Brass Baja: Stories From the World of Indian Wedding Bands 0195670817, 9780195670813

Citation preview

Brass Baja Stories from the World of Indfan Wedding Bands

01g1t1zedLy

GOL)gle

Original fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

01191nal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Brass Baja Stories from the World of Indian Wedding Bands

Gregory D. Booth •

OXFORD VNIVBl.SITY PIUISS

Oi9itiz n by

Google

Orlgiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

.·..

-

-.\

'

' .'

OXFORD ~· ·

UNIVl!..SITY PUSS

'. LI

- ,,......

l

YMCA Library Building, jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001

..

,

Oxford Univer.;ity Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It funhers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and educat.i on by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices In Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published In India by Oxford University Press, New Delhi C Oxford University Press 2005

The moral rights of the author have been asserted ' Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this' publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any fonn or by any means, elecuonic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without pennission in writing from Oxford Univer.;ity Press. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford Univer.;ity Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book In any other binding or rover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 019 567081 7

Typeset in Nalandagaramond 10/12 by Le Srudio Graphlque, Gurgaon 122 001 Printed by Roopak Printers, Delhi 110 032 Published by Manzar Khan, Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Contents

. ........ _,,, .,:~ . ::

1

INTRODUCTION

India, Brass Bands, and Ritual 1 Marginality and Musical Worlds 5 Musical Change and Continuity 9 Stories, History, and Metaphor 14 Research in the World of Indian Wedding Bands 20

PART ONE

Contemporary and Historical Ethnographies ofa Processional Music Trade

33

1. IDENTITY' CASTE, AND FAMILy Nankhatai 33

Who are Bandsmen? 36 Caste, Jajmiini, and Processional Musicians 37 The 'Punjab' Band 46 Social and Musical Identities in Pre-colonial Processional Practice 55

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

vi

CONTENTS

Instrumental Transformations in the Deccan 58 Inter-caste Transmission and Competition in Patna 61

68

2. MALIKs AND BANDSMENSocIAL AND PROFESSIONAL HIERARCHIES

Traditional Service and Free Enterprise 68

The Family Firm 76 The Jea Bands 76 The Mumtaz Band 81

Bandsmen and Bandmasters 89 Roles at Work' 90

Profit and Loss 93 Band Fees 96 Expenses 101 Instruments, uniforms, and other costs I 02

3.

105

CAREERS, SPACE, LOCATION, AND MOVEMENT

Searching for 'The Ladies' Band'

105

Space in Urban Band Worlds 108 Urban Shops-The Professional Centre 109

Location, Status, and Competition 114 Langa Sheri-Pre-capitalized ·space and Organization 115 Out of Lakkara GaiijNeighbourhoods, Competition, and Identity

117

Variations in Professional Mobility 120 Musical Mobility in the late Twentieth Century 122 Caste Level Migration and Historical Influences 127

Careers 129 On the Road to History with the Razak Bank 130 Bandmasters from RampurMoving away from Urbanization 141

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

vii PART

Two

Sounds, Sights, Practice, and Performance

4.

149

ENSEMBLl!S AND FASHION-THE FLOW AND CHANGE OP MEANING

British Military Instruments in British and Indian Contexts 152 Symbolizing Change and Tradition in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 'Mus/Im Barill' In Pama 165

165

'ROlos' In Kolbapur 171

The Band Party

174

Instrumentation 175 Elements of Visual Style 179

183

Fashion, Tradition, and Cultural Change Instrumental Fashions 186 Bagpipes in the Purab and the Punjab Pop Music Orchestras 197

5.

192

201

THE PRACTICE OF PROCESSIONS AND PROCESSIONAL M USIC

.

Waiting on the Margins 201

Making Music on the Street 202 Processions 203 1be bara1 206 Dancing ,,, the stre«s 212

BaratPenonnanceStructure-All in a Day's Work 215 Musical Structure and Ritual Structure

21 7

For'rlUltions and petfor'rlUlnce bebavtour-3

220

'Staying Out' in India, ' Eating In' in Pakistan

0191t1z•" by

Google

227

Original fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

viii

CoNm'ITS

Fixed and Variable MembershipSocial and Musical Implications 230

6.

THE WEDDING

BAND REPERTOIRE

238

ClasstcaJ versus ft/mi tn Varanasi 240

Barat and Processional Repertoires-Transformations and Continuities of Meaning 244 Salami-'Traditional English ' Music 246 Classical Music in the Band World: Knowledge, Performance, Prestige 249

Bandsmen and Film Music

256

Old and New Songs 258 Ritual Film Music 262 Specialties of the Processional Repertoire

7.

264

PRACTICES OF TRANSMISSION AND PERFORMANCE Marches, Rags, Gurus, and Oral Transmission 270 Film Songs, Settings, and Electronic Transmission-Interacting with the Medium Performing on the Streets-Leadership, Repetition, and Heterophony 279 Amplification 288

267

276

291

CONCLUSION

The Forefront of Change

291

A Diachronic View of Change in the Band World 293 The Margins of Tradition 299 Musical Traditions as Metaphors and as History 302 APPENDIX-MUSICAL TRANSCRIPTIONS

306

REFERENCES

316

INDEX

323

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Introduction

'What a noise and what a clanerl Drum-a-drum-a-drum! Pipe-apipe-a-pipe! Crash-a-crash-a-crash! ... Drums and pipes and cymbals, gla~ and hubbub and tinsel! II is a Hindoo wedding. Musicians and torch bearers lead the way.' Sames in tbe CU1es and W'1ds ofHtndoostan by R.G. Hobes'

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 beginning 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 ofHobes' 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 Munuswami Dikshitar had already created a series of devotional compositions, called kritis, in which imitations and adaptations of British tunes served as the melodic foundation. His brother Baluswami had begun the process of establishing the violin as 1

Hobes, R.G . 1832. Scenes in the Cities and Wilds of Hin.doostan. Handwritten MS.

