immediately severed with no acknowledgment on either side. Except
as music (or noise) makers, wedding bandsmen have no relationship to the events in which
they participate, nor do they normally have a social relationship with the people for whom
they perform. Brass bands are never applauded and are rarely even attended to as musicians.
They are simply hired help, there to be recipients of inauspiciousness, perhaps, but certainly
to provide the music that accompanies the dancing and highlights the event as a whole.
For the band, once the party is safely inside whatever space is being used, the job is
finished. In the past, bands were sometimes hired to play for the bride’s leave-taking
(αλαϖιδ⊄, farewell), which would take place after the actual marriage ceremony and the
dinner or reception. This is much less common in contemporary South Asia; the practical
realities of the return journey to the groom’s house no longer leave much room for large
processions. Leaving the site, the bandsmen then return to the shop, where instruments are
turned in, uniforms taken off, and the group dissolves until the next event. If the band is busy,
some or all of the bandsmen may have another βαρ⊄τ later in the day; at the height of the
wedding season, they may have to go directly from βαρ⊄τ to βαρ⊄τ. The conclusion of the
βαρ⊄τ, however, is a point at which it may be possible to perceive more clearly the negative
social implications of bandsmen’s jobs and identities. Whether one sees the behaviors as the
results of social and religious ideas about caste and impurity or whether one sees them as
indications of a purely socio-economic reality, however, is a matter of perception.
“Staying out” in India, “eating in” in Pakistan
Going to a βαρ⊄τ with the band is rather like spending all one’s time in the kitchen of
a luxury hotel. One sees what the guests will eat, but never eats or enjoys the luxury of the
cultural space. The picture that develops, of the enterprise and the cultural behaviors of those
who pursue it, is very clear and detailed; but it is taken from a single specific perspective. By
traveling with the band, I have effectively been going to weddings via the servants’ entrance.
My experiences of βαρ⊄τs and of Indian weddings in general have been very much
influenced by the company I have kept at these events over the past twelve years.

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 When an Indian band reaches the entry to the marriage space, they stop, allowing the
guests to enter, but never entering themselves. In one sense, this is hardly a remarkable
circumstance. The hospitality that is so much a part of South Asian culture extends to
strangers but hardly extends to servants, especially servants with such dubious credentials.
Bandsmen are temporary, low status (and low caste) providers of appropriately loud and
hopefully musical symbols of prestige for the family; their usefulness is very specific and
very short-lived. As soon as they stop playing, they cease to exist for their patrons. If one
were to view the βαρ⊄τ from a more developed ritual point of view--and of course, my
argument is that both perspectives are necessary--there would be additional reasons to see that
the bandsmen stayed outside of the wedding space. Having just invested considerable time
and money in a processional ritual for which one primary interpretation is the transfer of
inauspiciousness from family to bandsmen, it would hardly be logical to then have the
bandsmen set foot in the space reserved for the auspicious activities of the marriage ceremony
itself
I have noted already that such complex explanations based on caste and ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-
style exchange are not offered by most contemporary Indians. More consistently, they make
arguments along the lines I presented initially: class differences and the servants-for-hire
identities of the bandsmen. One does not, after all, invite the caterer’s hired help to sit down
with one’s guests. Such explanations would in themselves be unremarkable were it not for a
difference that most modern Indians cannot see, a difference produced through comparison
with behaviors in Pakistan.
I attended my first Pakistani βαρ⊄τ in 1995. The event was very much as I have
described here. The band and I went in a hired bus to the groom’s house, where we sat for
two hours. The groom then appeared, the band quickly assembled itself, bandsmen running
back from the various places they had been sitting and smoking. The groom mounted his
hired horse, which had been waiting nearby since before even the band arrived. The βαρ⊄τ
then proceeded about fifty meters down the road, whereupon all and sundry got into a bus
(except the groom and attendants who had a limousine). The band and I got back into their
own bus and the whole party rode across the city to the bride’s house. Upon disembarking a
short distance from the final destination, the band played a number of dance songs while the
young men danced and tips were distributed. The family and friends entered the tent where
the wedding ceremony was to take place and the band stopped.
At this point, however, instead of leaving, the bandsmen (and I, at their
encouragement) proceeded into the tent after the guests. We sat and witnessed the νικ⊄η

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[wedding ceremony] and when this brief event was concluded, helped ourselves to the roast,
the ν⊄ν, and other foods set out on large buffet tables. While none of the guests went out of
their way to talk with the bandsmen, none avoided them either; everyone acted as if this were
perfectly normal. I myself, although enjoying buffet, was uncomfortable and felt rather as if
we were committing some horrible breach of etiquette. In its way, this was among the most
astonishing events of my years of band research.
When I asked the bandsmen about this later, they told me that at most of the βαρ⊄τs
at which they performed, they participated in witnessing the ritual and feasting with the
guests. As long as the wedding dinner was buffet style, they joined the guests; when the
dinner was more formally structured, with seats and table settings for each guest, they did not.
Subsequently, I became used to eating with the band at Pakistani βαρ⊄τs; the practice was
wide spread along the lines the bandsmen had described. Prior to this event, it had never
occurred to me to question the behaviors I witnessed in India, any more than I imagine it
occurs to most Indians. And in fact, neither Pakistani βαρ⊄τ participants nor bandsmen find
anything unusual about the latter’s participation in the wedding festivities. The unusual
nature of these phenomena only appears when one juxtaposes two distinctive contemporary
practices and notes that prior to 1947, there were no national or consistent cultural boundaries
upon which to make such distinctions.
Since the enactment of restrictive sumptuary Pakistani laws in the later 1990s (which
severely limit the amount of food and drink that may be offered to wedding guests), it could
be said that no one eats at Pakistani βαρ⊄τs any longer, so it is clear that this minor indicator
of cultural difference or cultural change is susceptible to equally minor variations in the
cultural setting. Whatever conclusion is drawn from this distinction must be understood as
fragile. I would argue, however, that although broader post-Independence social changes in
the two nations contribute, differences in the understanding of the religious or ritual nature of
the βαρ⊄τ and bandsmen’s identities in the independent nations, with their distinct religious
orientations must also be contributing factors. Despite contemporary Indians’ rejections of
ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-based interpretations of the Hindu βαρ⊄τ, there may be enough of a residual
effect of the ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂ ideal on contemporary behaviors at Indian βαρ⊄τs that Indian culture
insists upon the social and physical separation of bandsmen from guests and the wedding
space. In contrast, Pakistani society’s conscious or unconscious rejection of such
hierarchically structured social conceptions make ϕαϕµ⊄ν⊂-based behaviors unsupportable.
The more egalitarian theories of Islam might be a contributing causal factor in the inclusion of
bandsmen in post-βαρ⊄τ feasting in Pakistan.

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 Generally, however, the Pakistani band world is a more old fashioned world than is its
next-door neighbor. This is expressed in the instruments, the repertoire, and in the nature of
their socio-professional organization. Consequently, one must assume (and some elderly
Pakistani bandsmen confirm this) that the behaviors I report here are not recent, and certainly
did not begin after 1947. Thus, to whatever degree religious difference is a factor here, an
equally important factor can be found in the same issues that have already been described in
the differences between the Pakistani and Indian band worlds. The same urbanization that
creates the enormous demand for Indian bands has also led to migrant identities and variable
membership. In the big city these factors also render bandsmen that much more anonymous,
and that much less worthy of notice and social inclusion. These issues, migrant identities and
variable membership have additional implications as well.
Fixed and variable membership - social and musical implications
In the stories of professional organization and movement that I have recounted in
previous chapters I have emphasized that in most cases, hiring an Indian brass band does not
mean that a customer is hiring a specific group of musicians. Customers make agreements
with a band’s µ⊄λικ. The µ⊄λικ agrees to have the contracted number of musicians present
for the procession. The individual bandsmen representing any given band may be largely or
completely different from one season to the next, or even from one job to the next. This
practice of variable band membership is perhaps, the dominant model of band organization in
modern India; the vast majority of bands have some degree of seasonal variability in their
membership. But, I am already adding the too familiar qualifiers that inhabit this study of
brass bands: naturally, not all Indian bands have the same degree of variability, seasonal or
otherwise, in their membership. The size of the market which a city or town represents (often,
but not always a direct function of population size), the geographic location of the city, and
the identities of local band µ⊄λικs are factors which can all determine the extent of a
µ⊄λικ’s need or ability to hire mobile bandsmen. When these factors force a band owner to
hire men from outside his city on seasonal contracts (as they do in the professional lives of
most µ⊄λικs), it seems to me that the musical quality of a band’s performance suffers.
The Shyam Band (Jabalpur) is an excellent example from which to demonstrate by
contrast some of the musical consequences of variable membership in the band world,
because the Shyam Band does not take advantage of this system of socio-professional
organization. Shyam is, instead, almost completely a fixed-membership ensemble, staffed by
a local labor pool, made up mostly of bandsmen related to the µ⊄λικ by marriage and blood.
Μ⊄λικ Ishwari Prasad has a large group of hereditary processional musicians who are related

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to him; but who are also local men with regular sources of non-band (and entirely non-
musical) employment. From this pool, Prasad has fashioned a band whose musical standards
are well above average. Because all his bandsmen are nearby throughout the year, the Shyam
Band µ⊄λικ can see that his group rehearses together more frequently than is the norm for
this trade. Regular rehearsals and, as Ishwari Prasad sees it, the professional experience he
acquired during his years as a film studio musician, have made the Shyam Band a more
musical ensemble than many of their competitors or colleagues throughout India. There is, in
addition, a more concrete outcome of both the regular rehearsals and the regular membership.
Shyam is one of the few Indian bands in recent (one could almost say post-
Independence) history to release not one, but an entire series of recordings (audiocassettes in
this case) under their name. Commercial recordings of brass bands are quite scarce. The few
contemporary recordings are usually recorded by anonymous bands for production of a
βαρ⊄τ-like atmosphere. Earlier in the century there were commercial recordings by a number
of brass bands (e.g., Razak, Prabhat, and Sohni); but one could say that as the practice of
variable membership increased, recordings decreased. That these events were roughly
simultaneous is no doubt true, but a clear relationship between these events is not likely. The
decline in recordings by named brass bands (an admittedly small proportion of the recorded
product in any event) results from an increasing distinction between bandsmen and other
musicians in India, together with a simultaneous increase in bands’ dependence on the film
song repertoire, and perhaps the final disappearance of brass bands from post-colonial popular
culture. Mobile labor practices in the band world result from the economic and trade realities
of post-Independence urban India, in which huge populations and seasonal demand
accompanied high costs of living. In mid-sized or smaller cities like Jabalpur or Kolhapur
(another fixed membership city) that are also off the main routes of migration in the band
world, fixed membership remains economically possible. Nevertheless, the absence of this
practice in the Shyam Band has clear musical implications.
The Shyam recording series was initiated by the band’s µ⊄λικ and founder, Ishwari
Prasad, whose experience and connections with the Mumbai film-music industry were major
factors in the commercial and musical success of the recordings. The tapes are products of
one of Mumbai’s major music companies, Tips; the performances are of high quality. The
recordings feature both the current hits of the years in which they were made, but also many
older songs that are not part of the standard wedding band repertoire. Both the quality and the
expanded repertoire are in part possible because Ishwari Prasad did not need to operate under
the musical constraints of a seasonal and seasonally changing membership.

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 In contrast, many of India’s largest bands have very high proportions of mobile labor;
in some, only the most senior bandmasters and managers are constant personnel. In bands
that depend on mobile, seasonal laborers, rehearsals take on a different rhythm, one as
seasonal as the men’s travel and employment. Instead of regular rehearsals spread over the
entire season, or the entire year, variable membership bands engage in a short period of
intensive rehearsal in the early stages of each wedding season. The pattern of most
bandsmen’s professional lives is carefully constrained by the wedding season. At the Jea
Band office in Jaipur, the central figure in the day-to-day management of the shop is not the
µ⊄λικ, Kishan Lal, but an elder bandmaster named Bhajan Lal, who has worked as a
bandsman since roughly 1950, most of the time with the Thadani family who own the Jea
Bands. Bhajan Lal himself has his home and family in a smaller town outside Jaipur; but he
lives in the city for much of the year.
I first met Bhajan Lal during a rehearsal period at the very end of January in 1994.
This is one logical time for rehearsals; the season is picking up again after the December-
January hiatus and the full complement of mobile bandsmen has arrived at the shop from their
villages or small towns (the Jaipur branch of Jea may hire as many as 400 men per season).
Rehearsal take place in the back room of the Jea Band shop, a large square room, roughly five
by nine meters. On this day, the room was literally crammed with 30-40 bandsmen in
concentric rows; the decibel level was, as with most band rehearsals in India, injurious to
one’s hearing (Plate 11). Bhajan Lal sat at a harmonium in middle of the group; near him sat
a bandsman in charge of the tape player in which was a cassette of the new film song that the
band was learning. Bhajan Lal was listening to the tape, teaching the song line by line,
assigning parts to particular sections, correcting bandsmen’s errors, and doing the many
managerial tasks that all leaders of large ensembles do. The rehearsals continued with
different personnel and different numbers of men, for three full days, stopping for meals and
prayers (especially on Friday for the many Muslims in the band), and to perform the
occasional procession. Although he was sitting in a room full of men who call themselves
Master So-and-so, Bhajan Lal’s status was clearly respected by those present. Men coming
into the room would greet him very politely, some taking his blessing through the symbolic
touching of feet that is frequently seen in the classical world.
The men who were rehearsing with Bhajan Lal were familiar with the songs they were
learning; some had probably played them already in their villages or small towns.
Nevertheless, the three days of rehearsal were just about the only chance the entire group
would have to sort out who was to play what part, how parts were to be played, and how the

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song(s) would be structured. Bhajan Lal had to ensure that the setting (that is, arrangement)
he created would be flexible enough to be played by parties both larger and smaller than the
group in front of him. The men rehearsing knew that they would not necessarily be playing in
a band of the size they were sitting with, nor with precisely the same distribution of
instruments, nor even with the same individuals. The seasonality of this pattern of arrival-
rehearsal-performance is quite consistent and makes for rapid and marked change in the
atmosphere of large band shops. When I returned to Jaipur the following year, I did so in
roughly the second week of January, rather than the fourth week. The shop was almost empty.
One party made up of some local bandsmen and a small group of migrants was performing for
the few processions that were scheduled. Kishen Lal, the µ⊄λικ, was out of town, and even
Bhajan Lal had gone home to visit his family; the season’s mobile laborers had yet to arrive,
and the rehearsals yet to start.
Every degree in the spectrum between rehearsal patterns like Jea’s (short intense
periods) and Shyam’s (regular rehearsals spread over the year) may be accounted for by one
band or another in India. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that variable membership limits the
musical quality of a band’s performance, especially given the small number of rehearsals in
which most bands engage. The size and prosperity of the three Jea Bands allows them to
insist on training and on musical and behavioral standards that are somewhat above average.
I must note that in many bands, in addition to Jea, µ⊄λικs and bandmasters take rehearsal
periods quite seriously and insist (although with varying degrees of success) on corresponding
attitudes and behaviors from their bandsmen. It is clear from the sounds on Indian streets
during the wedding season that some bands try harder than others.
In a variable membership band, musicians’ sense of ensemble is naturally not as
developed as it might be if they played together regularly (or indeed expected to play together
regularly in the future); arrangements cannot be refined to suit particular strengths and
weaknesses within the group. Basic musical functions for which different instruments and
different classes of bandsman are responsible are clearly understood by all throughout the
band world, the nature and requirements of the task highly familiar for the most part. As one
euphonium player explained to me, “I listen to what the master [the bandmaster leading the
party] is playing. What he plays, I answer that.” Salim was a relatively experienced young
καρ⊂γαρ, one of the relatively few mobile musicians playing that season in the Modern
Brass Band on the very outskirts of Hyderabad. He had never played with the band before
and was not expecting any rehearsals (indeed there were none in an organized sense). Salim
was quite familiar with the performance practice in the band world, however, and was

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prepared to be flexible. In bands larger than the Modern, the bandmaster to whom Salim
would respond might change from one day to the next (and may be playing a different
instrument as well). A mobile musician like Salim may find himself playing in a line of
fifteen other euphoniums one day and a line of four the next. Playing in ensembles that may
change daily to some extent (in regards to size, personnel, and instrumentation) naturally
makes performances quite spontaneously structured and requires musicians to be quite
flexible in terms of their own responsibilities. If a ⋅ηολ player (to choose a different and
perhaps more important example) is one of three in a party, the extent of his responsibility for
the overall success of the performance (not to mention the amount of attention and effort he
must give to that performance) is understandably less than if he is the only ⋅ηολ player, or if
his colleagues that day are less knowledgeable or talented. Since ⋅ηολ is a vital drum for
rhythmic interest and cadential material, and is equally important for the provision of dance
rhythms, the difference in the number and musical skills of the ⋅ηολ players in a party can be
significant. All musical roles are not as crucial as that of the ⋅ηολ players; a few more or less
skilled euphonium players hardly will make hardly any difference at all in most
circumstances. These considerations nevertheless apply across the instrumental spectrum.
Bands with variable membership can and do deliver effective musical performances; but the
obstacles in their way are increased by the professional and economic behaviors that govern
their world.
The social and economic implications for variable membership are also negative and
interact further with musical issues. Any socio-musical sense of ensemble identity, which is
quite obvious in Pakistani bands, for example, where many of the men in a given band have
been playing together for five, ten, or more years in most cases, has little chance to develop
significantly in variable membership bands. Variable membership only heightens the already
anonymous nature of bandsmen’s social identities; it facilitates a perception of bandsmen, by
customers, µ⊄λικs, and the bandsmen themselves, as simply musically replaceable cogs in a
uniformed, faceless industry. In a small town, the members of a fixed membership band
might well know, at least from a distance, the families for whom they perform. The potential
for some sense of community, however problematized it might be by caste issues, is at least
possible. From the other perspective, variable membership and the economic structures that
support it, in which bandsmen’s salaries are not directly tied to the fees the µ⊄λικ may
generate, naturally strain relations between µ⊄λικ and bandsmen. Jagannath More, µ⊄λικ of
the Tansen Brass Band in central Mumbai told me he never felt that he could trust his
καρ⊂γαρs. “For every function, I also go; or if I cannot go, I send my son. If I am not there,

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maybe some of my workers will not play so well, or they sit and have tea and do not play all
the time.” Although More expresses himself rather more extremely than most µ⊄λικs, most
would probably understand his concerns. Bandsmen whose commitment to a particular
µ⊄λικ will last only until the end of a season, three to four months away, naturally have less
motivation to work as hard or play with total enthusiasm during their third daily performance
of a hit film song. Disputes about pay sometimes cause bandsmen (even leading
bandmasters) to disappear in mid-season. In practice, this policy makes quality control of
musical performance almost beyond anyone’s control. Variable and seasonal membership
practices are in part responsible for the weakening of economic and social incentives for the
improvement of musical performances, which, in turn, is a major factor in the relatively low
performance standards that have prevailed increasingly among Indian bands since the 1950s.
Variable band party membership, based on a system of mobile labor is a relatively
recent phenomenon in Indian bands. It has grown along with the size of Indian cities, the
relative size of urban populations, and urban-rural disparities in the cost of living and wages.
Historically, bands like Razak, Jea, Jehanghir, Ghulam Hussain, Babu, Chaudary, Noor
Mohamed, and Macchan, to name some very definite examples, and perhaps the Sikh-owned
bands in pre-Partition Lahore, (such as the Lahore Military Band) had fixed memberships. A
bandsman might be able to take a certain pride in a claim to be a member of a city’s famous
So-and-so Band. Partition broke up the original personnel of some bands, (Jea and Lahore
Military, for example). For other Indian bands on this list, such as Noor Mohamed or Razak,
the change from fixed to variable membership, which took place in the second half of the 20th
century, was more gradual. For the Pakistani bands on this list, Chaudury, Ghulam Hussain,
and Babu, the change never took place.
As in many other aspects of the trade, Pakistani brass bands present an alternative, and
one might say anachronistic, perspective. Pakistani brass bands continue to be fixed
membership ensembles run largely as cooperatives. Older players who retire are replaced by
younger musicians, who then become permanent members. On my second visit to Lahore in
2000, the personnel of both the Sohni and Jehanghir Bands were largely the same men I had
met in 1995. The only changes were the result of retirement. In consequence, most Pakistani
bands, such as the Ghulam Hussain Band in Rawalpindi or the Kalle Khan band of Peshawar,
are more than a name, they are specific groups of musicians who play together consistently
under that name. This has obvious implications for musicianship and social identity. In
musical terms, my personal perception is that the better Pakistani bands have higher levels of
intonation, range of repertoire, and ensemble musicality than their Indian counterparts. Since

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almost no one has heard the contemporary bands of both countries, however, such
comparisons must remain personal expressions. I have also noted, however, that this older
pattern of socio-economic organization, fixed membership is the result of the generally lower
level of demand that exists in Pakistan, which in turn limits the growth of the trade and the
demand for new bandsmen.
Regardless of whether the bandsmen waiting outside the family home have waited
together in that city for other βαρ⊄τs over many years, or whether six months ago they were
waiting outside family homes one hundred or one thousand kilometers away, with completely
different colleagues, the professional behaviors of bandsmen, and the musical/processional
task they undertake are the same everywhere. At the core of that task is the music that brass
bandsmen perform. Consequently, the songs that brass bands play and the manner in which
they play them require consideration. Bandsmen do the best that they can to invest their trade
with whatever limited sense of musical humanity and enjoyment may be possible within the
limitations that have become apparent; but this could be said of many activities in the difficult
lives of South Asia. Issues of repertoire and performance practice will be the foci of the
concluding chapters of this work.

