Feel like a Bollywood evening with film projection, live music, and dance? If so, head to Muziekpublique on Saturday. Bollywood Brass Band will take you on a journey to all the most famous Bollywood films, blended with bhangra (British-Indian pop that emerged simultaneously in England and India in the 1970s), funk, and samba. As part of the Let’s Art India Festival and the International Migrants Day (18 December).
Bollywood Brass Band was founded in 1992 when a brass band from London began a collaboration with the Shyam Brass Band from Jabalpur in India. “We learned to play their music and when they returned to India, we integrated elements from them into our music to create our own sound, the British take on Indian wedding orchestras,” Mark Allan, a retired saxophonist and current VJ of the Bollywood Brass Band tells us.
Are you a wedding orchestra?
Mark Allan: A wedding brass band. We have the same instruments as a typical Indian wedding orchestra, but we added percussion: dhol (Indian percussion), small drums, and surdo (samba bass drum). Dhol is really loud and is thus a match for the blare of the brass winds. That drum also produces the extremely danceable beat of the bhangra. It’s very contagious! We are Bollywood meets brass meets bhangra. Two ladies in the group, saxophonist Sarha Moore and trumpeter Kay Charlton, arrange the songs so we can play them as a brass band with bhangra percussion.
Does that surdo give the music a Brazilian colour?
Allan: There are samba rhythms in a few of the songs. We have played some samba in the past, that’s where it comes from. One of the Bollywood hits we play actually has some Brazilian influences and a music video recorded in Rio. Indian musicians are always looking for inspiration, both in their own inexhaustible musical culture and in other parts of the world. They love diversity.
Bollywood Brass Band: brass mees bhangra
You’re coming to Brussels to celebrate Bollywood’s hundredth birthday?
Allan: That’s right, we’re here to perform a programme of hits and classics from 1930s Bollywood – the early “talkies” – all the way up to today. The audience will see clips from the films of the soundtracks we perform and there will be a dancer, Bollywood style. We’ll take you on a journey to the most popular music in the world.
The most popular music in the world?
Allan: Of course, Bollywood is Indian pop music, which is incredibly popular in India as well as much further afield. There are one billion people in India, and if you add all the Indians abroad to that, as well as the fact that Bollywood music and films are extremely popular in places like Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and other parts of Asia, the result is pretty plain. What’s more, the soundtracks are released before the films to create a buzz.
Are you supporting the International Migrants Day?
Allan: Absolutely, if it weren’t for the migration of Indians to the UK, we wouldn’t exist. Our percussionists are from India and if it weren’t for the weddings, there would be nowhere to perform. I also happen to be a migrant, from New Zealand, and there’s also a Spaniard in the group. The encounter of people with roots in different cultures is creating new, exciting forms of music like ours all over the place.
Allan: That’s right, we’re here to perform a programme of hits and classics from 1930s Bollywood – the early “talkies” – all the way up to today. The audience will see clips from the films of the soundtracks we perform and there will be a dancer, Bollywood style. We’ll take you on a journey to the most popular music in the world.
The most popular music in the world?
Allan: Of course, Bollywood is Indian pop music, which is incredibly popular in India as well as much further afield. There are one billion people in India, and if you add all the Indians abroad to that, as well as the fact that Bollywood music and films are extremely popular in places like Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and other parts of Asia, the result is pretty plain. What’s more, the soundtracks are released before the films to create a buzz.
Are you supporting the International Migrants Day?
Allan: Absolutely, if it weren’t for the migration of Indians to the UK, we wouldn’t exist. Our percussionists are from India and if it weren’t for the weddings, there would be nowhere to perform. I also happen to be a migrant, from New Zealand, and there’s also a Spaniard in the group. The encounter of people with roots in different cultures is creating new, exciting forms of music like ours all over the place.
Bollywood Brass Band • 14/12, 20.00, €8/12/14, Muziekpublique, Théâtre Molière, Naamsepoortgalerij/galerie de la Porte de Namur, Bolwerksquare 3 square du Bastion, Elsene/Ixelles, 02-217.26.00, www.muziekpublique.be
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