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

2

BRASS B...,A

one of South India's most important musical instruments. 2 Further 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.'l In Carey's opinion, 'this innovation did not succeed owing to the indifferent skill of the musicians. ' 4 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 subcontinen,t was an increasingly papular destination for European travellers as the nineteenth 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 travellers, 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, the location of this procession within the larger series of ritual events that comprise a marriage ritual, and the social identity or economic status of the families whose children were being married. 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. Raghavan, V. 1975. 'Muttaswami Dikshitar.' In V. Raghavan (ed.) Muttaswamt DlksbUar, pp. 1-24. Mumbai: National Centre for the Performing 2

Arts. ~ Carey,

W.H. 1980. 'Letter.' In R.R. Nisith (ed.) Tbe Good Old Days of the

Honcurable]obn Company, pp. 121-2. Calcutta: Riddhi-India. 'Carey, W.H. Ibid.

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

lrmtODUCllON

3

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 tra.mfonned After all, almost two centuries of musical and cultural change lie between the procession and the band that Hobes wiinessed in 1832 and today 's Indian wedding processions and bands. 1be 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 twc>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 nineteenth century, a steadily increasing number of Indian wedding celebrants have joined in processions led by ensembles of 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 replicas or revisions of British military uniform, brass bands accompany wedding and devotional processions, playing anything from early twentieth century regional wedding songs to the latest rap-inflected Hindi film hit on a variety of European instruments such as trumpet, clarinet, and valvetrombone. Their music overpowers local neighbourhoods during the day and echoes throughout the cities at night. Almost every Indian has, at some point in his or her life, listened, walked with, or danced to the music of a brass band, as have ii 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

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

4

BRASSBNA

nonnally 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 behaviours, the processions are transitional celebrations. Especially in contemporary terms, they appear to have little of the overtly transfonnative, 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 nonnegotiable within this marginal context. There are naturally many differently defined sets of margins in cultural space. It is unfortunate for Indian bands.m en 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 low caste status is actually required by the liminal nature of the procession, and the consequent ritual factors and behaviours 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,

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

l!mtooucnoN

5

even by the people who hire them, in pan because, as I will show, the professional and commercial conditions of their trade do not especially encourage or reward high musical quality. 1be 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 m 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 petformance on drums and wind instrument results in low musical status and is normally accompanied (or driven) by low (or at least lower) social status 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 lx>,JA

Tbe '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 capital, Chandigarh. The historical urban centre 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 fi.rst half of the 'nineteenth century, the centre 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 a.rmies. Allen reports accounts of recruiting activities in the Punjab showing that the 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. ' 27 Much has changed in the Punjab since this pre-1947 story took place; but retired Punjabi pipers and drummers from the Pakistani Army (at least) still man many of the bagpipe bands that play for weddings in modem 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 modem India, there are spread c00ntless '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 n Allen, Charles. 1975. Plain Tales From the Raj London: Century Publishing

Co. Ltd.

01g1tlz•dby

Google

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

iDEN'ITlY, CASTE, AND FAMILY

47

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 twentieth 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 nearJalandhar. 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 Anny musician, who played a small local oboe-style double reed instrument that his descendents call Afghani tota (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 194-0s in favour 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 wars the progenitots 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 of distinctive patterns of family engagement with the band trade demonstrated by

01gitized by

Google

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

48

BRASS BNA

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 singlegeneration 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 (such as 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 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 nineteenth century travellers in India, Miss Isabella Fane (1804-86), 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'.18 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'. 29 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 "' Pemble, john (ed.). 1985. Miss Fane in India. Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing. 29 Eden, Emily. 1983. up the Country: Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. London: Virago Press.

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

IDErmTY,

CAsn,

AND FAMILY

49

by European officers). Indeed, the very notion that Europeans were the source of military, technological, and musical innovation is one source of the metaphorical strengths 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 nineteenth 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 (1844-9) 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--40. One of his bandsmen during that period was a Muslim musician named Muhammad}ehanghir, 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}ehanghir 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-nineteenth 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.

0191t1zed by

Google

Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

50

BRASS BNA

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 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, sardarbeing a term commonly used to identify Sikhs. There is even a Guru Nanak Band injabalpur, named after the first of the Sikh Gurus. Connections with the military are also used by Sikh band owners. Two such groups, The Sardarji Fauji [Sikh Anny) 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 nineteenth century progressed make it easy and reasonable to suppose that a pool of trained Sikh and Muslim bandmasters may have been created in that region and period, and that these men were in search of employment in the 1820-6o period, perhaps

01g1tlz•dby

Google

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

loamTY, CA:>-re, AND FAMILY

51

increasingly so towards the end of it. 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. Boonzajer-Flaes30 has proposed a leading role for retired military bandsmen in the Indian band world of the mid-twentieth century. I have argued elsewhere" that the oral histories of both the nineteenth and twentieth 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-nineteenth century and declined through the ftrst decades of the twentieth. What oral histories also suggest is that in the ftrst 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 per cent may well have encouraged emigration. It may also be that Indian soldiers returning home from Europe and other posts at the close of the 1914-18 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 "'Boonzajer Flaes, Rob. 1993. Bewogen Kopper: Van Kolonia/e Kape/ Tot Wereldblaasorllest. Amsterdam: De Balie/Novib. l• Booth, Gregory 0 . 1996/1997. 'The Madras Corporation Band: A story of social change and indigenization.' Asian Music, 28(1), pp. 61~7.