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 Chapter 6. The Wedding Band Repertoire
Brass bandsmen are in the unenviable position of being hired musicians at events that
are not primarily musical events, but at which tradition demands music and in most cases,
music performed by a brass band. Bands serve as symbols of prestige and provide music for
processing and dancing; they serve pragmatic roles as well in helping families manage public
space. Βαρ⊄τs are events at which music is performed and (in a limited way) responded to;
but the demand for brass bands, stemming from the βαρ⊄τs that I have described, is not what
one could call a musical demand. Bands are not hired because people wish to hear them or
because they perform a special or exclusive repertoire. Asking βαρ⊄τ participants about the
band’s performance at the event does not produce qualitative evaluations of musical
performance. Instead participants tend to dismiss the musicians and/or the music with vague
statements such as: “Oh it was some band,” “I don’t really like that music,” “Those guys just
play anything,” and so on. Whether merely non-committal or actively dismissive, one hardly
ever gets the sense that the βαρ⊄τ participants are responding to bands in musical or aesthetic
ways. And, despite the broadly popular appeal and even broader dissemination of film song
in Indian culture, the film songs that bands play do not improve evaluations of their
performances.
In discussions of brass bands with non-bandsmen, the matter of the φιλµ⊂ γ⊄ν⊄ (film
song) repertoire will eventually surface, normally as a factor in the dismissal of bands from
serious musical consideration. In an article celebrating the return of a military brass band to a
Mumbai bandstand, Foy Nissen, a historian of the city’s culture expressed concerns about the
repertoire that the brass band might offer: “‘Nowadays, all music emanates from Hindi
films,’ he says with a wry laugh. Nissen needn’t have any fears on this count because the
band’s brief, at least for the debut concert, is to stick to the straight and narrow. No Kaho Na
Pyaar Hai, thankfully” (Kavarana, 2000: 2). According to the next day’s Indian Express, the
Mechanised Infantry brass band’s performance of the “straight and narrow” included
compositions by classical musician Pandit Ravi Shankar and other compositions from outside
φιλµ⊂ (that is, popular film) culture, along with “traditional marching tunes” (n.a. 2000: 1).
The film song, Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, whose absence Kavarana thankfully notes here, was one
of the major hit songs of the 1999-2000 wedding season. Wedding bands had been playing it
every day for months by the time their military colleagues took the bandstand. Here, the very
existence of brass wedding bands is only implied through a reference to their repertoire (film
songs), which is compared negatively to the repertoire of the military band. Thus, it is not
only the identity of the wedding band and bandsmen that generates negative response, it is

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that identity in combination with the modern φιλµ⊂ repertoire. Although wedding bands are
sometimes valued for their own nostalgia producing qualities, their performance of an
explicitly modern repertoire acts to negate some of the positive results of such nostalgia and
the positive reception of the bands that it might engender.
The songs that form the bulk of the brass band repertoire are readily available in their
original forms on radio, television, public broadcast and on film-song cassettes. Despite the
Shyam Band’s anomalously successful career as recording artists (Chapter 5), film-song
cassettes are much easier to find than the rare brass band recording. From an industrial or
production point of view, bands hardly exist. The nature of the standard repertoire of Indian
brass bands, however, and the ways in which that repertoire does and does not connect them
to the film song industry and audience, are matters that help us understand how brass bands fit
into their musical culture and how they embody (if not reinforce) the transformations of 20th
century India. For much of that century, the film music industry can be seen taking on the
role of primary cultural producer. Film songs are initially commercial musical product; but
they are transformed into the musical materials of traditional, ritual, and public life. We will
see that the brass band repertoire is dominated by film songs; indeed the depth and breadth of
film song dissemination by the industry are the reason those songs are such an obvious choice
for modern brass bands. Despite the relatively hegemonic position of the film industry and its
music, brass bands are not therefore merely the stooges of that industry. They participate in a
more active process of cultural consumption; ironically, that process could perhaps be said to
reduce the “shelf-life” of the most popular songs while neither increasing commercial sales
nor providing income through royalty fees. While customers must pay for the band itself,
neither they, nor other listeners, nor the bandsmen pay for the use of the songs. As I will
argue later in this chapter, the film song industry is certainly beyond the influences of brass
bandsmen; but bandsmen are in some ways equally free of control by the industry. As with
most traditional or folk musics, their performances are offered, in a sense, free to those who
would listen.
Classical versus Φιλµ⊂ in Varanasi
Hiring two or three bands for a βαρ⊄τ is a height of excessive consumption that few
modern families even contemplate. I have nevertheless attended a few βαρ⊄τs arranged by
families who have apparently felt that such grandeur was appropriate for their son’s marriage.
Among these was a 1988 βαρ⊄τ in Varanasi at which the Mumtaz Band was present. Two
other bands, the Punjab Band and the International Pipe Band, had also been hired for this
βαρ⊄τ. Bagpipe bands do not normally play the kind of introductory stationary musical sets

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that brass bands perform at βαρ⊄τs, so this portion of the performance was left to the Punjab
and Mumtaz Bands. The family of Ali Raza, the Punjab Band µ⊄λικ, are related to the other
Hashimi bands in Varanasi (including Mumtaz); but one must trace back five generations to
find the connection, as Figure 3 (Chapter 2) shows. This distant relationship is primarily
expressed, in modern times, as a lively sense of competition between the Punjab Band, on one
hand, and on the other, the many bands owned by families descended from Nachet many
generations ago. As one might have expected, on this particular evening, the βαρ⊄τ quickly
developed into a competition; since both bands had brought large 51-man parties, there was a
great deal of internally perceived prestige at stake.
On this night, each band adhered to standard practice, performing an introductory
series of songs from a stationary position that in this event occurred in the large enclosed
family courtyard. The space had been suitably decorated for the wedding and approximately
50 chairs set out in rows, in the center of the courtyard, for wedding guests. As with most
such arrangements, most of the guests ignored the chairs and chatted in small groups around
the edges of the courtyard. As the Punjab Band began its introductory set, many of the guests
moved to spaces as far as a possible from the band so that they could continue their
conversations; a 51-man band, after all, is loud. A few of the other guests stood and listened
to the band, while still others left the space altogether. Punjab offered a typical set of songs
beginning with a military style salute, or σαλ⊄µ⊂, followed by film songs, played with much
gusto and precision. The band had two working sousaphones and a bass drum, which were
unusual enough in Varanasi at the time as to be somewhat special or prestigious in
themselves. The Mumtaz brothers had anticipated this development, however, and managed
to find a sousaphone and bass drum of their own, although neither instrument was a daily
feature of Mumtaz Band parties.
The Mumtaz bandsmen had just finished a long weekend of rehearsals, learning new
songs, and integrating the local musicians with the mobile καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen who had
recently arrived from Rampur, a city with a reputation as a source of well trained bandsmen.
The results had been immediately apparent in their post-rehearsal performances, which were
more musical and more varied than they had been the week before; but it was clear to me that
the Mumtaz brothers were going to have their work cut out for them if they hoped to compete
with the Punjab Band. The presence of the sousaphone and bass drum made it clear that the
brothers realized this as well. They had one additional trick up their collective sleeves,
however, which did allow them to distinguish themselves on this particular evening.
Following their own σαλ⊄µ⊂, they chose not to perform one of the new film song

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arrangements they had been rehearsing. Given the limited nature of the repertoire, which I
shall describe below, whatever they chose would certainly have been one of the same songs
that the Punjab Band had just performed. Instead, they took advantage of the presence of a
classically trained Rampur clarinetist to perform a classical north Indian ρ⊄γ, Yaman,
complete with solo improvisations and drone. While the low brass provided the tonic
foundation, Muhammad Bacchan played an improvised αλ⊄π section that lasted perhaps six
minutes. After the αλ⊄π, following standard classical performance practice, Bacchan
introduced a composition or βαδιση in the sixteen beat rhythm cycle, τιντ⊄λ. The entire
band then took up the βαδιση in unison for two repetitions. Bacchan then reasserted his
soloist status, following standard classical practice by performing improvisations, complete
with cadential τιη⊄⊂s at the conclusion of each improvised section. After each
improvisation-τιη⊄⊂ sequence, he returned to the βαδιση, which was performed by the
whole band as a refrain. The performance lasted approximately fifteen minutes. After their
foray into the classical repertoire, the Mumtaz Band then performed two of their more
carefully rehearsed film songs.
The performance had obviously been planned since the Mumtaz percussion section
had come equipped not only with a bass drum, but also with a ⋅ηολακ, a common north
Indian barrel drum used to accompany a wide range of primarily folk and traditional song
genres. At this event, however, the drum was used to perform an approximation of τιντ⊄λ.
The performance took on the alternating soloist-ensemble structure that the rare brass band
performances of classical music inevitably do; sections of solo, improvised clarinet
accompanied by ⋅ηολακ were interspersed with sections performed by the entire band with
all the standard brass band percussion. The rarity of this performance practice was evident in
the first solo sections, when brothers Samshad and Naushad had to go from drummer to
drummer, making it clear to each that they should leave these sections to the ⋅ηολακ player.
Bacchan’s performance started a short-lived fashion among local Varanasi bands. Over the
next few nights, I heard two or three other βαρ⊄τ performances in which soloists played
improvised solos over drones, although these were more commonly trumpeters than
clarinetists. That these imitations used film songs, rather than classical or semi-classical
βαδισηs as their compositional basis provides additional commentary on the weakness of
the classical repertoire in the band world and the rarity of the practice.
Classical music is a rather difficult currency in the band world. It is generally valued
and respected in principle by most bandsmen, although there are very few who can even

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produce the broad outlines of classical performance that Muhammad Bacchan played that
evening in Varanasi. Despite its respected position, classical music has little pragmatic value
in bandsmen’s professional lives, and is hardly ever performed, at least in India. The Mumtaz
brothers’ decision to play classical music on that particular night, in that particular setting
was, as Mumtaz told me later, a calculated gamble intended to heighten the band’s status and
to distinguish them from their most bitter rivals, with whom they were sharing the
performance space that evening. Without that classical choice, the Mumtaz Band would have
appeared a slightly weaker version of the Punjab Band who had just finished their
performance. Since bands normally have the βαρ⊄τ performance space to themselves, the
need to distinguish themselves from other bands is rarely contextualized in this extremely
challenging proximity. The Mumtaz Band did not make a habit of playing classical music at
their βαρ⊄τs that year or in succeeding years. Not counting the echoes that rebounded down
the Varanasi alleys for the next few nights, this Mumtaz performance of classical music
repertoire and style is the only one I have ever heard at an Indian βαρ⊄τ or procession
(Pakistan is another matter, however).
One might blame classical music’s disappearance from the band repertoire on the
impact of mass mediated popular music in general were it not for two considerations. First,
classical music has probably only ever represented a percentage of the brass band and
processional music repertoire. The size of that percentage for the past is not clear; but my
suspicion is that in general it could not have been much larger than 50 percent. Secondly, to
whatever extent classical music has “disappeared,” this is only a symptom of a phenomenon
produced by a large conglomerate of factors of which the mass media are only part. As an
attempt to “one-up” their competition, the classical repertoire choice was an unexpected, but
inherently successful strategy; the Mumtaz brothers knew that Ali Raza, the Punjab µ⊄λικ,
had no one in his band at the time, who could compete with Bacchan’s classical skills
(although in other wedding seasons, this would not have been so). The brothers were
certainly pleased by the performance; it may have come as an unwelcome surprise to Ali Raza
and his sons; and it may have been of some (temporary) interest to the καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen.
Whether, in the midst of talking guests, running children, the bustle of family preparations the
performance was even noticed by the βαρ⊄τ participants is difficult to tell. There were
hardly ten people sitting in the rows of chairs directly in front of the bands as they started
playing; there were fewer by the time Punjab was finished and Bacchan began his αλ⊄π.
Except for the other bandsmen, there were no obviously attentive listeners. Whatever the
Mumtaz Band’s performance of ρ⊄γ Yaman may have proved, it proved primarily to the

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Mumtaz Band. According to Mumtaz himself, the band’s patrons had not hired them because
they expected or desired classical music performance. The performance was a gesture. It had
meaning within the closed world of inter-band competition; but without that world, the
gesture was largely empty. The Punjab and Mumtaz bands (as well as the International Pipe
Band) were there that night to demonstrate a family’s wealth, happiness, and self-perceived
social status. The behaviors of the guests made it clear that it did not matter to them which
band was more accomplished or which played what. For the guests, it was just background to
their social event.
The focus of this story has been on a particular repertoire choice and its implications;
but a more fundamental issue lies at the heart of the reception of the Mumtaz Band’s
performance that evening. Bands are marginal musically just as bandsmen are marginal
socially. The behaviors of participants during βαρ⊄τs suggest to me that there is no
audience, in the normal sense of that term, for brass band performance. There is no one who
seeks out brass band performance, and few enough who will stop what they are doing solely
to listen to a band performance. Βαρ⊄τ participants do dance to the music of their band, and
passers-by will pause for a moment to take in the spectacle; but realistically speaking, hardly
anyone listens to brass bandsmen. Except for dancing, when it takes place, one would be hard
pressed to deduce from the guests’ responses that there was even a band present. Although
most βαρ⊄τ participants are willing enough to criticize bands in general (and standards are
often low enough for much of that criticism to be applicable in any event), there is no
aesthetic or evaluative response to individual performances, good or bad. This state of affairs
problematizes the whole notion of music performance and aesthetics; it makes arriving at any
musical understanding of the band world a confusing exercise. Nevertheless, one must ask,
what are the songs of the brass bands and what do they mean to the musicians and to their
patrons? This chapter starts with a look at the various components of the brass band
repertoire, their functions within the processional context, and relationships between
bandsmen and their repertoire.
Βαρ⊄τ and processional repertoires - Transformations and continuities of meaning
Religious processions and βαρ⊄τs are musical performances; but for bandsmen
βαρ⊄τs are distinct from religious or other processions in musical, ritual, and performative
ways. A procession is the central feature of a βαρ⊄τ; but the larger event also includes a
musical performance before the groom’s home as well as during the procession itself. When
the procession ends, there is no performance which concludes the event in the same way that
the band’s introductory musical set begins it; but the band may perform a specially

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appropriate final song as the guests move from the public streets to the private space where
the wedding will take place. During a βαρ⊄τ, one could posit an emotional progression as
well: the general atmosphere and mood of the participants is conventionally understood in
many families and social groups to become increasingly ecstatic (not to say frenzied) as the
βαρ⊄τ draws closer to the bride’s home. In practice, of course, such emotional
transformation may be actual, performed, or simply absent. Naturally, it is the bandsmen who
are responsible for providing the musical setting intended to elicit the relevant behaviors for
this emotional progression. Most prominent among performed βαρ⊄τ behaviors is dancing
which is a large measure of participants’ emotional excitement.
Religious processions (processions generically are called ϕαλ⊆σ) tend to be much
longer (both in duration and distance) than βαρ⊄τs and rarely, if ever include dancing by
participants. Although I have argued that bands and bandsmen are largely anonymous in
normal βαρ⊄τ contexts, that anonymity is amplified in religious processions where there are
often two or more bands. In contrast to the progressive and sectional nature of most βαρ⊄τs,
religious processions are seamless events with little sense emotional transformation.
Nevertheless, participants may experience a certain devotional satisfaction at the conclusion
of a five or six hour religious procession.
Βαρ⊄τs and religious processions each have specialized repertoire elements, although
much of a band’s repertoire of current φιλµ⊂ hits may be heard in both kinds of events. As I
will describe below, there are songs heard at βαρ⊄τs that are only heard in that context, and
are often tied to specific stages of the event. On the other hand, it is possible to spend five or
six hours at a religious procession without hearing any film songs. In some communities and
cities, the standard βαρ⊄τ repertoire is not considered acceptable for religious processions,
leading to specialized devotional repertoires. Because βαρ⊄τs are the primary (and for many
bands the only) source of regular income for bandsmen, my focus in this chapter will be on
the βαρ⊄τs and the music performed at them; later in the chapter, I will discuss those
particular aspects of repertoire which are specific to non-βαρ⊄τ processions.
The band repertoire is informed by the performative and cultural needs of bandsmen’s
primary source of income, the wedding procession. To a certain extent, distinctive repertoires
and performance practices are routinely employed by bandsmen for different stages of a
βαρ⊄τ. The idiosyncrasies of individual bands and bandmasters, regional trends, and
distinctive historical and contemporary circumstances, however, all force me to generalize
with caution. This is especially obvious in the beginning of the βαρ⊄τ performance, which

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nevertheless does have some musical consistencies from region to region. I have pointed out
the musical advantages of stationary performances. All bands seem to take advantage of this
to produce their best quality performances.
Σαλ⊄µ⊂ - “Traditional” “English” music
The initial set of songs played by bands is one of the most consistent features of
βαρ⊄τ performance where ever one goes. In much of the Deccan, a band begins as they
mean to carry on, with popular film songs; but in northern India, and in some bands as far
south as Mumbai and Pune, the first sounds heard at a βαρ⊄τ are specifically conceptualized
as an introduction that calls for a repertoire distinct from the rest of the performance. A
musical introduction is usually quite short; bandsmen call their introductory item a σαλ⊄µ⊂,
“σαλ⊄µ” being a greeting or salutation in Muslim or Muslim-inflected social intercourse.
The actual music of the σαλ⊄µ⊂ is drawn from one of the oldest layers of the brass band
repertoire, that of the marches and related music of the military bands which are Indian bands’
ancestors. Marches generically and collectively belong to a category that bandsmen call
“English” music, although this term is used to identify any music that is not Indian. The
σαλ⊄µ⊂ melody shown in Figure 12 was performed by the Mumtaz Band. At this beginning
of my discussion of musical content and practice I should note that although bands often play
in something very close to unison, there is always some elaboration or variation on “the”
melody. Melodies in this tradition are in some ways, actually melodic skeletons that are
fleshed out or reduced by different players’ differing musical instruments, musical
understandings and expertise, as well as personal whim and simple human error. The small
(and large) melodic discrepancies of the different voices are technically a form of
heterophony, in which each individual’s version of the melody may vary to a greater or lesser
extent. This is a characteristic of brass bands’ performance practice, and with slightly
different rules and standards in some cases, a broadly and distinctively Indian approach to
ensemble playing heard in other musical traditions as well. I will discuss this performance
practice in the brass band world in Chapter 7; at this point, it is enough to note that all of the
transcriptions presented in this book are representative only.
The Mumtaz σαλ⊄µ⊂ shown here began with an opening chordal fanfare melody
(Measures 1-11), very much like a stylized version of the largely triadic bugle calls that mark
time and duty in the routine of the British (and Indian) army. This is a common feature of the
σαλ⊄µ⊂s played by other northern bands; in which different musical components may be
combined as appropriate, depending on which bandsmen know what melodies. I might argue

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here that English music σαλ⊄µ⊂s are more about playing the right sounding music at the
right time than about aesthetics or the performance of a single identifiable tune.
This particular night, the Mumtaz σαλ⊄µ⊂ was made slightly confused when,
following the fanfare, a καρ⊂γαρ bandmaster from out of town introduced a march melody
that seemed to be unfamiliar to most of the 25 men in the group (Measures 12-20). As a
result many of the bandsmen were content to let the bandmasters carry the tune for the short
duration of its performance. After only a few minutes, as it became clear that the rest of the
band was not going to participate, the bandmasters changed to a more familiar melody
(beginning in Measure 21). This was more enthusiastically performed and was repeated after
a return to the fanfare.
Σαλ⊄µ⊂s, English music, are not all military in origin. At a βαρ⊄τ in Mumbai in
1996, the National Hindu Band performed something they called the “Georgia March”; this
so-called march was comprised largely of the melody of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at
Home” interspersed with additional melodic materials that escaped identification. Foster’s
melody, played at a march tempo, with symmetrical, duple drumming similar to that shown in
Figure 12, meets all the requirements of a σαλ⊄µ⊂. The rhythms shown in this drum music
are typical for performances of “English” music. They are distinct, however, from the
drumming heard in performances of film music. Indeed, the beat that Indian drummers use to
accompany σαλ⊄µ⊂s shows that they consider this music to be separate from the rest of their
repertoire. The bass drums provide a constant “1-2” quarter-note pulse, which oddly enough
otherwise only appears in “disco” melodies, another western-influenced music (see below).
While the snare drum rhythms vary, they are equally repetitive and equally symmetrically
duple in their phrasing.
Not all bands play σαλ⊄µ⊂s; as I noted, most Deccani bands play only film songs. It
is probably true that the relatively young age of Deccani bands collectively means that these
families and musicians missed out on learning any of the military march repertoire that once
figured more prominently in Indian brass band repertoires. It seems to be the case that more
bands owned by families with over three generations in the trade (that is those who were
involved prior to 1947) play σαλ⊄µ⊂s than do bands of more recent origin. Despite the
preferences expressed by Nissen and Karvana at the beginning of this chapter, the absence of
military music in the repertoires of more recently established bands is most probably a natural
outcome of the transformation of brass bands from relicts of the British and Indian military
establishment into manifestations of modern (that is, independent) Indian culture. Certainly
the repertoire of marches is not growing; marches are legacies of earlier days in those families

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who have sufficient generations to pass on such dubious possessions. Nor is there any
connection between a family’s service in the military (the Indian military, that is) and their
performance of a military march repertoire. As I noted in Part I of this work, relatively few
contemporary band-owning families have any history of military service in any event. The
presence of marches in the wedding band repertoire is certainly an example of one kind of
musical change, the replacement of indigenous repertoires with foreign repertoires through
the influences of colonialism; the more recent decline of that repertoire and its replacement by
film song shows yet another form of musical change, as the media takes its place as dominant
producer of musical content.
I cannot offer a catalogue of σαλ⊄µ⊂s by name. “Colonel Bogey,” “Punjab March,”
“Loyal Comrades,” and “Georgia March” are names that have been offered in discussions of
marches with bandsmen. Many play melodies they have learned orally without ever knowing
the tune’s name. Many bandsmen simply say, “It’s a march,” when asked what is being
played, or alternatively, “English march” or even “English music.” Some σαλ⊄µ⊂s (the
beginning of the Mumtaz σαλ⊄µ⊂ shown in Figure 12, for example) at least appear to be
little more than elaborated bugle calls.
Bandsmen do not discriminate between actual marches and other melodies that are
used as marches, as we can see from the National Hindu’s use of a minstrel melody. Nor do
they find it odd to be playing British or American marches at Indian weddings. Northern
bandsmen especially understand marches as part of the repertoire of their ensemble, part of its
heritage. Some bandsmen suggest that their customers expect it, that it makes an appropriate
opening for their performance. Generally speaking, bandsmen play σαλ⊄µ⊂s out of habit
(“it’s what we do”) and a sense of the fitness of things (“it’s better that way”). As the Indian
Express implied above, one can say that British marches are traditional in the brass band
repertoire; that these brass bands happen to be Indian wedding bands is, in at least two senses,
not the issue. First, these marches were part of the popular repertoire of the late 19th and early
20th centuries. They were imposed upon Indian audiences along with the ensemble. As long
as India maintains the ensemble, it is no more unusual that they would retain at least the
vestiges of the original repertoire. In the other sense, I refer to my discussion of classical
music (about which more later) above. A band’s performance (the quality of their playing
and the precise numbers they are playing at any given moment) seems to make little long-term
impression on βαρ⊄τ participants. While the right dance song, well performed at the right
moment may evoke ecstatic or at least pleasurable motor responses, I cannot be convinced

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that the rest of the time their patrons are terribly concerned about what the band plays at a
βαρ⊄τ; Colonel Bogey is as good as anything.
Classical music in the band world: knowledge, performance, prestige
Classical ρ⊄γα music is revered more in thought than in action in the band world.
Older bandsmen confirm that classical performances by bands were more common throughout
the north in the early mid-century than at present; but the performance described in the story
opening this chapter is literally the only such performance I have witnessed out of the more
than one hundred Indian βαρ⊄τs I have attended. As in other areas of the trade, it is the
bandsmen of Pakistan who maintain this somewhat anachronistic element of the band
repertoire. Not all Pakistani brass bands perform classical music; but many do. Nor do those
who are able perform classical music do so to the same extent at every βαρ⊄τ. The lines are
further blurred by bands’ practice of using film songs as the basis for classical style
improvisation. Bands that maintain a level of ρ⊄γα content can be expected to match that
content with suitably developed rhythmic content. Some Indian bands and most Pakistani
bands have drummers who can collectively approximate some of the virtuosity of South
Asia’s solo drumming traditions.
The relative vitality of the classical repertoire among Pakistani bandsmen adds to the
anachronistic nature of this band world, in comparison with India. The ongoing congruence
of the classical and band worlds in Pakistan is an additional outcome of this vitality. Clarinet-
playing bandmasters continue to work in radio and television as staff musicians or casual
artists, a dual citizenship, so to speak, that is no longer possible in India (although it was
possible mid-century). That many of the bandsmen, film composers, and radio artists are
drawn from a single Mirasi community of hereditary musicians is a fundamental difference
between Pakistan (especially Lahore) and Indian patterns of socio-professional identity.
Bandsmen’s membership in the common community that acts as a labor pool of band, radio,
and classical musicians naturally makes the connection between classical music and brass
bands stronger. Indeed, it is not unusual for discussions or even impromptu performances of
classical music to take place in band shops in cities like Lahore or Rawalpindi. The walls of
the Jehanghir Band’s shop in Lahore display the usual photographs of the founders (Jehanghir
and Alamghir Khan) but also show photographs of the classical musicians associated with the
band’s history. Alamghir’s youngest son and current µ⊄λικ, Muhammad Babur, for many
years organized classical festivals to commemorate his father’s birth, hiring and persuading
the city’s classical musicians to perform without fees to honor his father, a bandsman who
was also a great classical performer.

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 In the not too distant past, some Pakistani bands and clarinetists adhered more closely
still to classical performance practice than the simple inclusion of classical improvisations in
suitable film repertoire. Figure 13 shows a transcription of an excerpt from a performance, in
the classical mode or ρ⊄γ called Malkauns, by Aurangzeb (Rangi) Khan (1939-1993),
Babur’s elder brother . Babur states that the Jehanghir Band was hired especially for this
1978 βαρ⊄τ in Islamabad by a Pakistani family who were fans of classical music. As in any
analysis of South Asian classical music, the following discussion of content will necessarily
include issues of performance practice, which I have otherwise left for the following chapter.
Like all classical soloists (and most South Asian soloists of any kind), Rangi Khan
began his performance with a traditional free-rhythm solo improvisation called an αλ⊄π.
After the αλ⊄π, the band introduced a unison melody, in this case really just a simple
ascending-descending scale outline. In normal classical vocal practice and in North Indian
classical theory, this would be called the αστ⊄⊂, that is, the first half of a fixed
composition (βαδιση) continuing the ρ⊄γ begun in the αλ⊄π, but also set to a specific
rhythm cycle, in this case, the ten-beat cycle called ϕηαπτ⊄λ in North India. In standard
vocal or instrumental performance, this rhythm cycle would be played by a ταβλα-drummer.
In this particular case, the melody could hardly be called a composition in the true sense of
that term; but it did serve the purpose that compositions normally serve in this improvised
performance practice, acting as a refrain, here played at the conclusion of each of Rangi
Khan’s improvised solos.
Following the introduction of this refrain by the band, Rangi Khan began a series of
improvised solos, adhering, as is customary in classical music, to the structures of both the
ρ⊄γ and the τ⊄λ. The drummers accompanied the band’s introductory statement and all of
Khan’s solos with a replication of the kind of drumming patterns that a ταβλα-drummer
would play to produce the requisite ten-beat cycle. In Figure 13, small “+” symbols indicate
the beginning of each cycle of ten beats (shown here as two measures of quintuple meter).
The ⋅ηολ strokes on beats 1, 3, 4, and 8 produced the expected τ⊄λ-defining strokes of the
left-hand drum of the ταβλα pair (which is also the lower pitched drum of the pair). Rangi
Khan’s performance of this slow composition was followed by a faster section in the common
16-beat cycle, τιντ⊄λ. This performance, of which Figure 13 is an excerpt completely
embraces the very slow tempo quite common in vocal practice, but rarely heard in classical
instrumental performance, and (except for this recording and local oral histories) unheard of
in brass band practice. In subsequent statements of the band’s refrain melody, the drummers

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played rapid dense rhythms similar to the χαλτ⊂ or λαγγ⊂ drumming style heard in thumris,
ghazals and other light musics of virtuosic light-classical ταβλα solo playing. In comparison
to the actual classical melodic soloing, such drumming “solos” are slightly more common, not
only among bands of the western Punjab, but also in some bands from eastern Uttar Pradesh
and Bengal.
The comparison to vocal practice is especially important since Aurangzeb Khan’s
discipular heritage connects him to classical vocalists (as do the similar heritages of some
other clarinet players of the band world) through his father’s relationship to the Gwalior-
γηαρ⊄να κηαψ⊄λ-style vocalist Ustad Bhai Lal Muhammad Amritsari (1887-1962) and
through his own relationship with Bhai Lal’s son, Ustad Hassan Shaggan (1930). Thus, like
many other classical clarinetists, Aurangzeb relates his instrument not to instrumental style of
instrumental performance but to the γ⊄ψακ⊂, or vocal, style of instrumental performance.
Aurangzeb Khan’s commitment to the γ⊄ψακ⊂ αγ is obvious from the very first melodic
smear of his entrance (Measure 1), which, despite the discrete pitches of the notated figure,
were actually performed as a single continuous glissando above and below the predominant
minor third scale degree. Only at the end of his first phrase (Measure 2) did Rangi Khan
actually articulate discrete pitches; these serve as a temporary conclusion to the phrase that
opens this improvisatory section. To reinforce this feeling of conclusion, Khan sustains the
final F, or tonic, almost until the next entrance (Measure 3).
Rangi Khan plays in an extremely fluid, singing style throughout his solo, and for the
most part, demonstrates the lack of concern with precise rhythmic values commonly found in
classical vocal practice in Northern India. Typically, phrases begin with clearly
distinguishable pitches and rhythms; but as the improvised melodies continue, pitches are
increasingly slurred and blended into each other. Throughout his performance, these contrasts
between articulated and slurred pitch formed an important part of Rangi Khan’s expressive
vocabulary (Measures 4-5, 7, 9). He used these contrasts to create interest, and heighten the
emotional impact of his performance.
Towards the end of the excerpt further classical practice is heard in the echoes of the
master’s melodies by a secondary (clarinet) soloist, normally understood in classical music
culture to be a student (measure 9-10), although this is not precisely the case in this excerpt.
The clarinet player providing the echoes was junior to Khan, but not a student. Aurangzeb
finished this portion of his performance with a melodic figure that is repeated identically,
three times in succession. The three repetitions were preceded by a particularly fast,
rhythmically dense scalar passage that again, heightened the emotional tension of the solo

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(Measure 11). The repetition of a melodic or rhythmic phrase three times in succession is the
standard marker of a musical conclusion in North Indian music; repeated phrases of this kind
are called τιη⊄⊂s and conventionally conclude on the first beat of the next rhythm cycle.
This example is therefore not a regular τιη⊄⊂ because it concludes before the first beat of the
next rhythm cycle rather than on the first beat, which is the standard practice. Despite this,
the cadential nature of the phrase is both precise and elegant; it offers a clear signal to the
band who do play the actual tonic pitch immediately after Rangi Khan’s last note, on the
following first beat of the next cycle (their Sa to Khan’s last Ni—Eb in this example—
according to the Hindustani pitch terminology).
This classical performance by the Jehanghir Band took place in the introductory
portion of the βαρ⊄τ, in which the band is stationary. It is, to my knowledge, unique in the
recorded documentation of Indian brass bands. Oral histories, however, suggest that the
practice was once more common and more widely spread. Other oral reports, primarily from
the Punjab, suggest that classical music was also part of the actual processional repertoire at
one point in history. Even in Pakistan this has ceased to be the case, and as with the
musicians, so with the audience: It is only during some of the classical performances by
Pakistani bands that I have witnessed clear evidence of interest by the βαρ⊄τ participants. At
a 1995 βαρ⊄τ in Sialkot (Pakistan), once the procession had reached its destination and the
official business of the day had been accomplished (the νικ⊄η was over as well), some of the
guests actually requested the band to perform some classical items. The band was happy
enough to comply; they played for an additional twenty minutes, while the guests sat quietly
and listened, sometimes talking amongst themselves, but clearly demonstrating more attention
to and enjoyment of the band’s performance than is normally the case.
When considered in musical or physical terms, the 1988 Mumtaz Band performance I
described earlier in this chapter was not so very different from the performance in Sialkot in
1995. Both bands were stationary; there was ample seating and a large group of βαρ⊄τ
attendees in the vicinity. There was no sense of urgency on the part of the band or the
audience. The band in Sialkot played to an attentive audience of fifteen to twenty individuals.
One would have to stretch one’s descriptive powers, however, to depict any one at Mumtaz’
1988 βαρ⊄τ as listening to the bands or the classical performance. Muhammad Farid, µ⊄λικ
of Ahmadabad’s Mustafa Band makes this point with regard to classical performances by
bands, which he claims his band provided at one time: “People used to appreciate bands and
their music. This is Saraswati! [Saraswati is the Hindu goddess associated with classical
music] Now they just want to dance and have a good time. They don’t want to listen.” And

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indeed, classical or otherwise, few people do listen, especially in the city and especially in
India. Farid’s comments show that as with all matters having to do with repertoire, bandsmen
blame their audience. That the audience returns the favor does not make the picture any
clearer.
Audiences may have perhaps lost their taste for classical music (if they ever had one);
but blame for changes in the brass band repertoire, and classical music’s demise in this
context, cannot be laid exclusively at the feet of bandsmen, their patrons, or their audience.
Changes in the processional music repertoire have resulted from transformations of
processional and musical fashion, in which both producers and consumers have participated.
Of equal importance are other causal changes: in understandings regarding the place of
classical music in northern India and in the professional organization of the processional
trade. More than taste or style, changing perceptions of the place of classical music have
contributed to the disappearance of this aspect of the brass band repertoire. Kumar (1988)
contributes to an understanding of transformations in public culture generally during the early
20th century. During this period she proposes that un-enclosed, outdoor spaces lost their
status as settings for classical or high culture. If we accept this interpretation (which seems to
apply more to processional culture than to the “music festival” culture of classical music), it is
easy to understand that the nature of bandsmen’s profession disqualified them from
consideration in classical terms. The developing rift between processional music and classical
music is reflected in a number of musical careers (some of which I outline in Booth, 1997).
It is not only the elder generation of bandsmen who are aware of the growing rift. G.
S. Bajantri (circa 1965) is a young Mane-Jadhav band owner from Bijapur, who is reviving
and refashioning his ϕ⊄τ’s investment in classical music performance by seeking ταλ⊂µ
(instruction) from a κηαψ⊄λ γ⊄ψακ (a singer of the dominant classical vocal style of
northern India) named Ramachar Kakhandaki; Bajantri is thus in a position to provide
classical music should his patrons request it. At the close of the 20th century, however, almost
no one goes to a βαρ⊄τ expecting to hear classical music. Especially in northern India,
classical performance is the staged, one might say ritualized, concert music of middle and
upper class India; with few notable exceptions, its decontextualization is complete.
Consequently, as Bajantri points out, his band’s patrons do not ask to hear classical music and
generally do not respond if he performs it. In his assessment, “they [band customers] don’t
want to listen; they just want to dance.” Bajantri thus structures his performing life to fit the
existing models of the late 20th century. He performs classical music on stage (playing
∨αην⊄⊂), where it is now culturally understood to belong. Like Muhammad Farid,

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Muhammad Bacchan and bandsmen throughout South Asia, Bajantri performs popular film
songs on the clarinet with his band (in Bajantri’s case, the Jai Brass Band Company).
English style σαλ⊄µ⊂s and classical ρ⊄γα music are both sounds of the past in the
processional music culture of the northern two-thirds of the subcontinent; they are both
marginal elements of the modern brass band repertoire, classical music, perhaps even more
marginal than the military march. The differences between modern Indian and Pakistani
practice that I propose above are merely differences in the extent of classical music’s
marginalization, not in the fact of that marginalization. The period of regular classical
performance by bands (that is, roughly the middle forty to fifty years of the 20th century) is
also a period in which there were fewer bands. It is hard to separate these issues; but oral
history seems to suggest that classical skills have been largely a distinguishing possession of
the better or more famous bands. Even at that, sufficient knowledge and training to perform
classical solos seems to have remained in the hands of a small number of bandmasters
(primarily clarinetists) within those bands. In attempting to understand the disappearance of
classical music from the processional repertoire of brass bands it is consequently important to
consider the extreme growth in demand for wedding bands through the latter half of that
period (in other words from 1950 onward). The demand for more and more bandsmen,
classically trained, musically trained, or otherwise, led to an increase in the number of bands
and a decrease in the percentage of bandsmen who had classical training. Bands staffed by
relatively untrained bandsmen relied on music that was easier to perform, widely known, and
better for dancing. Muhammad Farid agrees with this assessment. He notes that, “the smaller
shops [bands] have ruined this business through their behavior.” The behavior to which Farid
objects is the concentration on the dancing, partying aspects of the βαρ⊄τ through
bandsmen’s reliance on the popular songs of the popular cinema.
I also should note that in the 1950s and ‘60s, the φιλµ⊂ γ⊄ν⊄ repertoire still
sometimes offered composed approximations of classical music content. At one of the very
first βαρ⊄τs I attended in Lucknow in 1988, the µ⊄λικ of the Soni Band, had his group play
the 1958 song, “Kuhu kuhu bole koyaliyaa” [Kuhu kuhu said the nightingale]. This song’s
melody is famously based on a number of classical ρ⊄γs and is set loosely to τιντ⊄λ, with
composed renditions of classical τ⊄ν and other improvisatory practice. Since Manoharlal had
already established my interest in classical music, his gesture was a hospitable one; the song
was not in the group’s standard repertoire for that year.
Nevertheless, as demand for bandsmen grew, newly recruited bandsmen playing in the
newly established shops (Muhammad Farid’s “smaller shops”) were entering a world where