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

52

BRASS BAJA

of the trade for Muslim families is also increasingly apparent from the mid-nineteenth 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 Alunedabad. 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 Alunedabad in the second half of the nineteenth 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 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 (zan) worker in Surat was displaced economically in the 1830s by the 'disruption of demand at both the luxury and intermediate levels of the economy'~ 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' .33 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 Bayly, Christopher. Ibid. " Bayly, Christopher. Ibid. l•

01gitized by

Google

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

IOEmTTY,

CA.om:, AND FAMILY

53

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 at 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?' 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 nonhereditary families as well. This dual aspect to the identities of early brass bandsmen is the source of much of brass bands' metaphorj.cal power. The transformation of India's processional music trade was initially personal, as when a boatman became a bandsman; but like the proveri>ial circles in a pond after a stone, those individual transfonnations expanded in waves from individual to caste group. In the case of Ahmedabad, 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 uri>an centres and an emergent colonial Indian culture the new instruments and ensembles were understood to be suitable additions to

0191t1zed by

Google

Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

54

BRASS BAJA

and replacements for pre-colonial processional instruments. The dispersal of brass bands from the centres of British influence (that is, the Britishcreated 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 panicipated 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 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 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 its 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

Digitized by

Google

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

IDENTilY, CASTF:, AND FAMILY

55

processional music traditions, whether played on a trumpet or a ~ai. is that the occupation remains a low status undertaking. It is also true that in present day India, low-JA

labour 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-storey 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 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 lowcaste 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 S()Cial 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 tum requires a sense of the social dynamics behind the process of musical change; one must ask, 'who were bandsmen'?

, 01gitized by

Google

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

ID£NTTTY, CA.5TI, AN!> FAMILY

61

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 newcomers as well. In any glven 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, bir:idaris, and so on, co-operate and compete among and within themselves in the never ending battle for patronage in the urban marketplace. This competitive/co-operative process of transmission is evident in the story of the band world of twentieth 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 behaviour, 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 important economic centre 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 nineteenth 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 §ahnais, bagpipes, brass, or some combination thereof. In late nineteenth century Mumbai, the brass option would have been a sttong possibility, but oral histories cannot supp0rt this assumption

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

62

BRASS BAJA

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 tota. Among the immigrants was Muhammad Hanif, whose name I have already mentioned as founder of Patna' s Punjab Band. Hanif belonged to a qaum called Pathan. Members of a particular qaum share language, culture and a general sense of place; the word is most commonly translated into English as tribe. A qaum may have a loose hierarchical structure in the area of its origin and families within a qaum 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 qaum membership. Further, qaums 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 Fig. 4.1). 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. 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 tota in this group. Although they do n()( 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 ()(her words, although the Musa Band may have been there first, they were

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

lDEl'm'IY,

CAsrE, AND FAMILY

63

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 zat widely encountered in eastern India, called Ansari, who are traditionally associated with weaving (Musa's grandfather was a bunniii, that is, a weaver,) and other relatively low status jobs. Consequently, and unlike the Pathan qaum, which is quite high in the Muslim social hierarchy, the Ansari zat 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 Arabie name for the low-status weaver zat that Henry identifies as}ohala (in Bhojpuri, or Juhala in Hindustani). The public activities and behaviours Kumar describes constitute this group's efforts to elevate public perceptions of their status. 43 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 Bache~ Band was opened by ·Ajjan Mia, another Ansari musician. Ajjan i$ 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 zat who also describe themselves in low status tenns, 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 twenty 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 brass bands (the Punjab Band did not convert to ,\TNA BANDS

Band ruime

1. Musa

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Punjab Baccha Hindustan Prakash Acchan Ibrar Naushad Avon Abrar Shamim Bombay Himmat

Milan New Milan Maharaja Bharat Pankaj Durga Abrar Raj Kamal

Digitized by

Date opened

Owner's caste

Bandin which owner previously worked

Pre-colonial instrument played by owner or family

1937 1944 1957 1967 1973 1975 1978 1980 1.980 1981 1984 1985 1985 1987 1988 1990 1990 1990 1994 1994 1997

Ansari Pathan Ansari Ansari Jadhav Valmiki Pathan Sheikh-Siddiqi Mirasi Sheikh-Siddiqi Ansari Ansari Mirasi Ansari Jadhav Jadhav Jadhav Valmiki Jadhav Sheikh-Siddiqi Valmiki

unknown Army Mahboob Musa Mahboob none Musa Musa Mahboob unknown unknown unknown none Musa ? Mahboob unknown Mahboob Mahboob Punjab Musa

Afghani Iota Afghani Iota none none none sahnai none none sahnai none none none Sahn:ii none none khurdak none none khurdak none none

Google

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

iDENTm',

CAsrf, ANO FAMILY

65

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 zats represented, the relatively high status of the Pathan qaum is in part a result of the fact that Pathans are ashr.if, that is, of Arab, Persian or Turkish descent. As Ahmad" indicates, Muslim definitions of ' status and hierarchy tend to favour those groups who can claim Arab and Persian descent over those who have Indian roots (ajlaj). The other three Muslim groups, the Sheikh-Siddiqi, the Mirasi, and the Ansari are generally understood to belong to the ajlaf 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 per cent of the city's bands. In the following ten yea.rs to 1997, they had grown to represent sixty-seven per cent. 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 H.indu and Sikh families tend to leave the trade as soon as possible. This latter behaviour 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 nineteenth century to the late twentieth, a low caste Hindu/Muslim/low caste Hindu pendulum-like movement may have taken place from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth. 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 "Ahmad, Imtiaz. 1978b. 'Endogamy and Status Mobility among the Siddiqui Sheikhs of Allahabad, Unar Prades h.' In Imtiaz Ahmad (ed.) Caste and Soctal Stratification among Muslims In Indta. Delhi: Manohar.