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classical music was already becoming the preserve of the concert stage, and where film song
was the dominant popular music of the entire country. Under such conditions, we can hardly
blame them if they took the easy way out. Since many had only limited musical training,
their choices were doubly pragmatic. Once their patrons (who, under the influence of the
cinema were beginning to imitate the celebratory dancing styles of film heroes in any event)
became accustomed to lighter, more popular music, their tastes did indeed change. Especially
since they were hearing that same poplar music everywhere else. And that, of course, is the
other important factor in the decline of classical music in the band repertoire: Hindi film
music was usurping a whole range of traditional contexts and venues in South Asia during the
second half of the 20th century. Why not βαρ⊄τs?
Bandsmen and film music
As a number of scholars (Arnold, 1988; Manuel, 1993) have already pointed out,
Hindi film music has been, by far, the most widely received and intensely consumed mass
mediated music in South Asia from the mid-1930s through the end of the century. Sound and
music appeared in Hindi films in 1931. From that point forward, commercial films
throughout India conventionally included song and dance sequences, sometimes as many as
eight or more. Commercial films of this nature are made in a wide range of languages (see
Rajadhayksha and Willemen, 1995 for a complete listing of languages); but the largest
number of films has always been produced by the Hindi-language film-makers of Mumbai,
and through the 1940s, Calcutta and Lahore as well. After 1931, film songs were increasingly
popular; together with the cinema itself, they came to dominate Indian popular culture. It is
hardly surprising that brass bands adopted the melodies of the new cinematic music dramas.
It is impossible to determine just how long the adoption process took in this case; if
contemporary practice is anything to go by, the process must have begun soon after film
songs appeared. But should the adoption of the new popular repertoire by brass bandsmen be
seen as a break from their earlier practice in any event?
Despite the value that bandsmen assign to classical music, there is no evidence to
suggest that pre-1930s brass bands were dominated by classical musicians or that classical
content dominated band repertoires. Many bands who were active in this period were playing
popular tunes from locally produced music dramas, especially Nautanki, a music drama style
found throughout much of north-central India, and the Parsi music theater of Mumbai,
apparently a rather vaudevillian form dominated by singing, dancing girls, comedy, and
dramatic skits. Another important source of popular music that influenced pre-media band
repertories from Sholapur to Surat was Sangit Natak, the Marathi language music drama. For

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bandsmen who were already engaged in popular culture in this way, the shift to film music
must have been barely noticeable, especially since these pre-media musical styles had made
early contributions the songs of the cinema in any event. Ironically, the musicians in the
traveling Sangit Natak troupes were also sources of classical music training for bandsmen.
Members of the Razak Band (Surat), the Halde Band (Sholapur) and clarinetists as far south
as Dharward, either played in Sangit Natak troupes with classically trained musicians, or
sought out orchestral musicians playing in the visiting troupes to acquire training in classical
music. In any event, tunes from all these popular music drama forms, together with
traditional wedding songs, English music, and, from 1915 or so onwards, perhaps other
popular songs taken from the new recording medium, collectively formed brass band
repertoire through the early 1930s; at that point, film songs began their climb to cultural
domination.
Despite the exchange of blame for brass bands’ reliance on film music, the truth is
bandsmen have had no more choice than their customers. The power of the Hindi cinema
overwhelms most things in its path. Given its behemoth-like qualities, the rather one-sided
power relationship between the industry and brass bandsmen should not be unexpected.
Bandsmen have no impact on the creators of Hindi film songs. To a large extent, they have
little say even in the matter of what songs they perform. With some exceptions, the major
films of the year produce the major hit songs, which then saturate the media and public space
for a relatively short period of time (3-6 months), as Kavarana’s reference to the one of the
inescapable songs of late 1999-2000 implies. In a pattern familiar to all cultures with
dominant popular media, current hits are gradually replaced by newer current hits in a steady
stream. Although bandsmen have no direct relationship with the film industry, their
performance of film songs, and primarily Hindi film songs, to some degree reinforces the
hegemonic position that the Hindi film industry enjoys in South Asia.
Old and new songs
The constant change at the top of the brass band repertoire is media driven. The
English saying that Indians often apply to music, “old is gold,” may apply to the film songs of
the 1950s and ‘60s; but it does not apply to the songs of past two to three years (whichever
years those might be). Thus, for bandsmen, there are generally two kinds of film song, old
songs and new songs, the former meaning any song that is much more than eight or nine
months old, sometimes less. Bandsmen’s responses to questions about songs even one to two
years old generally offer variants on the assessment, “that’s an old song”. Once it disappears
from the current βαρ⊄τ repertoire, most film songs are no longer important; bandsmen are

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too busy learning the new hits. Indeed, a well-run band can be distinguished from a neglected
band in part by the up-to-date state of its repertoire. Normally, one gets the sense that most of
yesterday’s hits are barely recalled, fondly or otherwise. The steady stream of new product
flowing from one of the world’s largest film and music industries tends to make the songs
almost meaningless once their novelty value is expended.
A band’s repertoire of new songs is seasonal, more or less decided by the current crop
of hit films. Bandmasters work out the principal and responsorial melodies to the current hits
(and often the instrumental interludes as well); in small and large group rehearsals they work
out settings or arrangements. Settings are of necessity rather loosely structured agreements
about which instruments will play what parts and to some extent, what sections of the song
will be performed and in what order. Band parties are not normally fixed as to size and
personnel, as we have seen. Given the flexible nature of the ensembles, settings must be
equally amenable to alteration; they cannot depend for their musical viability on a specific set
or number of musicians.
The new songs that bandmasters arrange and that are then learned by the band form
the basis of the band’s repertoire for that season. As new hits come along, however, bands
gradually absorb these as well. Each yearly wedding season consequently has one or two hit
songs that tend to dominate the repertoires of bands throughout India and Pakistan. The
1993-94 wedding season, for instance, will be forever linked in the minds of myself and my
wife to the theme song from 1993’s smash hit film, Baazigaar. Indeed, my wife especially
began to dread going into new band shops, because the bandsmen would very often
courteously offer to play something for her. Almost without fail, that something was the
season’s biggest hit, Baazigaar. The current hits that bands play are often simultaneously
being broadcast by shops, restaurants, radios, and a range of other sources and so one does
feel literally surrounded by the most important of these pop hits, which change gradually over
the three to six months of the wedding season, as new “new” songs come into the repertoire.
The deep cultural penetration of the products of the film song industry, the public
nature of band performances, and the migrations of καρ⊂γαρs from city to city all support a
highly homogeneous repertoire throughout India. Although this is not a quantitative study
(indeed, the production of a statistically reliable sample of the brass band repertoire during a
single season would be an enormous undertaking requiring many researchers), some rough
statistics will nevertheless help give an idea of repertoire formation in the band trade.
I recorded the 1988-89 wedding season extensively, especially in Lucknow, Varanasi,
Calcutta, Hyderabad, Surat, and Pune, in which cities I recorded 14 different bands. Not

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including special events, such as a procession in honor of Guru Tej Bahadur’s Martyrdom in
Delhi, in which 6 bands performed a repertoire exclusively composed of Sikh devotional
songs, I recorded a total of 157 individual performances of 54 different songs. These figures
only consider film songs; they ignore the English marches that some bands played as
σαλ⊄µ⊂s. Of the 54 songs, only 24 were performed more than once; but these account for
127 (81%) of the 157 performances. Narrowing the repertoire down further, only 6 songs
were performed frequently enough to account for at least 5% of the total performances (8
times). Thus, one could tentatively assert that six songs accounted for over 40% (42.6% in
this sample) of the season’s total performances. Given a four to six month season in which
hundreds of bands are performing one to three hour events almost daily throughout the
country, six songs is a remarkably small dominant repertoire.
The two most widely performed songs in 1988-89 were both new songs, “Papa kehete
hai” (8% of the total) from an early 1988 release Qayamat se qayamat tak, and “Ek do teen
chaar” (10% of the total) from the late 1988 release, Tezaab. Looking at the months in
which these songs were performed shows us a glimpse of the process of media driven
repertoire change. Of the twelve different performances of “Papa kehete hai” which I
recorded, all but three (that is, 75%) were recorded in November of 1988. The three
exceptions were recorded in January and February of 1989. In contrast, eleven of the 16
recordings “Ek do teen chaar” (69%), were recorded between January and May of 1989. The
remaining performances of “Ek do teen chaar” were recorded in November of the previous
year. “Papa kehete hai” was already showing its age by January of 1989; while it was
gradually disappearing from the repertoire, “Ek do teen chaar”, its successor, was sliding into
its place. This pattern of gradual replacement of songs is ongoing, within seasons and across
seasons. By the 1989-90 wedding season, both songs would have been rarities in βαρ⊄τ
performances. In this way, songs are as replaceable as καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen in the βαρ⊄τ
process. Their value is their novelty; beyond that, they have little meaning or importance for
the thousands of βαρ⊄τ participants and observers who hear the performances of the bands.
“New songs” retain meaning and produce enjoyment for the relatively short period during
which they are new; they are short term and effectively interchangeable fashion.
Below the constantly flowing surface of new repertoire, one does find a number of
admittedly shallower layers of continuity. Old songs survive in the βαρ⊄τ repertoire as the
result of bandsmen’s pragmatism, as well as human interaction with the mediated repertoire.
It is at this point that one sees the emergence of use-values (to employ Frith’s relatively old
term, 1981) and cultural meanings that exist outside the immediate realm of the mass media.

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The appearance of old songs in a βαρ⊄τ performance also signals a new stage in the βαρ⊄τ
event and a change in the band’s role. Specifically, old songs begin to appear as the βαρ⊄τ
becomes a procession. Although they continue to play current hits during the actual
procession, the repertoire expands to include old songs as well. I could safely suggest that old
songs are a year or more old by definition; but most of those in the brass band repertoire are
considerably older than that. Old songs are performed for two types of specific reasons;
either they are songs to which people especially like to dance, or they are songs with specific
connections to the βαρ⊄τ and wedding rituals.
In the 1988-89 season a fairly recent “old song” was “Disco Bhangara” from the 1987
film Gunga, Jamuna, Saraswati. Despite its advanced age, and despite the fact that the film
in which it was packaged was not a success in any terms, the song was an especially popular
dance hit in India. As a cinematic music scene, “Disco Bhangara” featured actor Amitabh
Bacchan doing an especially lively dance that combined movements that were borrowed from
the standard eclectic Hindi cinema dance-style, as well as from western genres, and from the
Punjabi folk dance-style called bhangara. By November of 1988 “Disco Bhangara” was no
longer current enough to figure in the bands’ introductory sets; but its importance as an
encouragement to dance was enough to make it a regular feature of the processional portions
of βαρ⊄τs where dancing is expected to take place.
A small body of old songs, most considerably older than “Disco Bhangara,” have
become particularly important as traditional dance songs in the βαρ⊄τ procession. Two of the
most widely performed fall into bandsmen’s category of English music. These are known in
India as “Tequila” and “Come September.” They are both played for the same reason that
bands in the late 1980s were playing “Disco Bhangara,” that is, to encourage dancing.
Performances of “Tequila” represented 4.5% of my 1988-89 sample; so the song misses my
arbitrary 5% mark for inclusion in the “top six songs” by an equally arbitrary coincidence.
Although “Tequila” is known as an English song, it was introduced to Indian audiences in a
lively performance by actor/singer Kishore Kumar in a 1961 film, Jhumroo. In Kumar’s
revision of this popular American song, already exoticized for American consumption by
textual references to the distilled spirit and the stereotypical sonic symbols of Mexican
culture, “Tequila” becomes a lively and re-exoticized dance number representing a version of
western popular culture in combination with a orientalized version of Himalayan tribal
culture. Forty years after its introduction to Indian audiences, Indians are still dancing to
“Tequila” at βαρ⊄τs. It is performed by bands throughout Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and
Punjab; most commonly during the latter portions of βαρ⊄τs when the dancing becomes

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more consistent. It is not performed as frequently or as widely by Deccani bands. Without
over-romanticizing, one could perhaps say that new songs are driven towards extinction by
the industry that produces them and their replacements; but that old songs survive because
human reception finds particular meaning in their appearance in this context.
Ritual film music
In some cases, relevant texts and cinematic contexts also help some old songs survive
in special niches of the βαρ⊄τ repertoire. The appearance of the groom and the beginning of
the actual procession are often marked musically by one of the most important songs in the
wedding band repertoire, “Aaj mere yaar ki shadi hai” [Today is my best friend’s wedding].
This is the only official “old song” in my top six song listing; its place in this exalted
company is maintained not by it popularity as such, or even because it is an especially good
dance song (although people do dance to it). Rather, “Aaj mere yaar ...” retains it place in the
βαρ⊄τ repertoire because of its text and cinematic setting. Hindi film songs are integrated
into Indian culture to an extraordinary depth. Their importance, and the complexity of their
reception as songs, as music scenes, and as components of lager narrative packages are well
beyond the scope of this book. Like many other cultural activities, however, that complex of
meanings affects the utilization of old songs by brass bands in βαρ⊄τs.
The title of “Aaj mere yaar…” indicates the source of its relevance and importance to
the βαρ⊄τ setting. In Aadmi sadak ka, the 1977 film in which “Aaj mere yaar...” originally
appeared, the song is, in fact, part of a music scene that depicts a βαρ⊄τ and wedding. The
generation of βαρ⊄τ participants who were attending βαρ⊄τs in 1977-79, (who are the
parents and grandparents of today’s grooms) may well have seen the film and be able to
remember the scene as well as the song to which they, or more probably their son’s friends
now dance. For “Aaj mere yaar...” and for some other songs, the memory of the cinematic
image and the emotions evoked by the narrative setting are to some extent retained in the
minds of βαρ⊄τ participants. In the case of this limited number of current “old songs,” their
ritual performance helps to produce a specifically appropriate joyous atmosphere that is
necessary to the βαρ⊄τ. The performance of songs such as “Aaj mere yaar...”
simultaneously conflates or merges the emotional codes of the cinema with those of the ritual.
For younger βαρ⊄τ participants, the issue is not as straight forward. In all likelihood
they have not seen Aadmi sadak ka; which was far from being a major hit in 1977. Indeed,
hardly anyone in or out of the band world can correctly identify the film in which the song
first appeared. Although they have not seen the film, younger Indians, have grown up
attending βαρ⊄τs at which “Aaj mere yaar...” has been performed by brass bands. For these

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younger generations, this song has come to represent the βαρ⊄τ and weddings in a newly
traditional way, a way that might also include the English marches that bands have been
playing for decades. Ten years after I collected this repertoire sample, five of the top six
songs have disappeared completely from the brass band repertoire (and from popular culture
altogether). The only constant in the list of band top band songs over the decade of my
research has been “Aaj mere yaar ki shadi hai”.
The traditional nature of brass band performances at βαρ⊄τs is demonstrated in an
appropriately circular way, by the inclusion of the sounds and images (but not necessarily
both) of brass bands in cinematic depictions of βαρ⊄τs. Until fairly recently, bands used
their appearances to enhance their public images. Naturally, the major bands in Mumbai,
where the majority of Hindi films are produced, benefited most from this practice; but other
bands have had their 10-15 seconds in the limelight as well. A publicity leaflet produced by
the International Band (Lucknow), proudly informs its customers of its appearance in the
1967 release, Paalki (as the title is more commonly spelled in India). Brass bands still appear
regularly in cinematic βαρ⊄τ scenes (as the most recently famous βαρ⊄τ scene, from the
1999’s Hum Saath Saath Hai, testifies, most especially since the scene also features a
performance of “Aaj mere yaar …”); but a band’s appearance in a film is no longer distinctive
enough to be worth special comment in one’s publicity.
I do not believe that I have ever attended a βαρ⊄τ at which “Aaj mere yaar ki shaadi
hai” was not performed; the song is probably known by every bandsman in India. Another
ritual film song, heard less commonly than “Aaj mere yaar …”, but still widely performed at
βαρ⊄τs is “Bahar phul barsaon mera mahabooba aya hai “ [Outside it is raining flowers,
my love has come]. Throughout much of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and to a lesser extent
through the Deccan as well, bands play this song as their final item. The scene in the 1966
film from which this song is taken does indeed produce a rain of flowers about the heroine as
she sings this song. Again, it is the title, text, and generally romantic content—visual, textual,
and musical—of the song that has led bandsmen and their patrons to consider it an appropriate
accompaniment to the actual entrance of the groom into the bride’s home: the bride’s love
has come. If it is not actually raining flowers, most βαρ⊄τ destinations are decorated as
though such precipitation had only recently ended, and if the bride-to-be is not thinking in
suitably romanticized φιλµ⊂ terms, it is comforting to think that she is. Like “Aaj mere
yaar...”, “Bahar phul barsaon …” uses text and cinematic context to suitably mark a specific
phase of the βαρ⊄τ procession. The culturally understood and conventionally stereotyped
emotions of the mediated cinematic originals are mobilized in an attempt to produce those

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same emotions for the related or relevant stages of the βαρ⊄τ. These songs, the dance
numbers and the particularly wedding-focused items, are clear examples of bandsmen’s role
in the integration of the mediated repertoire into traditional practice.
The βαρ⊄τ repertoires of brass bands change very little from place to place; but are in
a constant, although gradual, process of change from season to season. With the exception of
the old ritual songs of this repertoire, I have heard bands perform identical repertoires at both
βαρ⊄τs and religious processions. Some religious processions, however, require separate
repertoires. Whether a band can play its φιλµ⊂ repertoire at a religious procession depends
on the location and the community.
Specialties of the processional repertoire
I heard Mumtaz Band for the first time at the close of the great Hindu festival of
Dassara in October 1988. A small, twelve-man group led by Naushad stood on the steps of
one of Varanasi’s famous γη⊄√ s playing a film song. It was a ten-year old film song,
however, and not one of their (or any one’s) standard βαρ⊄τ repertoire. In fact, this was the
only time I heard them play “Yashomati maiya se bole Nandalala”, from the 1978 film
Satyam Shivam Sundaram. In the film, the music scene is located in a temple dedicated to the
Hindu deity Lord Krsna; its text expounds on one of the many childhood stories of young
Krsna, one of Hinduism’s most important and popular deities. For both these reasons, the
song is especially appropriate for Hindu religious processions, and in fact these are the only
occasions in which I have heard this song performed by a brass band.
In my experience, four major religious communities in India routinely produce
devotional or religious processions. Of these, Hindu, Jain, and Sikh processions are likely to
include brass bands. Islam’s ambiguous stance regarding music seems to disqualify brass
bands from the Muslim devotional processions. For example, I have never seen nor spoken to
anyone who has witnessed (and can hardly imagine), a brass band in a procession marking
Muharram, the great Shi’a day of mourning commemorating the martyrdom of Ali. On the
other hand, Hindu, Jain, and Sikh communities routinely hire bands (often more than one) as
part of their religious processional ritual, although again, there is regional and religious
variation in this practice.
Most Jain and Hindu processions are accompanied by whatever current hit film songs
a band has in its repertoire, with the addition of the relatively few older film songs that bands
retain for devotional occasions (“Bole Nandalala” is the most common of these). The Sikh
communities of many cities, on the other hand, quite frequently demand a specialized
repertoire; in such circumstances, bands play σηαβδ κ⊂ρταν, the devotional songs of the