0191t1zed by

Google

Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

66

BRASS BAJA

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 villages in Samistipur District, more than 50 kilometres 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 perfonnance (on ~hnai or tota) or through performance on khurdak, a small drum used to accompany ~i. The connection with Afghani tota 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

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

IOENTI1Y, WsTE, AND FAMILY

67

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 on 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.

0191t1zed by

Google

Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

2 Maliks and Bandsmen Social and Professional Hierarchies

Traditional Seroice and Free Enterprise The five bandsmen shown in Plate l 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 of the Mane-Jadhav jat, the dominant, indeed almost the only, caste active in Bijapur's band world, as we saw in the previous 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 photo below) 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 high 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 high caste Hindu ritual represents a very old set of behaviours; it relocates us in the jajmani based understandings of bandsman identity offered in Chapter 1. This description of processional musicianship as

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

pan of traditional service and ritual economy, however. ignores the changes that have ocrurrcd in lhc band trade during the past 150years, dunges that have taken place within the conlcxt of processes such as modemiu1ion and urbanization. Thus. \Ye must .stt lhc identities of bandsmen, lhc hereditary f:unilies, refugee new comers, low caste Hindu and artisanal caSle Muslim all within the context of similar changes (and continuities) in the professional organiution of the band trade

On the basis o f events suc h as the procession shown in this p hOlograph, one might assert that the band trade is simply a modem day Vt:Bion oflhe jajm3nisysiem of exchange, that it embodies a powerful current of continuity in lndiansociety. lbe focusofthischap1er, however, is on the professional and economk relatiomhips, between band owners, bandsmen, and pa1rons, which are also at the heart of such events. Here we encounter a challenging triangle formed by the issues of identity found in Chap1er 1, manersof place (rural/urban), and interpretations of processiOfl.5 as ritual and as commerce. Depending on how we choose 10 understand lhcse inter.teting fuctors. we might also view this procession simply as a group of musicians. members of a relatively low socioeconomic class, performing (for a fixed fee) for middle and upper-middle class patrons. who have obtained their services from a sub-contractor

"""'" • Google

Origonollrom

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

70

BRASS BAJA

Contemporary interpretations of these events by Indians (induding those participating in the events) most frequently favour 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 jajmaru relationship, such as those that Gould 1 presents, low caste (ritually impure) kamins perform ritual services for their high caste (ritually pure) jajmiins, for which they receive prestations (dan). 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 ph()(ograph). 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 jajmani 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 behaviours and the precise social relationships upon which scholars such as Gould and Raheja2 constructed their theories of jajmaru. There can be little doubt that the ritual or theological roots of such behaviours are as these theories propose. Nevertheless, patrons, bandsmen, and passers-by in modem India and Pakistan explain these behaviours 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 1

Gould, Harold. Ibid. 2 Raheja, Gloria G. Ibid.

oig1tlze1lby

Google

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

MAIJKs AND BANDSMEN

71

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 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 malik 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 malik or se{b. In this context, both of these terms translate as 'boss'; malik is generally used in the north of the sub-continent (roughly north of Ahmedabad) while owners from Ahmedabad south are seths; but southern musicians would understand 'millik' and vice versa. Not all maliks perform with their bands, however, as I have already noted. It should be clear that a jajmani-based interpretation of the activity contributes to the impetus to avoid performance if possible. This is even more the case where the malik is of a different and perhaps higher caste or status than his bandsmen. Prestations given during the procession resemble dan, even in the manner of their giving. During the barat, 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, dan 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 (kbatrkbatrlyat) and •auspiciousness" (~ubb) of the ... donors through the transferal of inauspiciousness to the recipients' .3 In ritual processions, 3

Raheja, Gloria G. Ibid.

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

72

BRASS BAJA

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 jajman to kamin. Despite the obvious similarities in context, behaviour, and social identities, to jajmiini type exchange, bandsmen and their patrons invariably describe these ritual payments simply as tips, using the English term. In fact, some processional participants to 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 jajmani model, especially in the modem city. Rudner for example, locates this distributive system squarely in the village (rather than the urban) economy; he is explicit in his contention that 'the jajmilni does not represent a panIndian phenomenon and that where the jajmani or jajmani-like systems do operate, they make up only part of the total village economy'. 4 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 modem character of the band trade (as distinct from traditional processional ensemble activity) to establish footholds in hostile urban environments.

• Rudner, David West. 1994. Caste and Capitalism tn Colonial India: The Nattukottai Cbentars. Berkeley: University of California Press.

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

MWxs AND BAN05MEN

73

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 barat 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 behaviours throughout the country. Despite the obvious social inequities, the bandsman-

z

1980

t a r I n

a g

I

p

e

Aman'ulla

6Serif

n

6HanH

B

P.I

B

e

a s s

r

Nachel (Da.sa Swamedh Ghat)

l

~6

6 Wazir Mia

6

'r\Jsuf

6Yasin

Musa Mia

er:::> CD CE>

6_J

JA

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 someone 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 determination of which mobile bandsmen end up where in this mobile labour 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 orig1n. 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 Twentieth 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 maliks; but only Shyam is composed almost entirely of local bandsmen related to the malik 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 karigars, on short and long term verbal contracts. All rely on caste relations for the professional organization that structure the labour

0191t1zea by

Google

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

CAREERS, SPACE, LOCATION, AND MOVEMENT

123

pools; but it is not necessarily a malik '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, 12 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/labourers are hired. These regions, mostly poorer rural districts, are in tum professionally connected to specific large urban labour markets. This means that bandsmen from the central Deccan who begin their mobile careers working in Gulbarga might end up working in Hyderabad or as far north as Ahmedabad, but would never be found working in Jaipur orJabalpur. Bandsmen from western Maharashtra also appear from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, 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 labour networks of the band world. Variables such as the size and location of the city, the caste identity and musical abilities of the malik, the numbers of available local caste mates, and the full or part time nature of the malik' s involvement produce a range of different configurations in band personnel and malik-karigar 12

Eck, Diana L. 1983. Banaras, City ofLight. Delhi: Penguin Books.

01g1tlz•dby

Google

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

124

BRASS BAJA

relations. The fundamental difference between the Shyam and Santosh Bands (to canyon 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, 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 travelled 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 labour 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 nlore profitable bands of cities such as Hyderabad, or Mumbai. Indeed, when I left Gulbarga, Muhammad Razak told me that when next I came to India, 'you should look for me in Hyderabad or Mumbai, or maybe Ahmedabad. 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 jat has been well established in the city at least since mid-twentieth 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 barats. Such behaviours are in direct contrast to the mobile labour 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 maliks are of different social identity from their bandsmen; or to put it the other way, these miiliks have no local castemates or extended family upon whom they can call for musical labour. These owners must rely on mobile labour. Given the

Digitized by

Google

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

CAREERS, SPACE, LOCATION, AND MOVEMENT

125

number of economic and political refugees involved in the growth of the band trade mid-cenrury, this may have been an important factor in the development of mobile labour practices. Suddhir Shanna, 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 labour on a seasonal basis. The story told by this family of Sharmas in Agra replicates that told by the Thadanl family in Ahmedabad and Delhi. In modem India, however, even those maliks 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 vicissirudes of living and maintaining a full-time brass band in Inclia's cities. The availability of suitable labour, social relations, the intense seasonal demand in the large cities that allows mobile bandsmen to work three jobs a day for short periods of tilne, variability in transportation infrastrucrure (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 narure of musical labour in the band world, where owners with large capital investments hire workers to meet seasonal demand, is only the most recent formation of mobility and professional organization in this world. By recent, I mean that, as far as I can tell, the rural-tourban behavioural systems I describe began after Independence and e 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 infonnation, 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 conunents 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-amplifiedkeyboard of his descendants. There was in fact some sort of instrumental progression from 1840 to 1980. Ghulam Ahmad (1927-89), a member of the fifth generation since the beginning of the family's involvement, told me that at one time the 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 rnusical family were playing Eb soprano clarinets, probably still with pre-European percussion. He further noted that by the time Abdulla's son, Muhanunad, took over the business, European instruments were increasingly accessible. The family adopted full brass

Digitized by

Google

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

insi:rumcntalion someiime around 1900; rhis c ha nge is associa1ed in the family ·s h is tory with the laner caree r of Muh a mmad 's son. Nur Muhammad (1860-1920). Plate 8 shows the full brass b.ind \•ersion of the family's busines.s, lt:d by Nur Muh:unmad's ddesl son. Abdul R;i.lun:i.n (circa 19QS.-Oo). who inherited the business from his father. Comparing the chronology of instrumental c hange reported by the family owners of the Noor Mohamed Band with th:it report1..-d for the Ha.shimi bands of Varanasi (Fig. 2.1). we see a similar instromental progression. bm at a remarkably different paa". This should no1: Ix 100 surprising. Mumbai and Varanasi, after all. are [WO cities characterized by very diff.. rent hisl:ories and by disl:inctive .'IOcial and .:conomic conditions, during bol:h the colonial and Independent periods. The West. so to spea k. was and is much more physically and culturally ~r in India 's major western port mdropolis th:in it has ever been in one of the oldest living cities of the subcontinent.

Pun: 8

MfMBEas Uf 111E A . NOUI. M om.>t.W 8. BAND,

L UCKNOW

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

APPENDIX-MUSICAi. 'fR>.NSCRJmONS

l

..__

,.

. .... . .1

J • 130

...-

~·I

..__ Tu

,..,

..,.._v Tli

jj

FJG.

01gitized by

Google

A.4 (CoITTD)

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

315

312

·~"""

"""'"""'

~r

!II

I

I

g

;;tsb::r }j~::@i,! ~t ,rrRn !--! FIG. A.4

"""'" " Google

(Co!)

Originollrom

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

314

BussBNA

FIG. A.4

(c.omo)

Ori9ir.. llrom

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

APPENDIX-MUSICAL T RANSOUYnONS

2

----... _

315

ra•- ....,1

J/

Tli

t II

1\

0 II

£ 4'

'

-------Tl

2 ..

1\

$II

r n

JJ

t

DW

I

1\

, ..

J!

p

JJ

--

DW t~

FIG.

01gitized by

Google

A.4 (CoITTD)

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

References

Alunad, Imtlaz. 1978a. Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims fn India. Deihl: Manohar. _ _ l 978b. 'Endogamy and Status Mobility among the Siddiqui Sheikhs of Allahabad, Unar Pradesh..' In lmtiaz Alunad (ed.) Caste and Social Stratification among Musltms fn India. Deihl: Manohar. Ainapur, L.S. 1986. Dynamics of Caste Relations in Rum/ India. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Allen, Charles. 1975. Plain Tales From the Raj. London: Century Publishing Co. Ltd. Appadural, Arjun. 1986. 7be Soctal Life of7bfngs: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Arnold, Alison. 1988. 'Popular film song in India: A case of mass market musical eclecticism.' Popular Music, 7(2), pp. rn-88. Babb, Lawrence. 1975. 7be Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central lndta. New York: Columbia University Press. Banerjee, Sumanta. 1989. 7be Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Bayly, Christopher. 1983. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bayley, Susan. 1999. 7be New Cambridge History ofIndia, Volume IV (3~ Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beck, Theodore. n.d. Private Diary, 1884 5, Aligarh. Handwritten MS. Berreman, Gerald D. 1975. 'Social Categories and Social Interaction in Urban India.' ln)ohn Friedl and Noel Chrisman (eds) City Ways. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