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Sikh religion. This practice is not universal, however: In the Punjab itself (where Sikhs are
the dominant population) and in Delhi (where the Sikh population is also very large)
σηαβδ κ⊂ρταν are the only permissible repertoire. Because Sikhs are especially fond of
processions (celebrating the births of a range of gurus, but most especially Guru Nanak and
Guru Govind Singh) this is a lucrative enough market for bandsmen to take the trouble to
maintain a suitable repertoire to meet this specialized demand. In cities with smaller Sikh
communities however, Sikh processions are accompanied by film songs (this is the case in
most of Uttar Pradesh). In still another contrast, at a Guru Govind Singh Jayanti procession in
Ahmadabad, the Jea Band was the sole band hired. They played “The Punjab March” as a
suitable compromise, for the entire procession.
The vast majority of processions in India are religious; but of course I have already
referred to at least one non-religious procession (Chapter 5) and there are political, nationalist
events that are explicitly not religious. Indian Republic Day (celebrated at the end of January)
is an event at which brass bands and bagpipe bands are often heard and seen, although for the
most part this means Indian military bands rather than wedding bands. One Republic Day in
Jaipur, however, the local Police Band was joined by the Jea and Sundaram Bands. Like
some religious processions, φιλµ⊂ γ⊄ν⊄ was deemed inappropriate. All three bands were
playing nationalist anthems such as “Vande Mataram” and “Sabse accha hai hamara
Hindustan.”
The repertoire of the brass band world offers an especially poignant perspective on
bandsmen’s marginal status. Some elements of the band repertoire are inherently marginal or
anachronistic; the colonial-era marches or the classical performances in processional contexts
are obvious examples. The classical component of the band repertoire cannot truly be said to
have survived the cultural and music industry changes that have gone on around it. Here,
media driven cultural change has led to the collapse of one element of traditional repertoire.
Even band performances of popular hits, however, emphasize the extent to which bandsmen
exist on the periphery of the popular music industry. That members of the public should use
bandsmen’s performances of film songs to reinforce pre-existent notions of low status and
low caste merely compounds the situation.
When we look at the function of the brass bands in cultural process, however, the
perspective changes. Bandsmen’s performances of current hits contribute to the cultural
consumption of those industry products, adding momentum to the process of continual,
although superficial, musical change. That they perform film songs at all (I will not
recapitulate my explanations for this outcome) offers what is perhaps a more important

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glimpse of mediated music becoming a major part of traditional ritual music culture. At the
same time, in the survival of old film songs in both religious processions and βαρ⊄τs, we see
humans constructing new traditions of continuity from the pieces of that mediated repertoire.
Even in that repertoire component that seems the most subject to industrial manipulation,
however, the new film songs, bands manage to transform those songs through performance
practice to suit their own needs as street musicians. My final chapter considers the ways in
which bandsmen perform the various musics of their repertoire.

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 Chapter 7 - Practices of Transmission and Performance

In Plate 12, three bandmasters sit on a Gulbarga roof-top at night with the three tools
of their trade: a trumpet, a keyboard, and a tape recorder. To some extent, each of these tools
represents a distinct phase in the process of transmission that transforms the products of the
mass music industry into live street music. In this case, there is no significance in the matter
of who holds what. At some point during that evening’s learning session, each musician
played keyboard, or operated the tape machine, or played on trumpet or clarinet (visible on
the floor between the trumpet player and the keyboard player). The transmission process is
neatly and coincidentally arranged in this particular picture from right to left. In its original
form, the new song resides on the audiocassette. Like most of the products of the Hindi film
music industry, the song in question that evening (the title song of a recent release, Bazigaar)
was a carefully crafted pop song with sophisticated production values and a characteristically
eclectic blend of western and Indian musical content. Along with the rest of the Indian
population in late 1993, these men were hearing this song casually on a daily basis. Whether
they liked the song or not, these bandsmen and others like them throughout the country were
also listening intently to Bazigaar as part of their work. Given its hit status, they had no
choice but to play it at βαρ⊄τs and other processions during the coming months.
Modern film songs are too long and too complex for any musician to grasp quickly
after one or two hearings in a movie theater. Some older bandsmen tell stories about going
again and again to see a particular film in order to “catch” a song; but even before cassette
technology became readily available, radio and even the phonograph repeated film songs
enough for bandsmen to learn them in a cursory manner. I would also suggest that modern
film songs are more complex, at least superficially, than those composed up until roughly the
mid-1970s. There is no question, however, that audiocassettes and cassette players make the
task of learning film songs easier and cheaper than it was in the past. After this rooftop
session in Gulbarga, which went on for two to three hours, and perhaps a second similar
session, the principal melodic themes of Bazigaar, together with some of the introductory,
bridging, and concluding music, would have been transferred to the trumpets and other
musical instruments of the Santosh Music Band. As the senior bandmasters of this relatively
small band, the men in this photograph were responsible for learning the song, arranging it,
and teaching it to the rank and file bandsmen, translating the song into live the performances
that would echo through the Gulbarga streets.
In this particular case, the keyboard in the center of this photograph would not be one
of the instruments to play Bazigaar on the street. The Santosh Music Band was not a big

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enough operation in 1993 to be able to provide a τελ⊂ψα with keyboard. For that matter,
none of the bands in this relatively small town in the central Deccan had sound trolleys in
1993. The keyboard’s central position in the photograph can nevertheless be taken as a
symbolic, if coincidental, indication of its importance in the transmission process. Since it
does not require breath and can be played more softly than either trumpet or clarinet, a
keyboard, whether the “traditional” hand pumped harmonium or modern, but equally common
electronic keyboard, is ideal for bandsmen to learn songs on. Because it offers all the possible
pitches for a player to choose from, a keyboard requires somewhat less musicianship for the
successful translation of a film song than do other band instruments. If the tape player
represents the film industry and the trumpet the street music performance tradition, the
keyboard occupies a crucial liminal place within both worlds. Keyboards are part of the
workaday worlds of many Indian musical traditions beyond the domain of brass bands; they
are used by music composers, arrangers, and directors, classical and light classical musicians,
teachers and students, in many music theater traditions, and so on. Keyboards are instruments
upon which it is easy to capture and temporarily store the melodies of a film song so that
bandsmen can learn them. The electronic keyboard in the hands of Triloki Nath (see Chapter
3) is the perfect intermediary between the electronic but repeatable medium of the pop music
cassette and the oral tradition of the band world.
To Triloki Nath’s right in Plate 19 is Muhammad Razak (holding his trumpet), a
mobile bandsman from nearby Aland district. After the men had been working on Bazigaar
for some time, Razak told me he was especially fond of an “English” tune, which he did not
know the name of, and of which he only knew the first part. He played the song as he knew
it, asked if I knew it (or rather assumed that I did), and if I could teach him the rest of it. I
tentatively identified the song as coming from the American film entitled Hathari, a 1960s
wildlife/adventure film and, by some quirk of memory was able to teach Razak and his
friends the second section of the melody. Since Razak was not firmly possessed of both the
melody and rhythm when I left that evening, I offered to write the whole song down for him
in the Devanagari syllable notation commonly used in India (called σαργαµ from the first
four syllables of the scale: sa, re, ga, ma). This suggestion was welcomed; I wrote the tune
down and left. When I returned the next evening, Razak asked me to again sing the melody I
had taught him. I asked about the notation; but it turned out that in fact, Razak could not read
the σαργαµ or any form of notation. Of the group, only Triloki Nath could read it and since
he had left by the time I taught the song, he could not really make much sense of how it was
supposed to be played solely on the basis of my notation.

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 It is hardly necessary at this point in the development of Ethnomusicology to
emphasize the interactive nature of ethnographic or ethnomusicological field work, even by
means of so bizarre an image as the teaching of a bit of 1960s American popular music
culture to hereditary processional musicians in the Indian Deccan. Anthony Seeger made the
point quite clearly in 1987; his point has been reinforced by a host of scholars since that time.
This story is important, however, because it exemplifies the minimal role that all systems of
musical notation and transmission play in the band world. Although I never had the chance to
ask Triloki Nath where he had learned σαργαµ notation, his educated status makes it at least
possible that he learned σαργαµ not in the band world, but in his educated “teachers’ college”
world. The band world is one that combines the painstaking note by note transmission
process of oral transmission and rote learning with an infinitely repeatable, electronically
transmitted repertoire that is constantly changing under the pressure of new music industry
releases. In practical terms, there is no literate transmission. For old film songs and other
historical aspects of the repertoire, there is not even a viable electronic tradition; the whole
process is oral.
Marches, ρ⊄γs, gurus, and oral transmission
Bandsmen have occasionally shown me versions of British or American marches
(usually Colonel Bogey) written in western staff notation. One such copy was shown to me
by the brothers Mumtaz and Samshad, of the Mumtaz Band. They had just finished playing
for me the principal themes of Colonel Bogey, Loyal Comrades, and the Punjab March on
trumpet and euphonium. Although they had one copy of the staff notation for Colonel Bogey,
Mumtaz and Samshad had learned this march orally from their uncle, Muhammad Safi, whom
they also referred to as their guru. Safi spent some of his early career in royal bands and so
knew the marches well enough to teach them orally to his nephews. Marches in western
music notation were more or less novelty items for Mumtaz and Samshad; they also knew that
this was my tradition and so showed them to me out of what they assumed would be my
interest. Although they understood the basic premise of staff notation, and knew which
particular dot represented “Sa” (or tonic) and that other of the dots represented other pitches
of their scale, they could not read the music. One cannot say that notation is a viable medium
in the band world, even for music that originally reached India in that form. As Rajesh Singh,
µ⊄λικ of Lucknow’s International Band pointed out to me, “There is no need for us to use the
notes. I can use them; but people only want to hear film songs and for that it is easier to listen
to the tape. What do we need the paper [notation] for?” Rajesh speaks from a privileged and
unusual position; his father and grandfather played with circus bands and so could, in fact,

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read western music notation. Rajesh had also studied classical music briefly at Lucknow’s
Bhatkande University. His musical training was therefore much broader than the average
bandsman’s.
Bhajan Lal, the senior bandmaster of Jaipur’s Jea Band, once told a story from his
days with the Delhi shop of the Jea Band. The band’s office in Lajpat Rai Bazaar is directly
opposite Delhi’s famous Lal Qila [Red Fort] and directly opposite the grounds where
traveling circuses often set up their tents. Apparently, one circus, finding itself short of
musicians, hired Bhajan Lal and four or five other Jea bandsmen to fill out the circus band.
The circus bandmaster was apparently a Chinese or Nepali (Bhajan Lal could not remember)
musician who, like many circus bandsmen, could read western notation. Although the circus
had specifically asked for bandsmen who could read notation, no one in the Jea group could in
fact do so; probably there was no one in the Jea shop who could. Having hired these much
needed, but non-literate musicians, the circus band found itself effectively split into two
groups, one musically literate and familiar with the circus repertoire, the other musically non-
literate and possessed of a different repertoire. The Jea bandsmen did not have time to learn
orally the repertoire of the circus musicians, nor did they have written versions of their own
repertoire to offer their temporary (but literate) colleagues. At what apparently was the
group’s only rehearsal, the Jea men in desperation began playing an old film song that they
knew. The bandmaster did not know the song; but asked the men to play it again, which they
did. The bandmaster notated the song, and over night arranged it for his own musicians,
along with a number of others from the Jea repertoire, after which the whole group got along
quite happily, the circus bandsmen playing from notation while the Jea men played from
memory. The wedding bandsmen continued with their electronically and orally transmitted
repertoire, forcing (more or less) the circus musicians to accommodate both their repertoire
and to some extent, their practice. Other elder bandmasters (for example, the late Baba
Hussain Nadaf, a clarinetist and sometimes bandmaster from Dharward) tell similar stories of
their encounters with literate circus musicians.
Like the rest of the brass band repertoire, marches and other musical military relicts
survive in oral tradition. For this repertoire component, maintenance can be at the level of the
individual band, the city, or the region. The ubiquitous Colonel Bogey, for example, is
known to bandsmen throughout Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Punjab. The “Georgia
March,” that I described in the previous chapter on the other hand, is by no means universally
performed, even in Mumbai; I have never heard it outside that city. There is no need for a
band to learn new marches; one is enough to formally begin the βαρ⊄τ and acknowledge that

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aspect of the band tradition before the band gets down to its performance of popular film
songs. For those bands that play marches, it is simply a matter of maintaining the one (or
perhaps two) that they already know. Since mobile bandsmen tend to travel within limited
geographic boundaries, most know the majority of march tunes played by bands where they
are likely to seek work. If it happens that they do not know a particular march, it is far from
impossible for them to learn enough of the march to get by through oral instruction and
imitation of their colleagues. Young bandsmen often learn a march, or at least part of a
march, in their villages as well. They learn them from local bandmasters, often older men
who have retired from performance, but who continue to teach incipient bandsmen the
technical instrumental and musical rudiments of their trade. These men may be referred to as
bandmasters or as gurus.
As an outsider in the band world, one known to have classical music connections and
to be interested in all aspects of the trade, bandsmen sometimes told me about important gurus
whom I should meet as part of my research. Indeed, one of the first acts of the Mumtaz
brothers was to introduce me to their guru and uncle, Muhammad Safi. Later, Samshad the
third of the four brothers, told me about another man he called his guru, named Muhammad
Ahmad Sirsi-walle (circa 1940). The latter part of Ahmad’s name specifies that this particular
Muhammad Ahmad lived in Sirsi, a large village on the road between Moradabad and
Sambhal in western Uttar Pradesh. Some years later, I had the opportunity to meet
Muhammad Ahmad; he told me that his father and grandfather both played cornet, which
instrument his grandfather apparently learned in an army band or at least from a military
bandmaster. Among the gurus of the northern band world, military antecedents are more
common than among the band population generally. After a military introduction to western
instruments, some have learned their classical music from classical musicians; others have
relied on books and recordings. Ahmad taught himself classical music by listening to
recordings of classical musicians and from an Urdu copy of Bhatkande’s classic collection of
ρ⊄γs and classical compositions, Kramik Pustak-Malika. He has developed his own
instrumental technique in which a fluid half-valve fingering system produces the
ornamentation and bending of pitch that classical music requires. Muhammad Ahmad
understands that the band world and its popular music repertoire are the primary sources of
his income; but like many of the older generation of bandmasters, he sees himself as a
classical soloist. Ahmad performs with brass bands, but includes classical style solo
improvisation in his performances, even if the settings for those solos are the latest film song.

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 Although he was playing the occasional procession as late as 1995, despite problems
with his teeth, Muhammad Ahmad makes most of his living by teaching; he is a guru to many
of the brass bandsmen of Uttar Pradesh. Μ⊄λικs hire him at the beginning of a season to
spend a week or two rehearsing their band and teaching their καρ⊂γαρ musicians the
individual parts and song settings. Muhammad Ahmad was in Varanasi on precisely this kind
of teaching and performing assignment for the Punjab Band when Samshad met him.
Bandsmen learn their “sa re gas,” that is, their “ABCs,” from men such as Ahmad, who are
often treated with at least some of the respect that classical gurus receive. I have witnessed on
more than one occasion the touching of feet (as a behavior seeking the guru’s blessing) that is
common among classical musicians, and the same kind of social and musical deference.
Despite the respect for classical music knowledge in the band world, the weakness of
the σιλσιλ⊄ [the chain] or series of personal master-disciple relationships through which the
business of ταλ⊂µ [instruction] takes place, is made clear by the limited performance skills
that younger bandmasters can actually demonstrate. Those who are fifteen or more years
younger than Muhammad Ahmad, and who wish to demonstrate the depth of their musical
knowledge, will perform a bit of ρ⊄γ-based improvisation; but the transmission of classical
knowledge in the band world has not been a great success in the second half of the 20th
century. An example of the weaknesses in many of the links in this chain of transmission can
be inferred from the careers of the students of the famous bandmaster, Muhammad Gucchan.
Gucchan received his training in classical music from Mustaq Hussain Khan, a classical
vocalist of the Rampur court. Among Gucchan’s students was Rashid Pinga, a clarinet player
and band master, who moved to Kanpur and opened his own band, the Gemini Band, later the
Avon Band. Pinga is deceased and it is consequently impossible to know just how much
Gucchan may have taught his student, although other of Gucchan’s students, such as Rampur
clarinetist, Nabi Jan, suggest that Pinga was most probably reasonably competent in classical
music.
Among the musicians trained by Pinga, was a young scheduled caste bandsman named
Itawari Lal, who later became µ⊄λικ of the Azad Band (Lucknow). Itawari Lal brought up
the matter of classical music when I spoke with him. Like other bandmasters, he expressed
great respect and like many clarinet players, played a few minutes in the classical αλ⊄π-style
to demonstrate his abilities in this repertoire. Itawari Lal chose to play in ρ⊄γ Marwa, a mode
that is usually considered quite difficult by vocalists and string players, but which seems
inexplicably popular among clarinet players. On at least six different occasions, clarinetists

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across the north have spontaneously chosen to demonstrate their classical skills by means of
this ρ⊄γ.
On this occasion, Itawari Lal, admitted that his training in classical music was limited;
he could not manage a complete composition, let alone a complete classical performance. In
this particular story, the line of classical knowledge transmission that began with Mustaq
Hussain, an undisputed great voice in early 20th century classical vocal music, had collapsed.
Certainly Itawari’s sons, the acting bandmasters of the Azad Band, could not even manage
their father’s limited classical repertoire.
Elders of the band world, such as Muhammad Ahmad or Jaora’s Muhammad Hussain
are known and respected as men with classical music knowledge. But, as far as I can
determine from the oral histories upon which I depend, they are members of a unique
generation of bandmasters, who were most active circa 1925 - 1985. These men, and others
like them, had connections through discipleship to a classical music performer, more often a
vocalist than not; many were highly competent performers of classical music. What is more,
they seem to have performed in this style from within the brass band performance setting, that
is, at βαρ⊄τs. In addition to Gucchan and the great Lahore clarinetists, Alamghir Khan (and
his two elder sons, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb) and Master Sohni, one can consider Kalle
Khan (Mhow, mentioned in Chapter 2), Dilan Khan (circa 1935, Jaunpur), Abdul Rahman
(aka Mithan Khan, circa 1920 - 1993, Jaipur), and Balle Muhammad (circa 1920 - 1975), a
clarinet player and bandmaster from Lahore, who moved to a village near Jalandhar around
1940. Balle Muhammad had both military and classical training and served as a teacher for
local bandsmen. A few of those bandsmen, such as the brothers Dilwar Hussain (?? - circa
1990) and Kashmir Muhammad (1940), themselves students of Balle Muhammad, learned at
least some of the classical knowledge and skill that these elder bandmasters possessed.
Kashmir Muhammad, now quite elderly himself, is respected in the same way that
others of his generation and knowledge are, but also like his peers, he has not been able to
pass the core of his classical performance knowledge on to a younger generation. Classically
trained brass bandsmen, such as Kashmir Muhammad, seem to have been a possibility only
during a limited period of time. The possibility seems to have arisen as the result of three
major factors, which are not precisely related but which operated in combination. First of all,
in the period in which most of the individuals named above were learning to play their
instruments, there existed throughout Hindustan and the Punjab a well-established brass band
tradition, in which training was quite robust. Nevertheless, bands of the mid-20th century
were still rare enough to be truly prestigious, especially prior to Independence. Second,