01g1tlz•dby

Google

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

317 _ _ 1972. Hindus ofthe Himalayas: Ethnography and Change. Berkeley: University of California Press. .Beteille, Andre. 1996a. 'Caste in Contemporary India. ' In Chris Fuller (ed.) Caste Today, pp. 150-79. Oxford: Oxford University Pres.s. _ _ 1996b. Caste, Class, and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification In a Tanjore village. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Blacking, John. 1977. 'Some problems of theory and method in the study of musical change.' Yearbook ofthe International Folk Music Council, 9, pp. 1-26. Boonzajer Flaes, Rob. 1993. Bewogen Kopper: Van Kolonlale Kapel Tot Wereldblaasorltest. Amsterdam: De Balie/Novib. Booth, Gregory D. 1990. 'Br.w Bands: Tradition, Change, and the Mass Media in Indian Wedding Music.' Ethnomusicology, 34 (2), pp. 245--62. _ _ 1991/ 1992. Disco Laggi: Modern Repertoire and Traditional Performance Practice tn North Indian Popular Music. Asian Music, 23 (1), pp. 61-84. _ _ 1993. 'Traditional practice and mass mediated music in India.' International Review of the Aesthetics and Soctoloay ofMusic, 24 (2), pp. 159-74. _ _ 1996/ 1997. 'The Madras Corporation Band: A story of social change and indigenlzation.' Asian Music, 28(1), pp. 61-87. _ _ 1997. 'Socio-musical mobility among South Asian clarinet players.' Ethnomusicoloay, 41, pp. 489-516. Braudel, Femand, 1980. 7be Mediterranian and the Mediterranian World in the Time of Phillip 11. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. Briggs, George W. 1920. 7be Chamars. Calcutta: Association Pres.s. Bruce, Lady Elisabeth. n.d. The Diary of Lady Elisabeth Bruce, 1894-1898. Handwritten MS. Cadell, P. 1938. History of the Bombay Army. London: Longman Green and Company. Carey, W.H. 1980. 'Lener.' ln R.R. Nisith (ed.) 7be Good Old Days of the Honourable john Company, pp. 121-2. Calcutta: Riddhi-Indla. Carrington, N. n.d. ' Ebb Tide of the Raj.' Unpublished memoirs circa 1930, MS. Clifford , James. 1988. 7be Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Pres.s. Curtis, Decima. n.d. 'The last twelve years of the British raj.' Unpublished memoirs, 1932-1947, MS.

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

318

BRASS B!\IA

Dandekar, Hemalata C. 1986. Men to Bombay, Women at Home. Ann Arl:>or: The University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. de Certeau, Michel. 1988. 1be Wrlttng of History. T. Conley (trans). New York: Columbia University Press. de Thevenot, Jean. 1976. 'The Travels of Thevenot.' In J.P. Guha, (ed.). India in the 17th Century, Vol. 2, pp. 32-43. Delhi: Associated Publishing House. Deliege, Robert. 1996. 'At the Threshold of Untouchability: Pallars and Valaiyars in a Tamil Village.' In Chris Fulle r (ed.) Caste Today, pp. 6592. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deva, B. Chaitanya. 19n. Musical Instruments. Delhi: National Book Trust. Dumont Louis. 1980. Homo Hlerarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eck, Diana L. 1983. Banaras, City of Light. Delhi: Penguin Books. Eden, Emily. 1983. Up the Country: Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces ofIndia. London: Virago Press. Erlmann, Veit. 1995. Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice In South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fay, Elizabeth. 1925. Original Letters from India, 1779-1815. London: Hogarth Press. Fine, Ben and Leopold, Ellen. 1993. 1be World ofConsumption. New York: Routledge. Finnegan, Ruth. 1989. 1be Hidden Musicians: Music-making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitch, Ralph. 1930. 'Lener.' In}. Courtnay Locke (ed.). 1be First Englishmen in India, pp. 100-2. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. Flora, Reis Wenger. 1983. 'Double-Reed Aeropohones in India to A.D. 1400. ' Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Fox, Lilla M. 1967. Instruments ofProcessional Music. London: Lunerworth Press. Fox, Richard G. 1969. From Zamindar to ballot Box: Community Change in a North Indian Market Town. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Frith, Simon. 1981. Sound Effects: Youth, l'.elsure and the Politics ofRock 'n' Roll. New York: Pantheon Books. Fuller, Chris. 1996. Caste Today. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gould, Harold. 1987. 1be Hindu Caste System: 7be Sacra/ization ofa Social Order. Delhi: Chanakya Publications.

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

..