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throughout this period, classical music was in an extremely active and well-patronized
condition, primarily in court centers, and largely (and significantly given the Muslim
identities of almost all the bandmasters reputed to have classical training) in the hands of
Muslim musicians. Finally, classical music still possessed a viable northern tradition of
performance in processional contexts. As these conditions changed through the second half
of the twentieth century, the possibility of successful classical music transmission in the band
world collapsed.
Between the breakdown of transmission and the decline in demand for (or at least
acceptance of) classical music, there are few bandmasters born after 1950 who can perform
the kind of ρ⊄γ-based improvisation that defines classical knowledge in this world.
Muhammad Ahmad complains that younger bandsmen have little interest in actually learning
classical music, no matter how much they may claim to respect it and him. And of course,
professionally speaking, there is little reason why they should take the trouble to learn
classical music. Ahmad’s complaints in this regard resonate poignantly with other elder
bandsmen’s comments about their audiences. When Ahmad says of his students “they don’t
want to learn [classical music],” he sounds remarkably like other elder bandmasters who
make the same complaint of their audience: “they don’t want to listen.” Musical change is an
interactive process in which producers and consumers conspire unwittingly. The decline in
demand for classical music instruction follows similar declines in demand for classical
performance. These changes in the band world have taken place as commercial film music
and its industry-driven need for constant change become fully established in that world.
Film songs, settings, and electronic transmission - Interacting with the medium
Films songs, widely disseminated throughout Indian public culture, are readily
available on audiocassettes. They replace each other with almost calendrical consistency. In
the face of this musical onslaught bandsmen have very little say about what songs they will
learn and play, what they will retain and what they will discard.
If bandsmen have no control over the songs generated by the industry, at least the
industry has no control over how bands play those songs. Band performances are often rather
Pyrrhic assertions of this quasi-independence from media control however; uncontrolled error
and pragmatic reductions and simplifications of original songs feature prominently in band
performances. I have often wondered whimsically whether the composers of songs like “Aaj
mere yaar ki shadi hai” have since had cause to regret their invention, as the brass bands’
modifications of their creations pursue them down the streets of Mumbai every wedding

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season. In the creation of brass band settings and in daily performances on the street, songs
are routinely shortened, lengthened, melodically altered, and structurally re-arranged.
Film songs are composed and performed by professionals who include some of India’s
best classical and popular studio musicians. There are no rules to the composition of film
songs; in the vast repertoire one can find an equally vast range of musical styles, structures,
rhythms, and melodic types. Nevertheless, one can usually expect two or more principal
melodic themes (sometimes in a vague approximation of the αστ⊄⊂−αταρ⊄ construction
of traditional northern classical and light classical music) and a reasonably frequent use of
responsorial counter-melodies; many songs are male-female duets. Finally, although few
songs make obvious displays of musical virtuosity, many are carefully detailed compositions,
with multiple themes and numerous musical interludes played by a wide variety of musical
forces. The typical brass band setting transfers the central melodies to soloist bandmasters
(normally clarinet, keyboard, or trumpet) as well as to sections and sometimes the entire band.
Responsorial melodies are usually left to the lower brass, although unison sections may
reverse this pattern. Rehearsals are devoted to working out parts and to producing general
agreements about who will play what parts.
In band settings and performances (not necessarily the same thing), musical content
and formal structure are both subject to intentional and unintentional variation. As I showed
in Booth (1993), bandsmen focus on the principal melodic themes of film tunes. These are
the portions of a song with text, and thus, the best known by their patrons. The instrumental
sections (interludes, transitions, introductions, etc.,) are treated much more causally and with
less consistency. The arrangement of formal sections will shift from band to band or from
town to town. In the process of brass band performance the question of which melodic
section follows any other melodic section is somewhat negotiable. One cannot assume that
once a band has agreed upon a setting and formal structure, the song will consistently be
performed in that fashion; the process of street performance, and the collective nature of
leadership in a street band militates against the consistent reproduction of a single sequence of
musical events. Indian bandsmen use a song’s formal sections as the materials with which
they construct a flexible, and usually simplified bricolage revision of that song. As functional
elements in the larger cultural process that integrates the songs of the Hindi film industry into
Indian culture, bandsmen actively and publicly deconstruct those songs into their various
component parts, reconstructing them for each performance into similar but not identical
patterns. They are also, no doubt, responsible for speeding up the process of what might be
called a song’s social consumption. Bandsmen play hit songs to death; by the end of a

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wedding season, between live band performances and the blanket exposure imposed by the
media, the public interest in yet one more performance of that season’s dominant songs is
naturally extremely limited.
In addition to formal structure, melodic and rhythmic content are the other major
aspects of a film song. They are also subject to change in the hands of brass bands. The
transmission process of tape-to-rote is extremely vulnerable to errors generated by the range
of variability in individual bandsmen’s musical perception. I described earlier a Jea band
rehearsal in Jaipur, directed by bandmaster Bhajan Lal. One of the songs that the group
focused on during this rehearsal was the principal hit from the late-1993 film, Raja Babu, a
song rejoicing in the title, “A aa e ee o oo, mera dil na todo” [Ah Eee Oh, don’t break my
heart]. The bass drum rhythm, as it appears on the commercial recording, to which the
bandsmen were listening, was a four-beat drum-machine generated pattern with three short
strokes spaced over the first two beats and a single stroke over the last two beats (Figure 14a).
Bhajan Lal interpreted this rhythm as shown and sang it (so to speak) to the drummers that
way, that is, with both 3+3+2 first half of the measure and the single long beat in the second
half of the measure. The drummers nevertheless proceeded to play only the first half of the
rhythm; they completely omitted the long beat in the second half of the measure (Figure 14b).
Bhajan Lal never corrected this simplified version and a week later, Jea Band parties were
playing the song with this newly simplified rhythm. I could not play the cassette to them
myself and therefore did not have the opportunity to ask whether the change was a matter of
musical perception or cultural response. I suspect it was a bit of both.
In a small way, the elision of the long bass drum beat from the second half of this
simple rhythm pattern makes the drumming less heavy-handed. One could argue that the
change removes the band’s performance by a small step from the drum-machine-generated
predictability of the modern western-influenced film song rhythm track. One could argue
further that the change produces a four-beat rhythm cycle, and makes the drumming
somewhat more “traditional” through its creation of accented and unaccented portions of the
longer pattern, that is, those with bass drum sounds (the first two beats) and those without (the
last two beats). This is undoubtedly a ταβλα player’s interpretation, but may well be
justifiable in this case. As a fundamental explanation for a wide spread (but largely
unarticulated) practice of the routine alteration of the musical details of film songs, it may
magnify the musical importance of the practice.
The collective nature of the apprehension of musical material that is required in a large
ensemble almost invariably simplifies or modifies the carefully detailed content of the

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recorded film song. This small example shows how that process can work even when the
group leader has the musical skills to correctly perceive the line. These processes happen
consistently at all levels of melodic and rhythmic content with results that may be more,
equally, or less musically effective. This collective process of re-interpretation is beyond the
power of most bandmasters to control. In addition to structural changes intentional and
otherwise, performance practice also leads to musical change, and again, it is the combination
of individual and collective practices and skills that determine how these changes (as both
transient manifestations and enduring musical concepts) are worked out in the band world.
Performing on the streets - leadership, repetition, and heterophony
Performing on the streets, in a βαρ⊄τ procession, is highly predictable activity. The
patterns of musical and processional behavior stay the same over time, allowing bandsmen to
correctly anticipate the broad outlines of what will happen, how long it may take, what songs
will be performed, and so on. At the same time, a band’s successful performance is
dependent on bandsmen’s flexible response to a wide range of appropriate cues: from their
patrons, from the leading bandmasters, and from each other. Like the songs they perform, the
details of musical and performance practice change constantly and produce endless minor
variation within highly predictable formal structures and in response to ritual or processional
demands and circumstances. Senior bandmasters are leaders maintaining musical
organization and direction on the street; during a βαρ⊄τ performance they fight a never-
completely-successful battle to maintain musical structure and coherence and keep the
potential chaos at bay. Musical leadership, however, is at once collective, hierarchical, and
(sometimes) arbitrary. In a typical 25 man party there may be as many as five or as few as
two bandmasters of different levels of skill and socio-professional seniority. Experienced
uniformed bandsmen, who are not recognized as bandmasters, may also take secondary, or
even primary leadership roles in certain circumstances. The senior bandmaster or µ⊄λικ
decides what songs the band will perform from their current repertoire, although as I have
already explained, the majority of any performance will be devoted to current hit film songs.
As a musical performance, a band’s βαρ⊄τ performance can be readily characterized
as a progression. The early stages, especially the introductory set, may feature longer, rather
formal performances, in stationary formation, of settings of new film songs with relatively
high levels of musical quality. The relatively formal nature of this introductory set reflects
the equally “cool” level of emotional involvement and formal behaviors of βαρ⊄τ
participants as they arrive at the groom’s home for greetings, some gift giving, and general
socializing. There is no fixed order of songs for a βαρ⊄τ performance, although as I have

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described, certain parts of the βαρ⊄τ do call for particular songs or at least kinds of songs and
performances. Following the introductory σαλ⊄µ⊂ (if the band plays σαλ⊄µ⊂s and if the
bandmaster decides to play a σαλ⊄µ⊂ for that performance), the bandmaster chooses songs
as the occasion demands and within the limits of his band’s repertoire. These stationary
performances of a band’s introductory set are more or less as the group has arranged in
rehearsal; they approach the theoretical ideal of direct reproductions of film songs as mediated
products. Each song may last from four to six minutes, again, reproducing the originals that
are usually of these lengths. I could easily propose that during their introductory sets, a
wedding band is rather like a concert band, playing so that people can listen, although I have
suggested that whether people do listen is another matter. Once the procession is under way,
dancing becomes more important and bandmasters choose their songs so as to produce as
lively and enticing a dance atmosphere as they are able. Songs change more quickly; there is
a higher degree of repetition, and older dance favorites become more prominent. In
procession, the brass band becomes a dance band. Songs change in an effort to encourage
dancers and to maintain or at least approximate the desired atmosphere of emotional
enthusiasm, if not ecstasy. By the end of the procession, performances of individual songs
will have grown shorter, old as well as new film songs will be played, and structural
variability will have increased. Generally speaking, musical quality will have decreased due
to fatigue, inattention, the overall level of noise, and the increasingly chaotic performance
space. Although musical quality often declines during the actual procession, louder playing,
more insistent rhythms, and greater repetition all musically reflect the theoretical increasingly
excited emotions of the processional participants.
Like all performances in oral traditions, behavior and musical signals communicate
change, requiring bandsmen to pay attention and to be flexible to sudden shifts of direction.
Not all changes happen smoothly of course. Bandsmen do not in fact always pay attention;
the chaos of street processions and the dispersal of bandsmen over relatively large distances
both make musical performance difficult even if they do pay attention. Once a song has
begun, it sometimes takes no more than simple miscounting by another bandmaster, or even a
regular bandsman, to alter the structure of a song by the repetition or deletion of a phrase or
melodic line. If the bandmaster feels that a song needs to conclude, the song may simply stop
in the middle. This is especially common during dance portions of the βαρ⊄τ. The
bandmasters and the bandsmen all assess the responses of the dancing members of the party.
If the customers seem not to respond to one song, another will be tried. Bandsmen do their
best to encourage dancing because it leads to tipping. Naturally, musical leaders must also

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see that the songs I have called ritual songs are performed in the right points of the
procession.
Because this process is at the core of brass band performance, I will provide an
example of the process at work from a musical and performative perspective. The
performance I consider here is a 10-minute excerpt from a βαρ⊄τ, played by a 24-man party
of the Azad Band (Lucknow), recorded in November 1988. The major events that took place
during this period are is summarized in Figure 15. Excerpts of the actual musical
performance are transcribed in Figure 16. The entire βαρ⊄τ performance was roughly 100
minutes in length.
The party was led by Ram Kumar and Shyam Kumar, the two sons of µ⊄λικ Itawari
Prasad, who are both trumpet players. In this and most performances where they were both
present, Ram Kumar, as elder of the two, was functionally the senior bandmaster, or musical
director. Shyam Kumar acted as a leading bandmaster as well, of course, but very clearly in a
supporting role, picking up and reinforcing the cues given by his brother in halting specific
songs and starting new ones. Another important bandmaster in this performance (and most of
Azad’s performances that season) was clarinetist Nazir Ahmad of Rampur, the elder brother
of Muhammad Bacchan. I have noted above that some uniformed bandsmen, not technically
bandmasters, contribute to group leadership. This is mostly true of euphonium players who
rarely take on formal leadership roles (for reasons I have discussed). In this party, a
euphonium player, whose name I do not know, also acted as an important voice in the
managerial team, echoing Ram Kumar’s signals and playing in concert with Shyam Kumar to
lead the melodies that Ram Kumar introduced. The excerpt I analyze here is from the
processional portion of the event, and rather late at night, when the dancing was at its height.
The ten-minute sequence of songs I will discuss here is bounded, rather arbitrarily, by two
performances of the song “Ek do teen”, discussed in Chapter 6 as one of the major hits of the
1988-89 wedding season.
Figure 15. Ten minutes of a processional performance by the Azad Band.
Duration Song Voice Measures
-0:00 “Ek do teen” band
0:00 “Aaj mere yaar” Ram Kumar 1-3
0:07 Drums + Bandmasters 4 - 14
0:09 Full Band 8 - 14
1:57 signal to stop Ram Kumar + Euphonium 14 - 15
2:00 “I want to love Ram Kumar 16 - 17

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2:05 somebody” Drums + Bandmasters 17 - 25
2:07 Full Band 19 - 25
4:53 signal to stop Ram Kumar 25 - 26
4:58 “Disco Bhangara” Ram Kumar 27 - 29
5:01 Full Band + Drums 30 - 32
5:05 signal to stop Ram Kumar 31 - 32
5:10 “Disco Bhangara” Full Band 33 - 42
8:55 signal to stop Ram Kumar 41 - 42
8:58 “Been Music” Ram Kumar 43
8:59 Drums 44
9:01 Full Band 47 - 49
9:02 signal to stop Ram Kumar 48
9:03 Ek do teen Ram Kumar 51
9:04 Drums 52
9:06 Shyam Kumar + Euphonium 53

At the conclusion of the first “Ek do teen,” and as this excerpt begins, Ram Kumar
introduced “Aaj mere yaar…” by playing a slightly ornamented version of the melody. I have
literally never heard a bandmaster identify the song they wish their band to play by the song’s
name. Instead, the bandmaster announces a new song by playing a snatch of the principal
melody on his instrument. Bandsmen playing in solo contexts often add the kind of melodic
ornamentation that is shown here. Such ornamentation rarely appears in the original recorded
versions of the film songs. Later in this excerpt (Figure 16, Measures 51-52) Ram Kumar
performed a still more elaborately ornamented version of the introduction to “Ek do teen.”
When a bandmaster or bandsman is in the habit of doing this, he tends to do so almost
regardless of the song to which the practice is applied. Although it is barely noticeable in
“Aaj mere yaar,” the ornamentation in “Ek do teen” was more distinctive; it is also more
problematic, however, because it produced a certain tension that I will discuss later.
Once a bandmaster has identified the song he wishes his band to play, he may call out,
“Ready! One, two!” to start the band of as a group. In most European and American practice
such cues not only identify the moment at which the ensemble is to begin but also identify the
tempo or speed at which the group is expected to perform. In contrast, in the band world, the
temporal spacing of the counting gives no such clues. What is more, if the other musicians
decide to begin immediately after the bandmaster’s identifying performance (which does

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provide cues about timing) they may do so, making a verbal entrance cue completely
unnecessary and literally impossible. In this instance, the drummers responded in this
precisely way as soon as Ram Kumar identified the song. Like most of their colleagues,
however, the Azad bandsmen demonstrate no consistent entrance protocol. Almost
simultaneously with the drummers, Shyam Kumar and Nazir Ahmad picked up the main
melody from Ram Kumar. In this situation, the drummers’ enthusiasm exceeded their
control; it cost them five to ten seconds of rather chaotic playing before they were able to
establish and settle into the correct tempo. Once the bandmasters had performed the song’s
opening first phrase, the rest of the band entered on the consequent phrase.
In varying degrees, traditional style performance practice and content find their way
into brass band performances of their popular repertoire. Bands in Lucknow make rather a
local specialty of sudden and dramatic shifts in tempo and in the addition of traditional style
drumming content, especially cadential content (see Booth, 1991/2). Ends of major phrases
or sections of the song are often marked by typically tripartite drum cadences (τιη⊄⊂). One
of the many such that the Azad drummers performed on this particular evening is shown in
Measures 12-14; they stopped playing the steady time that they had been playing and replaced
by a short syncopated phrase repeated three times, concluding just before last note of the
melody. Perhaps in response to the drummer’s cadential flourish, Ram Kumar chose to end
the song immediately thereafter.
In brass band performance practice, the basic understanding is that once a song is
begun, it continues until further notice, as the saying goes. Thus, signals must be given for
the band to stop as well as start. These may come at literally any moment, although naturally
perhaps, bandmasters do try to end songs at logical places in their melodic and formal
structure. Signals to conclude a song sound the same throughout India. In this particular
case, Ram Kumar used a high-pitched ascending signal—which was both out of rhythm and
(in the case of the Gb) outside of the song’s mode as well—to signal a halt to the band’s
performance of “Aaj mere yaar…” (Measure 15). By playing something distinctly non-
musical in content, Ram Kumar made clear to his men that what he was playing was a signal
conveying information rather than a contribution to the band’s performance of the song. The
euphonium player, hearing this cue to stop, echoed it with a different but equally distinctive
cue.
After a pause of a few seconds, Ram Kumar introduced the next song. “I want to love
somebody” belongs to the category of music that in the mid-1980s and even the mid-1990s
was generically identified by bandsmen (and many Indians as well) as “disco” music. In the

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Indian usage of the time, “disco” was used to identify any song that was modeled in some
fashion or another, on aspects of American popular music. The more recent appearance of rap
in Indian music culture has led to a similarly non-discriminatory usage of this term. Disco
songs are marked in band performance by distinctively unsyncopated drumming, especially
by the ⋅ηολs, usually the regular 1-2-3-4 show in the transcription. As in this tune, the
melodic phrases in disco melodies are usually short and are rigidly structured into a call and
response framework. Almost as soon as Ram Kumar began his introduction, the drummers
picked up the steady 1-2-3-4 rhythm. As he finished his antecedent phrase, the band
responded with the answering consequent phrase (Measures 16-17). There was neither the
need nor even the opportunity for Ram Kumar to give a vocal cue.
The final note of the antecedent phrase (the high “F” of Measure 17), was the source
of considerable intonation difficulties. These were exacerbated by the associated “Eb”
ornament, which is played with a high degree of variability by the different bandsmen, from
not at all to a rather broad emphasis of that pitch. This kind of micro-discrepancy is
characteristic of the ensemble heterophony that these performances embody. This means that
personal inclination, mood, and varying standards of musicianship make each musician’s
version of the melody is slightly different in aspects of rhythm, pitch, tuning or
ornamentation. The simultaneous variations contribute to the creation of a “fuzzy” collective
version of the actual melody.
This performance of “I want to love somebody” continued for almost three minutes;
until, during the performance of a highly repetitive bridging theme, Ram Kumar again
decided to change songs. As the band returned to the main theme he repeated the same kind
of ascending signal discussed above, which was intended to bring the band to a stop
(Measure 25). In this case, however, his timing was not fortuitous, since he gave the signal
just as the band was launching itself back into the song’s principal theme. Furthermore, his
signal this time was neither as loud nor distinctive as his previous one. In consequence,
despite loyal assistance from the euphonium player, it took the band quite a few seconds to
actually stop. Further troubles followed as Ram Kumar continued, playing the opening bars
of his next choice, “Disco Bhangara” in order that the band would know what song he wanted
played next. Kumar’s introduction (Measures 27-28) turned out to be rhythmically
inconsistent with the original. Kumar was only following standard practice, of course, by
ornamenting the melody as he played it; but disco songs are not as readily amenable to the
kinds of ornamentation that are part of the broader Indian aesthetic. As a result, and despite
his shouted “One, Two,” the drummers and euphonium players who started the song off did