Ri!FERENCl!S

319

Greene, Paul D. 1999. 'Sound engineering in a Tamil village: Playing audio cassenes as devotional practice.' Ethnomusicology, 43, pp. 459-89. Greene, William S. 1810. A COtk ofthe Pay reguJattcns ofthe Various Military Establishments under the Presidency of Fort WtUiam. Calcuna: Orphan Press. Grossbeck, Rolf. 1999. 'Cultural constructions of Improvisation In Tayampaka, a genre of temple instrumental music in Kerala, India.' Ethnomusicology 43, pp. 1-30. · Guha,J.P. (ed.). 1976. India tn the 17th century. Delhi: Associated Publishing House. Guba, Ramachandra. 2002. A Corner ofa Foreign Field: Tbe Indian History of a Brlttsb Sport. London: Picador. Hale, Thomas A. 1998. Grlots and Grlottes: Masters of Wonts and Music. Bloomington: Indian University Press. Hannerz, Ulf. 1992. Cultural Complextty: Studies in the Social Cft8anization ofMeaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hedges, William. 1887. Tbe Diary of WtUiam Hedges Esquire, 1681-1687 New York: Burt Franklin, Publishers. Heruy, Edward 0. 1988. Chant the Names of God: Musical Culture in Bhojpurl-speaktng India. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University Press. Hicks, David. 1999. Rttual and Belief Readings in tbe Anthropology of Religion. New York: McGraw-Hill College. Hobes, RG. 1832. Scenes in the Cittes and Wtlds ofHtndoostan. Handwritten MS. Kavarana, Roxanne. 2000. 'After decades, the pipes are calling'. 1be Sunday Times ofIndia, April 23, 2000, p. 2. Kersenboom-Story, Saskia C. 1987. NttyaSumangalt: Devadasi Tradition in South India. Delhi: Motllal Banarsidass. Khanna, Balraj. 1993. Sweet Chtlltes. Delhi: Penguin Books. King, Leslie). and Golledge, Reginald G. 1978. Cities, Space, and Behavior: Tbe Elements of Urban Geography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. Kinnear, Michael S. 1994. Tbe Gramophone Company's First Ir.dian Recordings, 1889-1908. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Kumar, Nita. 1988. Tbe Artisans ofBanaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880-1986. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lamsweerde, F. van. 1969. 'Musicians in Indian Society: An attempt at classification.' Tropical Man (Yearbook of the Anthropology Department of the Royal Tropcial Institute) Volume 2, pp. 7-30.

0191t1zed by

Google

Original from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

320

BRASS BAJA

Leonard, Karen I. 1978. Soctal History of an lndtan Caste: '/be Xayasths of Hyderabad. Berkeley: University of California Press. Leppert, Rlchard. 1987. 'Music, domestic life and cultural chauvinism: images of British subjects at home in India. ' In R. Leppert & S. McClary (eds). Music and Society: '/be Polttics of Composition, Peiformance and Reception, pp. 63-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1967. '/be Scope of Anthropology. S. Ortner and R.A. Paul (trans.). London: Cape'Publications. Locke, J. Courtnay (ed.). 1930. 1be First Englishman in lndta. London: George Routledge & Sons. Lynch, Owen M. 1969. 1be Politics of Untouchabtltty: Soctal Mobility and Soctal Change In a City of lndta. New York: Columbia University Press. Malik, Saeed. 1999. Labore: Its Music Culture. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications. Manuel, Peter L. 1993. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North lndta. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mistry, Aban. 1984. '0011'.J\ ~ ~ t ~ 11:1( 0((11(~ ['Ibe gharanas and traditions of pakhavaj and tabla). Mumbai: Swar Sadhana Smiti. Moorhouse, Geoffrey. 1971. Calcutta. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Mukherjee, Ramkrishna. 1974. 1be Rise and Fall ofthe East lndta Company. New York: Monthly Review Press. n.a. 1853. Life in Bombay and the Neighbouring Out-Stations. London: Richard Bently. n.a. 1937. Military Files of the Goverrunent of India, New Delhi. n.a. 2000. 'Play it again, band'. Indian Express: Mumbai Edition, 24 April, 2000. p. 1. Neuman, Daniel M. 1980.· 1be Life ofMusic in North lndta. Detroit: Wayne State University. Ollikkala, Robert. 1997. 'Concerning Begum Akhtar, Queen of Ghazal. ' Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ovington,). 1976. 'A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689.' In J.P. Guba, (ed.). India in the 17th Century, Vol. 2, pp. 141-58. Delhi: Associated Publishing House. Panini, M.N. 1996. 'The Political economy of Caste. ' In M.N. Srinivas, (ed.). Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar. Delhi: Penguin Books. 1'atterson, George. n.d . Personal Diary, Volume 2. 1770, Madras. Pemble, John (ed.). 1985. Miss Fane In India. Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing.

Digitized by

Google

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

., RF.FEllENCES

321

Pitkin, Donald S. 1993. 'Italian Urbanscape: Intersection of Private and Public.' In Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh (eds), 7be Cultural Meantng of Urban Space, pp. 9S-101. London: Bergin & Garvey. Post, Jennifer C. 1987. 'Professional Women in Indian Music: The Death of the Courtesan Tradition.' In Ellen Koskoff (ed.) Women and Mustc in Cro.ss-Cullural Perspective, pp. 97-110. New York: Greenwood Press. _ _ 2000. 'Women and Music. ' In Alison Arnold (ed.) 1be Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 5 : South Asia-The Indian Subcontinenl(Part 2-Issues and Processes), pp. 407-17. New York: Garland Press. Prato, P. 1984. 'Music in the streets: The example of Washington Square Park in New York City.' In R. Middleton and D. Hom, (eds) Popular Music 4, pp. 151-M. New York: Cambridge University Press. Quigley, Declan. 1993. The Interpretation ofCaste. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raghavan, V. 1975. 'Muttaswami Dikshitar.' ln V. Raghavan (ed.) Muttaswami Diksbitar, pp. 1-24. Mumbai: National Centre for the Performing Arts. Raheja, Gloria G. 1988. The Potson in the Gift: Rttual, Prestation, and the Domtnant Caste In a North Indian VIiiage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rajadhayksha, Ashish and Willemen, Paul. 1995. Encylopaedta of Indian Cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rousselet, Louis. 1975. India and tts Native Princes (T. Buckle, ed.). Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp. Rudner, David West. 1994. Caste and Capttaltsm tn Colonial India: The Nattukottat Chettiars. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schama, Simon. 1991. Dead Certatnttes. New York: Vintage Books. Scott, William. 1813. Letter to the Military Secretary for the Commander-inChief, Fort Saint George. The William Scott Collection, Handwritten MS. Searle-Chatterjee, Mary, and Sharma, Ursula. 1994. 'Introduction.' In M. Searle-Chatterjee and U. Sharma (eds). Contextualising Caste: PostDumonttan Approaches, pp. 1-24. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/ 1beSociologtcal Review. Seeger, Anthony. 1987. Wby the Suya Stng: A Musical Anthropology of an .Amazonian People. New York: Cambridge University Press. Seetha, S. 1981. Tanjore as a Seat ofMusic. Chennal: University of Madras.