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so in an extremely disjointed fashion (Measures 30 – 31). The latter’s attempts to imitate
Kumar’s introduction only confused the drummers further. The results of the collective
confusion were musically unsatisfactory. Ram Kumar realized after a few seconds that
things thus begun were not likely to improve and so brought the band to a halt again (Measure
32). Again he called “One, Two!” this time with a preceding “Ready;” the band restarted the
song, this time from the beginning and in a much more orderly fashion (Measure 33).
“Disco Bhangara” is the longest performance of this excerpt; most of the almost four-
minute performance is devoted to reiterations of the introductory material and principal
melody. There is no audible signal for the band to conclude the song, but after about four
minutes the song did stop (in a rather desultory fashion) in response to a visual hand wave
from Ram Kumar. Visual signals are only possible in the rare occasions that the bandmaster
and band are closely space and all bandsmen are focused on the leader.
Ram Kumar later told me that as soon as he had introduced the next song, “Been
Music” from Nagin (1954), he decided that the tempo was not right for the dancers. “Been
Music” is associated in its original (and very old) cinematic context with heroines who have
the ability to transform themselves into (divine or demonic) snakes. In modern India, those
entertainers who are known in the west as “snake charmers” invariably perform this music
with its particularly sinuous melody. Although it was still quite commonly heard at βαρ⊄τs
in the 1980s, rather in the spirit of a specialty dance number, “Been Music” does have a
slower tempo and different flavor than the disco and other songs the Azad Band had been
playing. The band, led by the drummers, came in correctly even as Kumar was continuing his
introduction (Measure 44), but no sooner has the band entered than Ram Kumar signaled
them to stop. Not surprisingly, Kumar’s signal to halt caught his colleagues off guard; his
brother Shyam Kumar continued for a few notes longer (Measure 49) before he realized what
had happened. A long and quite highly embellished introduction to “Ek do teen” put an end
to any confusion (Measures 51 – 52). This melody was readily taken up by the rest of the
band.
As the band began what was actually their third performance of “Ek do teen” that
evening, mixed perceptions led to errors and other difficulties in the performance. One of the
defining features of the principal “Ek do teen” melody is the use of a major third in the
antecedent phrase followed in the consequent phrase by a minor third in the same rhythmic
and structural location. The phrases are very similar in all other respects. Half-way through
Ram Kumar’s elaborated antecedent phrase, the drummers entered. Shyam Kumar and the
euphonium player then entered as he concluded that phrase (Measure 53); but while the

238
euphonium player went back to the the beginning of the melody (that is, playing the
antecedent phrase with a major third), Shyam Kumar took his brother’s statement to have
been the antecedent and played the consequent phrase using the minor third. There is no
“rule” that could have decided the right and wrong of this situation. My perception of
standard practice, if one can suggest such a thing in this case, is that going back to the
beginning of the melody would have been the more likely choice. In any event, this
confusion produced very unsatisfactory results as the major and minor third were sounded
simultaneously. It took the bandmasters roughly fifteen seconds to finally reach a musical
consensus on where exactly in the melody the band was going to be. Two statements of the
melody had gone by before everyone was at the same point in the melody.
The Azad Band in 1988 was an accomplished professional ensemble, typical of other
ensembles both in their city (Lucknow), and in northern India in general. Fifteen years later,
the audible results of the process and practice described here for the Azad Band are still easy
to hear in the processional performances of Indian brass bands. This detailed look at the
process of performance and musical decision-making shows that in the traditional world of
brass bands, musical leadership, however clearly defined in theory, becomes much more
collective in practice. A musical leader only has so much control if one of his colleagues or
subordinates intentionally or unintentionally takes a wrong or at least unexpected musical
turn. If enough of the group follow the alternative path, playing a different section of the
song, or starting again from the beginning, that may be where the band will end up.
Within the roughly ten minutes of brass band performance that I outline, the Azad
Band played five different songs. Two were new songs for the period (that is the 1988-89
wedding season); two were more than ten years old. The remaining song was well on its way
to becoming an old song by late 1988. Its prominence here (it is the longest performance after
all) relates to its popularity as a dance number in the late 1980s. “Ek do teen” precedes the
excerpt, thus making it a repeat (so to speak) as one might expect given its status. At the
song’s conclusion at the end of this excerpt, the band launched into yet another old dance hit,
“Tequila.” Although the songs succeed each other with considerable rapidity, the longest
being four minutes from start to finish, the repertoire shows very little variation in comparison
to the rest of the band’s performance that night or to other bands’ performances that season.
Individual bandsmen add changes to the texture of all film songs through their
approach to performance. There is a certain level of heterophony that is understood to be part
of melodic performance practice. As I show in the trumpet lines of Figure 16, bandsmen add
repeated pitches, leave out melodic fragments, enter half-way through melodies and perform

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lines that anticipate or follow the bulk of the group. They add ornamentation to melodic lines,
and of course, they make mistakes, as I showed in the small example from Azad’s “Ek do
teen.” The level of error may increase or decrease depending on the band and the musical
skills of the personnel; but factors such as fatigue and boredom are just as likely to produce
errors. Melodic variants also appear due to the nature of some instruments, especially
euphoniums, which require considerably more air than clarinets or trumpets. If a euphonium
player attempts to play loudly (as most do) he can only play a short phrase before taking
another breath. Thus, a euphonium player who wishes to stand out tends to begin his melodic
phrases slightly after his colleagues have done so, and tends to play his notes in shorter
durations, in a rather clipped fashion, in response to the physical demands of his instrument.
This performance variant is even more pronounced in performances by players of the rare
brass bass, who also attempt to play the melody.
Quite obviously, there are differences in the conditions of production between the
recorded performance of a film song by a studio orchestra and the band’s performance of that
song on the street. These lead to variability in band performances within the tradition and
between the tradition and the film song products. Songs created and performed by highly
skilled professionals in a recording studio are not necessarily suited for performance by street-
based brass bands. In skilled hands, the heterophony of the street adds musical interest and
demonstrates individual creativity in the performance of a homogenized and media-dictated
repertoire. In other hands, of course, although sometimes within the same band, it
demonstrates low musical skill resulting from a social and economic musical system that
offers little reward for the improvement of musical performance by these marginalized
musicians. The phenomenon of amplification, to which I have referred already a number of
times, further marginalizes many brass bandsmen even within the processional tradition.
Amplification
Sometime in the 1970s, brass band µ⊄λικs discovered amplification, as I have
described in Chapter 4. The enormity of their discovery was made very clear to me at a
religious procession I witnessed in Lucknow in mid-1988, the celebration of the Hindu
festival of Ram Lilla. Three bands had been hired for the event, Soni, Ravi, and Azad. Each
band brought its own sound trolley; Soni actually had two. The decibel level on the street was
such that it hardly mattered whether most bandsmen played or not; one could not hear oneself
speak anywhere near the bands. The contributions of the brass players amounted to a vague
noise buried under the amplified onslaught as each band’s amplification system was pushed to

240
its maximum in order to drown out the others, or at least to make themselves heard above the
clamor.
In a band with amplification, musical leadership more or less ceases to become a
negotiable or collective issue. Leadership rests with the amplified voice, whether singer or
instrumentalist. He becomes the person who calls “Ready! One, Two!” to the band, who
announces the next song, and so forth. This in itself may be musically problematic, since
most τελ⊂ψα-based amplification systems employ echo effects consistently and with long
delay. More generally, however, amplification effectively reduces the voices in a band. In
call and response or counter-melody sections, it is the whole band that must respond to the
amplified soloist. Instead of arrangements that pit different sections and soloists against each
other, only the solo-band alternation is possible. Instead of two or three bandmasters playing
solo or collective heterophonic melody, there is a single amplified soloist with whom no one
can compete. In bands that use amplification, therefore, heterophony is less collective and
less creative. The καρ⊂γαρ bandsmen play responses with less enthusiasm (they can
sometimes not be clearly heard no matter how loud they play); in unison sections, brass
players often simply stand and listen rather than attempting to reinforce a voice that is
drowning them out in any event. There is less sense of collective effort no matter how much
that sense is dissipated in all bands by the nature of the work and the recruiting patterns.
Especially when the amplified voice is that of a keyboard, amplification obviates the need for
the bulk of the band. As we saw in Chapter 4, with the example of Kolhapur’s Mangal Music
Band, the amplified voice together with suitable percussion are largely self-sufficient.
Amplification in essence turns the majority of the band into musically unnecessary figures,
like the “dummies” that µ⊄λικs may sometimes hire to fill out the ranks; bandsmen become
simply fillers, present to make up the required numbers and spectacle.
This situation is especially severe in northern India (Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, parts of
Gujarat and Rajasthan as well) where the τελ⊂ψα are large and their volume, projected
through banks of cone-shaped speaker horns is overpowering. In the Deccan, the effect of
amplification is slightly less extreme since the smaller trolleys and smaller speakers have less
of an ear-shattering effect. Wherever it appears, however, amplification leads to deteriorating
standards of musicianship in an already musically fragile world. It leads further to inevitable
questions about the need for a brass band; indeed, the need becomes increasingly visual in
bands with τελ⊂ψα: in many such ensembles, bandsmen can simply not be heard. In
consequence, amplification can hardly be considered a transformative element in band

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practice, except to the extent that the degradation of the tradition can be seen as
transformation.
In 1990, I wrote that, “brass bands are not a permanent feature of Indian culture. Their
hey-day is past … but in their decline and in the phenomena that eventually replace them, will
be additional clues to unraveling the processes of change in Indian …musics” (Booth, 1990:
257). In large part, I made that rather pessimistic assertion with amplification in mind, and
with the memory in mind of a particular βαρ⊄τ, a 12-man party of the International Band
(Lucknow), with τελ⊂ψα featuring a βυλ−βυλ ταρ⊄νγ (a strummed zither with typewriter
keys used to stop the strings to create different pitches) and two singers. Having avoided
quoting from my research journals to this point, it may be that this final story can be told
through my noted journal comments in response to this performance.
“With the τελ⊂ψα, the motivation to blow, especially for the rank and file
bandsmen diminishes by half. Nobody (sometimes including themselves) is going
to hear them no matter how loud they play. … After two songs they [the brass
players] stopped and the singers sang accompanied only by the drums and the
βυλ−βυλ. I have seen the future? And is it boring! The ensemble is clearly the
implication for the future, however. The τελ⊂ψα makes the players superfluous.”
The incorporation of amplification is a recent transformation of Indian brass bands
that moves it away (in a number of directions) from the colonial side of their ancestry.
Τελ⊂ψα mounted amplifiers are a particularly Indian solution to the need to be modern
within the traditional context of the βαρ⊄τ or religious procession and the equally important
need to compete for space on the street. No doubt, amplification is also a straightforward
response to rising noise levels in the urban setting. The “clues” that τελ⊂ψα offer therefore,
are metaphorical. They are musical symbols of urbanization (which could be said of brass
bands as well to some degree) and of the increasingly difficult nature of urban life for many of
the city’s residents, especially those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, such as
bandsmen. That τελ⊂ψα and amplification transform brass band performance practice in the
negative manner I have suggested here may ultimately make the ensemble as culturally and
ritually superfluous as the brass players of the International Band appeared to me to be in
1988.

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 Conclusion
The Forefront of Change
In 1813, William Scott, serving in the Company Army at Fort St. George, Chennai
wrote to the fort’s Commander-in-Chief suggesting the “formation of Bands of Musick in
Native Regiments in order to establish pride, esprit de corps,” and “to invigorate an active
principle of union between the European officers of the Native Corps and their men” (Scott:
1813: 1). Scott then went on to discuss some of the problems that he foresaw in
accomplishing his inter-cultural goal. Chief among them was a scarcity of talented or trained
musicians: “it is almost certain that the whole of the Native Army could not turn out a single
effective Sepoy…capable of performing in a band!” (ibid). Nevertheless, like some more
recent enthusiasts, he felt that the answers to cultural tensions were to be found in music
appreciation, “our musick not being in much repute among the Natives of India…few are
educated to it and fewer still by note” (Scott, 1813: 2).
In spite of the disrepute Scott attributed to European music, there must have been
something of a demand for Indian musicians trained in the European tradition. If, as he says
later in his letter, those few Indians who were trained in “our musick” were “too well aware of
[their skill’s] value to allow themselves to come under the restraints of military life” (ibid),
we have to think that there were other sources of patronage, beyond the military, for Indians
who could play European instruments and music. Since Scott does not tell us the source of
the demand generating that value, of which these few musicians were “too well aware”,
however, we are left to wonder whether this demand was coming entirely from European
patrons or whether at least some Indian patrons were also willing to spend money on Indian
musicians who could play European instruments and music. Indian musicians would
certainly have been cheaper than the imported European models (so to speak), as Woodfield
(2000) makes clear; but it is nevertheless hard to imagine that all the demand came from the
European quarter. Less than twenty years after Scott wrote his letter, nearly three hundred
kilometers south of Chennai, the court of Maratha ruler Sarabhoji II (1798-1832) would see
the appearance of the Tanjore Band, in which Indians playing European instruments
performed both Indian and European music (Seetha, 1981). Sookmoy Roy’s Kolkata
experiment in musical fusion that took place in 1792 (see Introduction) was 20 years old by
this time. In Chennai itself, the British bandmasters of Fort St. George had already made their
contributions to musical interaction, providing instruction in violin to Baluswami Dikshitar
(1786-1858) and providing the musical models that led to the compositions of Baluswami’s
more famous brother, composer Muttuswami Dikshitar (1775-1835), in which English modes

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and melodic patterns were used as compositional elements in a series of the elder Dikshitar’s
κριτι compositions (Raghavan, 1975).
Thus, Scott’s assessment of the status of European music may have been based on
limited information or experience. Alternatively, he may have been traveling in a musical
world somewhat removed from the aloof or exalted realms of Karnatik classical music. In
any event, it is clear that even if we take Scott’s assessment at face value, musical change was
under way in some quarters, and, it was underway in different directions and at varying rates
of speed across the length (and probably the breadth) of the Indian subcontinent, especially in
the colonial urban centers. The results of musical change in India are, as we have seen in this
study, both multifaceted and unpredictable. We saw in the Introduction that the musical
experiment in Kolkata was judged a failure by at least one European observer (Sookmoy Roy
may have had a different opinion of course). The violin, on the other hand, has become an
integral feature of South Indian classical musical practice (indeed, it is difficult to imagine a
Karnatik vocal concert without one) and is heard in the North as well. At the same time, the
English-style compositions of Dikshitar and a few other South Indian composers remain
conversation pieces: rarely performed or recorded and hardly part of most singers’ standard
repertoire.
There is no way to quantify or even categorize in their totality the range of musical
transformations that have taken place in Indian music culture since 1813, since 1792, or since
whenever it was that the first musical results of the British presence in South Asia were heard.
That the brass band trade is the result of that presence is unquestionable; but the presence of
foreign music cultures and instruments in South Asia hardly began with the British, as Flora
(1983) shows us. He points to images of foreign ensembles from the west performing in
northern India in the first and second centuries of the common era. The Arabs, who first
appeared in Sindh and the Punjab in the 8th century and the Turks and Afghans who began the
conquest of Hindustan proper in the 11th century, were traveling well-trodden paths. Musical
change was (and is) not something that began with the British, or with the Portuguese, or with
the Lodis; these newly arrived cultures merely changed the directions in which musical
change proceeded (as did other non-musical events, such as urbanization, new technologies,
and so on). In South Asia, at least, musical change is a cumulative, ongoing process rather
than an event; trends in the processional music world of the 12th century (or the 15th century)
are part of the same process.
A diachronic view of change in the band world

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 Change as a process is a constant in any music culture. This is equally true of the
hypothetically isolated hunter-gathers in the depths of a rain forest and the classical/traditional
musicians of Cairo. Ethnomusicology can legitimately be concerned only with directions and
rates of change. I noted in my Introduction that I have chosen to sacrifice some degree of
ethnographic depth in exchange for geographic breadth. The stories in this book, told about
bands and bandsmen in different geographic (but also) economic and cultural settings have
shown us what a lot of things we might mean when we talk about musical or cultural change;
they have also demonstrated some of the problems we may encounter when using the term
with too much enthusiasm based on research that is more narrowly focused in time and place.
I discuss this dilemma in reference to one of the most successful musical ethnographies of an
Indian object of study, Henry’s (1988) Chant the Names of God. The author of this valuable
work chose to focus on a single village and surrounding region located just north of Varanasi,
producing a highly detailed picture of the entire depth and breadth of village music culture in
this area at a particular point in time, specifically the early 1970s.
We have seen in Chapters One and Three that there were brass bands in some parts of
eastern Hindustan as early as the mid-1930s and that in the two major urban centers on either
side of Henry’s village (Patna to the north and Varanasi to the south) brass bands were
steadily replacing bagpipe bands (which Henry mentions only briefly as an urban
phenomenon) after the late 1940s. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a study conducted in
the early 1970s should reveal brass band activity even in a small village. We may be equally
unsurprised by the differences to be found between the view I have developed of the band
world in the 1980s and ‘90s and this rural world of an earlier decade. Both the similarities
and the differences will help us understand the rate and nature of musical change within the
tradition and also offer insights into the potential pitfalls in studies of musical change.
As I have done, Henry notes that it is members of the lower Hindu and Muslim castes
who are involved in the processional music trade. In his village, this means some of the low
Muslim castes I have described. Interestingly, he also refers to the “noisy Camaar rhythm
bands called daphalis...the least expensive processional bands” (Henry, 1988: 218). Thus, for
this village context, divisions of caste and of ensemble appear to be correlated in the
processional trade: the Ansari and Johala Muslim ζ⊄τs controlling the band instruments,
while the low caste Hindus, the Camars (who still have little managerial presence to speak of
in the band world of Uttar Pradesh) are restricted to drum ensembles using the pre-British ⋅αφ.
Sheikh-Siddiqi bandsmen in Uttar Pradesh, however, sometimes refer to other Muslim band
ζ⊄τs (the Hashimi, for example) as ⋅αφαλ⊂, indicating thereby that they suspect such

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families of having low caste Hindu ancestry. They show us that cultural changes, which may
have happened over a century and a half ago (and which figure prominently in the process of
musical change), still play a part in the contemporary politics of the band world. Even if the
extended family of which the Mumtaz brothers are a part abandoned both their old
processional instruments and their old religion (at about the same time), and even if other
still-Hindu caste groups have since picked up those old instruments, other Muslim bandsmen
of more prestigious heritages are clearly not willing to forget the past.
As in the cities, brass bands were the “loudest, most colorful, and most prestigious”
processional ensembles available to the villagers of Henry’s 1971-2 study. The ten to fifteen-
man ensembles that Henry describes are small in contemporary terms, but that can hardly be
thought surprising for a village of this period. The apparent changes in repertoire, however,
between rural 1970s and urban 1990s show us the transformative power inherent in the
combination of the popular music media and the marginal social and economic roles of
bandsmen. The bands of Henry’s world “play four classes of music: film songs; marches;
folk tunes; and ragas. The ragas are similar to those played by contemporary, formally trained
classical musicians” (Henry, 1988: 221). Henry is as dismissive of the φιλµ⊂ components
of the band repertoire as are most modern Indian patrons. His discussion concentrates on the
classical (ρ⊄γα) side of the repertoire; but it is difficult to determine just how much of the
band repertoire that Henry heard is actually classical. Since he also notes that “as in the
orthodox classical tradition, the brass bands play each raga only during a certain period in the
day” (ibid), it might be safe to assume that the classical repertoire was both more robust and
more common than I have reported. We have seen that bandsmen in Varanasi were still
incorporating at least a remnant of that classical repertoire; but the Mumtaz Band’s
performance of Rag Kalyan at a single βαρ⊄τ is significant as the only Indian exception in a
twelve-year study. In this musical world (and most others as well) the output of the film
music industry, in the hands of men who have no economic base or source of training from
which to resist, has swept all before it.
The descriptions of βαρ⊄τs that Henry and that I produce are comfortingly similar
until the band reaches the bride’s home. Thereafter, Henry’s description is as if we had
stepped into a different world or time. In Henry’s rural world of the 1970s, when the βαρ⊄τ
reaches the bride’s home, the band “entertains the guests briefly;” this practice has vanished
from India, but is still observable in Pakistan, as I have described above. “The next day at
dawn [the band] customarily plays songs based on Raga Bhairavi. … Later around noon the
barat follows the band [again] to the bride’s home for the khicari ceremonies. It may play

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again in the afternoon for the entertainments of the wedding guests. The larger bands,
consisting of ten to fifteen members, received from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
rupees for these services” (Henry, 1988: 219). Thus, the fee that would hire a fifteen-man
band in an Uttar Pradesh village in 1971-2, to work for the better part of two days, two
processions, and two performances, might, in the late 1990s pay the wages of single urban
bandmaster for a single two-hour βαρ⊄τ.
These are small differences of detail in practice and larger differences of repertoire
and economics. The methodological perspective, on the other hand, and the resulting
representation of bandsman identity are both quite different. We can see precisely how
studies whose chronological and geographic objects of study are quite narrowly defined make
it hard to understand the processes of musical change (of course, change was not Henry’s
goal; none of this discussion is intended as criticism). Nevertheless, the many points of
conjunction between Henry’s and my descriptions are intersections in fact; the particular
pieces of Henry’s village music-culture puzzle also fit into my band-world puzzle. They are
two or three small pieces in a slow-moving, low-key corner of that puzzle. Moving from that
older and rural corner towards the more sophisticated urban center, we can see the process of
musical change across space as well as over time. Access to this process, however, is only
available through the oral histories of those involved and the limited documentation of earlier
periods. Musical change here is shown clearly as being “the real insofar as it is entangled
within the scientific operations” (de Certeau, 1988: 35). Rather than being the direct result of
ethnographic analysis, as Henry’s study is, the only “reality” possessed by musical change is
as a postulate resulting from that analysis.
The instrumental outcomes of early musical change appear in the courtly images
examined by Wade (1998) and Flora (1983). Wade’s commentary informs us about the
incorporation of new musical instruments and the creation or adoption of new musical
ensembles. Wade is able to take us somewhat more directly to the heart of the matter, the
human interactions, decisions, and compulsions that drove these musical changes. Generally,
however, those human processes remain as dark in Henry’s study as in these earlier studies of
the instrumental outcomes. The zoomorphic metal trumpets of 1st Century visitors to India
from Kushan, or the Arab ναθθ⊄ραs of 15th Century Mughal conquerors remain symbols of
identity and prestige; but what the Indians thought of them, who played them, by what means
and over what length of time they were incorporated into local processional ritual all remain
inaccessible. This should hardly be a surprise. The stories I have presented here show us that
the forefront of change in the processional traditions of South Asia is a place for the

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desperate, for political and economic refugees, and for low caste musicians. It is a place for
another kind of hidden musician, to use Ruth Finnegan’s (1989) famous and appropriate term.
I have concentrated here on documentation and stories that concern the specific
musical changes that were subsequent to the British arrival in South Asia, for which there is
both available oral history and some documentation produced by British observers and by
Indian observers and participants. Even at that, I have no stories that reach back beyond the
19th century. I have tried to make clear that the families or caste groups whose stories appear
in this book are not the beginners of anything; they are simply the ones who persevered in the
trade. As individuals, as families, and as caste groups, they became engaged through
employment with and through imitation of still earlier individuals and families. These
anonymous forerunners were trading on their skills in British music culture, acquired in the
service of Indian and British aristocracy (including the military) or through tuition with
aristocratic or military musicians. The resultant chain (σιλσιλ⊄) of teaching, imitation, and
competition may well have begun in the later 18th century (as far as British instruments are
concerned); but neither I nor any one else can support such suppositions, even with oral
history. It is important to remember that the individual members of this succession of family
and caste groups had fundamentally pragmatic interests in the acquisition of new instruments
and musical styles. They were concerned with making a livelihood to support themselves and
their families. That goal is just as crucial for the low-status processional musicians of 2003 as
it was for those of 1801. That it may eventually lead to the demise of the brass band tradition
is, in this pragmatic sense, irrelevant. As Tukaram Jadhav says, the band trade involves
“much work, but not much money.” Like many bandsmen, he hopes his grandchildren will be
able to leave the trade behind.
In spite of the almost inevitable confusion that results from this inevitably tentative
history, a number of important points or issues stand out for emphasis.
1. There was no unified simultaneous movement away from pre-British instruments
and formations. A series of changes, largely un-documented, beginning with bugles, drums,
and perhaps fifes, gradually led Indian processional musicians away from pre-colonial
instruments and towards brass bands in the late 19th Century. These transitions required
anywhere from as little as 10 to as many as 70 years to reach the stage of modern brass bands
in the private sector. Location played a major role in determining both the rate and the
process of change. Proximity to major colonial urban centers or to British military activity
(either “in the field” as in the northwestern areas, or in garrison/training centers, such as
Mhow) seems to have sped things up.

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 2. In the social realm, and based on available evidence, the northern trend towards
processional brass (which began before similar changes in the South) appears to have been led
by Muslim musicians of mid- to low caste status. It is not clear (and may never be clear),
however, whether an earlier wave of low caste Hindu processional musicians preceded the
Muslim bandsmen of the north. Certainly, there is a degree to which low caste Hindu
bandsmen are becoming dominant in the contemporary trade; but whether this is a resurgence
following a long period of secondary status, or whether this is a phenomenon arising from
new socio-political dynamics in modern South Asia remains unclear.
3. A three-way combination of hereditary processional families (low caste Hindu and
some converted Muslim families), mid- to high status Hindu refugees, and artisanal Muslim
families has produced a complex social spectrum of band ownership in contemporary India.
The lingering issues of pollution, low status, and ritual absorption of inauspiciousness
attached to actual band performance, on the other hand, have left actual performance in the
hands in which it appears to always have been, those of the low castes of both religious
spectra.
4. Musical change is change in fashion. In this instance at least, fashion—and the
social meanings and ideologies attached to the ensembles—is, in almost all instances, more
important than musical change as such.
The limits of oral history and the marginal importance of musicians and their music,
together with the colonial identities of their instruments collectively mean that the stories I
have related here are the only stories we can tell; but in telling them, I have begun not at the
beginning of musical change which is a fiction in any event. Instead, the first glimmers of
musical change that appear in these stories are like our first glimpses of a train that has
already covered much territory and that comes at us slowly at first; but then with increasing
speed out of an uncertain fog.
The Margins of tradition
Commercial popular Indian films and film songs, especially those of the Hindi-
language film industry, have appeared on the margins of this study, mostly as sources for
contextual reinforcement for specific βαρ⊄τ songs, and as suppliers of the bulk of the band
repertoire. More occasionally, the film industry is a medium reinforcing the traditional role of
brass bands in processional culture. As I began this Conclusion, I planned to revisit the issue
of bandsmen’s marginality through reference to a Hindi film that was immensely popular
during the first year of my research dedicated to this topic. In an early scene from the 1988
film, Ram Lakhan [Ram and Lakhan], the younger of the two hero brothers, Lakhan, is shown

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lounging in a village brass band shop with his bandsmen friends. Since Lakhan is by birth a
member of a wealthy and respectable landlord family and class, this scene is one of the means
by which the filmmaker establishes the shiftless and weak aspects of Lakhan’s character.
This technique of guilt by association reinforces the points I have made here about
bandsmen’s marginal and low caste status. A more recent film, however, one of 1999’s major
cinematic releases, Hum Saath Saath Hai [We are united], offers the opportunity for a more
complex re-evaluation of the issue of bandsmen’s marginality. I have already referred to this
film in Chapter 6, noting that the βαρ⊄τ scene found therein includes a validation of both
brass bands and the βαρ⊄τ standard, “Aaj mere yaar ki shaadi hai” as the traditional sounds
of the Indian wedding procession.
As a film, Hum Saath Saath Hai asserts the importance of Hindu family values and
relationships with a level of intensity and obviousness that is extreme. In addition to its
depiction of idealized processional practice, however, there yet another reason to comment on
this film. Like many Hindi films, Hum Saath Saath Hai includes among it cast of characters
one who serves in part as a clown figure and in part as a companion/confidant to the main
hero. Such characters are usually servants or other individuals of obviously lower status than
the main characters (who in this film are wealthy Hindu industrialists). The clown in Hum
Saath Saath Hai is named Anwar; his importance to this study lies in the fact that Anwar is a
bandmaster and µ⊄λικ, owner of the “Anwar Band.” It is Anwar’s band, so to speak, that
plays “Aaj mere yaar ki shaadi hai” at the family’s βαρ⊄τ; Anwar is shown leading the
group and playing clarinet.
Anwar’s name and his repeated use of distinctly Urdu/Muslim expressions mark him
clearly as a Muslim in an explicitly Hindu film. Throughout the film, he is described as the
very close friend and brother (in a social rather than genealogical sense) of Vivek, the eldest
son of the family. Vivek and all the characters of his generation (his brothers, wife, sister, and
sisters-in-law) address Anwar as βη⊄⊂ [brother] in a most familial and even respectful
manner. In a scene depicting a version of the ρ⊄κ⊂ βαδηαν ritual in which sisters honor
their brothers by tying garlands/decorated wristlets on their wrists and receiving presents from
their brothers in return, Vivek’s sister ties a cord on Anwar’s wrist as well. In fact, of course,
the extent to which the characters assert Anwar’s familial status belabors a very suspect point.
The state of Hindu-Muslim relations in India (especially given the explicitly Hindu nature of
recent politics) in 1999, both internally and externally, forces the film-makers to extremes in
their attempts to portray Hindus and Muslims as brothers. The point is still more suspect
when we look at Anwar in the context of the story and the other characters.

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 Although his role as clown is a standard one, Anwar is hardly a significant character in
terms of the story line or plot developments; his presence and actions do little to change the
course of events. Aside from one “Khansahab” a bookkeeper in the family business—who
dresses in the ασητρακ⊄ν fur hat and σηερω⊄ν⊂ coat stereotypically worn by upper class
or educated φιλµ⊂ Muslims for the past forty years or so—and the family’s female secretary,
Anwar is the only Muslim in the film. His presence confirmed the marginal acceptability of
Muslims, the qualified religious tolerance, to be found in the Hindu fundamentalist vision of
India in 1999. It is logical that in choosing a lower class parallel to the high status
“Khansahab” character, one who could also undertake the clown/advisor role, the film makers
chose a bandmaster; I have shown, after all, that throughout northern India this is a class
heavily dominated by Muslims. In consequence of these considerations I might assert that
this depiction of a Muslim bandmaster confirms the stability of bandsmen’s low status in
contemporary India; but the history of Hindi cinema makes this issue somewhat more
complex.
Within the context of Hum Saath Saath Hai, Anwar Bandmaster is certainly a
marginal character of relatively low status; within the context of Hindi films, he is, to my
knowledge, unique. As far as I can determine, his is the first appearance of a bandsman as a
speaking character in a Hindi film. It is literally impossible to address the totality of popular
Hindi-language films, of which roughly five or six thousand have been made since the
introduction of sound in 1931. Few fans could claim secure knowledge of more than twenty
percent of a repertoire that enormous. Nevertheless, neither I, nor Indian film watchers whom
I have consulted can identify any earlier Hindi film in which a bandsman appears as a
character of any kind. That the character of the bandsman may actually have appeared on the
cultural radar that is the Hindi cinema suggests to me that Anwar represents a breakthrough
for bandsmen. What makes this debut so ironic, of course, is that in a film of such extremely
Hindu sentiment, the presence of a carefully limited and carefully stereotyped set of Muslim
characters (of whom one is a bandsman) might simply confirm the low status of Muslims in
India. While he may represent progress for Indian bandsmen, Anwar might be bad news for
Indian Muslims.
To what extent does the appearance of a single bandsman in such a politically charged
role in a single film represent changing realities or perceptions of Indian bandsmen’s status?
My own perception is that Anwar is more important as an event in film history than as a sign
of change in Indian society in general. I argue, however, that bandsmen’s very marginality is
one of the factors that make them such active and effective agents in the process of musical

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change. Throughout this book those at the very bottom of the musical and social ladders, who
in that sense have the least to loose, have engaged in competitive behaviors (for patronage and
market control) that have resulted in musical change. Their very social and economic
marginality in many cases forced them to try new instrumental combinations and at the same
time, made it easy for them to change instruments and repertoires as the winds of popular
fashion dictated: It was not as though any one was necessarily going to think worse of them
for playing British processional instruments instead of Indian ones.
Musical traditions as metaphors and as history
The character of Anwar Bandmaster in Hum Saath Saath Hai and the issues I have
raised regarding him remind us that music, musicians, and musical change may serve as
powerful metaphors for culture and cultural change. I have argued that this is true of brass
bands, both the trade and the ensemble, in general. I have already noted Bayly’s (1999)
description of events in northern India in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a period that saw
many changes in the makeup of the ruling elites and their immediate supporters to include
“non-martial scribes, ritualists and trader-bankers who were either Brahmans themselves, or
followed conventions which are now thought of as Brahmanical” (Bayly, 1999: 65). Brass
bands offered such newly established upper classes an attractive combination of meanings. Is
it possible that these new elites needed to acquire the trappings of royal prestige (brass bands
had been part of royal households since the early 19th century at least), while at the same time
showing a sense of modernity and even support for the growing might of the British? Many
members of the commercial and bureaucratic elite of the first half of the 19th century were,
after all, “people of mixed origin from whom the British recruited their commercial
intermediaries. ... δυβ⊄∨ families [who] had become keen practitioners of caste-centered life-
cycle rituals in the early stages of Company expansion” partly as a means of reinforcing their
newly superior status (Bayly, 1999: 81). Bayly’s concern here is with the development of
concepts and practices of caste, which also included, as she notes, a stiffening of the negative
attitude towards the low castes (such as Doms or Camars). For families whose origins were
of less than clearly Brahman rank and who were attempting to improve their ritual status,
while at the same time demonstrating their allegiance to their new commercial patrons or
employers (the British), the employment of brass bands in ritual processional contexts takes
on considerable logic. The brass band trade and its growth in the 19th century encapsulate one
set of core issues and processes underway across northern India during the early colonial
period.

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 Changes in the trade during the 20th century, increasing capitalization and
commercialization, the commodification of ritual processes and relationships, and the collapse
of the pre-media and regional repertoires, similarly and readily show us a small version of
Indian culture in the Independent era, especially in northern India. For ensembles of such
variable quality and quantity, bands carry an enormous load: the colonial connection
certainly, but the (pre-1947) courtly Indian connection as well. Bands reflect urban style in
the colonial and Independent eras; they also possess an increasingly nostalgic flavor of a
passing era (as represented in the idealized bands of the Hindi cinema). Finally, the
integration of old film songs into the βαρ⊄τ repertoire speaks to a particular kind of
incorporation of the products of the mass media entertainment industries into personal ritual.
When brass bands in Mumbai play the old hit “Ramiya vasta maiya” (as most inevitably do)
the power of the original scene—as Raj Kapoor wanders through the late night streets of the
city, coming upon a group of happy dancing poor, who welcome him and offer him the
fellowship and acceptance his life lacks—may seem reassuring in an increasingly
depersonalized urban environment. At the same time, the big bands of the big north Indian
cities, ever larger, increasingly organized, regimented, and anonymous, reflect the realities of
those same depersonalized, increasingly hostile and consumer driven, sometimes nightmarish
metropolises.
Brass bands thus embody one perspective on 200 years or so of South Asian history;
but my delineation of the trade’s history remains incomplete. Simon Schama writes of the
insoluble quandary of the historian, “how to live in two worlds at once: how to take the
broken, mutilated remains of something or someone from the ‘enemy lines’ of the
documented past and restore it to life or give it a decent interment in our own time and place”
(Schama, 1991: 319). Although this book has historical pretensions, my task has been more
an exercise in tunneling from the living present back to the “enemy lines” of a non-
documented past, using the oral histories offered by living survivors, as my primary digging
tools. I have encountered “old-fashioned” bands, but very few actual remains.
“Historians are left forever chasing shadows” Schama continues, “painfully aware of
their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness” (ibid). The historical
pretensions of this book arise from my attempts to reconstruct the shadows of earlier stages of
the historical process of change. Some of the families and individuals that appear in these
stories do connect us directly to the process of change; but looked at through their eyes, that
process resembles nothing so much as an ongoing struggle for survival, with fashion-oriented
demand driving changes in ensemble which the musicians must pick up. Like the historians

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that Schama writes about, I have not even come close to reconstructing a world and have, as
he points out, made do with “formulating problems and supplying explanations about cause
and effect. But the certainty of such answers always remains contingent on their unavoidable
remoteness from their subject. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just
gone around the corner and out of earshot” (ibid).
My task has been in some ways more challenging, since many of persons I have been
hailing had no wish to be identified. I have, for the past twelve years, collected the oral
fragments of a tradition. It thus takes on reality only through the lives of the musicians who
were not concerned at all about musical change or any other theoretical construct. They were
concerned pragmatically with musical change as a means to a better living for themselves and
for their families. My quest has been to reconstruct their quests and construct a picture of the
unintended broad-scale outcomes of those personal quests. The immigrations, the changes of
instrumentation or repertoire, the shutting out of other castes from the patronage market of the
urban center, the quest for bigger bucks in the rural hinterlands among the rural elites are
human and economic concerns, not musical ones.
I have been attempting to make sense of the processes of change in which foreigners
like William Scott and Indians like bandmaster Lakshman Singh (to pick at random one of
Scott’s chronological, if not geographic contemporaries) played complementary roles. In the
process, I have proposed that these processes and the roles of the musicians in those processes
may have some metaphorical reference or relevance to the broader changes in Indian culture
over the period with which I am concerned. Among other things, these include changes in the
perception and reception of British culture by Indians, changes in caste attitudes and
structures, changes in the socio-economic nature of Indian life, and changes in what is now
called popular culture. William Scott and Lakshman Singh were active agents in the process
of British-influenced musical change in South Asia. Singh was no doubt trying to make a
living; he may have given little serious thought to possible musical outcomes 100 years later.
Scott’s motivations were more political or cultural; he had particular outcomes in mind that he
assumed or asserted would follow from the changes he proposed. Singh and Scott might or
might not be pleased to know the results of their activities. For that matter, they might or
might not even acknowledge that their initiatives led to the omnipresent and complex package
of meanings that is the contemporary South Asian brass band tradition. It is certain they
never could have anticipated it.

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