01gitized by

Google

Original frcm

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

322

Biws B"1A

Shukra, A. 1994. 'Caste-A personal perspective.' In M. Searle-Chatterjee and U. Sharma (eds). Contextualising Caste: post-Dumontian approaches, pp. 169-77. Simmel, G. 1904. 'Fashion.' In 7be Internattonal Quarterly, 10(1) October,

130-55. Smith, David A.

1996. Third World Cities In Global Perspective: the Poltttcal

Economy of Uneven Urbanization. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Srinivas, M.N. 1996. 'Introduction.' In M.N. Srinlvas (ed.) . Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar. Delhi: Penguin Books. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1990. Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modem India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Terada Yoshitaka.

1996. 'Effects of nostalgia: The Discourse of decline in

Periya Me{am music ofSouth India.' Bullettn ofthe National Museum of Ethnology 21, pp. 921-39. Tingey, Carol. 1994. Auspicious Music in a Changing Society: 1be Damai Musicians ofNepal London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Tomlinson, B.R. 1993. 7be New Cambridge History of India. Volume l/J1be Economy ofModem India, 1860-1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Wate rman, Christopher A. 1990. juju: A Social History and EJhnograpby of an African Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wade, Bonnie C. 1998. Imaging sound: an Ethnomusicological Study of Music, A11, and Culture in Mughal India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. White, Hayden V. 1987. 1be Content of Form: Na"ative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Woodfield, Ian. 2000. Music of the Raf-A Social and Economic History of Music In /Ate Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Indian Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

01g1tizea by

Google

Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Index

A

aa e ee o oo, mera di/ rw todo

278,310 A. Noor Mohamed Band 34, 52-3, 131, 137, 184, 188-90, 193, 198,

236 Aadmi sadak ka 262 Abdul Rahim 81, 84, 86 Abdul Ralunan 189 Abdulla 52, 54, 1~9. 184, 188, 192 Abrar Band, Muzalfarpur 64-5, 96-8. 100, 143 Acchan Band 64 Afghani Iota 47, 62, 66 Ahmad, Aftab 178 Ahmad, Ghulam 188 Ahmad, lmtiaz 39n, 65 Ahmad, Muhammad 272--0 Ahmad, Nazir 281, 283 Aj mere yaar ki sbadl bai 262-3, 276,282--4,300 Ajjan Mia 63 Alamghir Master 224 Albert system 175 Ali, Nadir 179 Ali, Naushad 73 Ali, Rajab 129 Ali, Shakur 129 Ali, Zafar 179

oig1tlze1lby

Google

All India Radio (AIR) 58 Allen, Charles 46, 155n, 212 Altaf Band, Oehradun 203 Aman'ulla 84 American Institute of Indian Studies 20 American jazz 12 Amplification, use by bands 288-

90 Amrit Singh 50 Amritsar school bands 192 Amritsari, Bhai Lal Muhammad 251 Anis, Muhammad 129 Anwar Band 300 Appadurai, Arjun 26 Army (Fauji) Band 187, 192 Army System 101, 121 Arnold, Alison 106n, 256n Asad Band 109 Auber 152 Auckland 48, 154, 157 Avon Band 64, 274 Azad Band, Lucknow 48, 274, 281-8,310 Aziz, Abdul 65

Baazigar 259, 267-8 Babb, Lawrence 37, 204

Origi~al

rron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

324

INDEX

Babbu 84-5 Babu Band of Lahore 126, 138-9, 192, 199,236 Babu Raj Barid 83 Babur, Muhammad 49, 93-5, 250 Babur, Zahiruddin Muhanunad 21 Bachchan, Amltabh 261 Bacchan,Muhammad 142-3,2413,254, 281 Bachcha Band 63-4 Bagpipe bands 187-8, 190, 192-7, 199,240, 294 Bagpipes 47, 61-2, 161, 165, 175, 187-8, 190, 192-7 Babaron pbul barsaon mera mababooba aya bat 263 Bajantrl, G.S. 254 Baluch, Haji Muhammad 199 Banaras Band 83 Banarasi Shahnahi 186 Band fees 96-100 Band Party 174-83 elements of visual style 17983 instrumentation l 7S-9 Bandmasters bandsmen and 89-93, 141-5 from Rampur 141-5 Bandsmen, as musicians 23 bandmasters and 89-93, 141-5 caste level migration 7, 127-9 character in films 300-2 customer relationship 73 film music and 256-64 Hashmi-Biradari bands and 83-4 historical influences on 127-9 identity 296 instruments 102-4 marginality and musical worlds 5-8 mobile bandsmen 122-4, 1278, 140

01g1tlz•dby

Google

monthly salaries 101-2 moving away from urbanization 141-5 old and new ftlm songs performances and 258-61 patron relationship 72 ritual ftlm song performances and 262-3 role at work 90 unifonns 102-4 Banerjee, Sumanta 185 Banjo 198 Bankiya 171 Baral (wedding processions) 202, 206-39 band repertoire 238-66 dancing in streets during 21215, 223-4 descriptions of 29s-6, 303 display of bands banners in 181-4 film music in 256-64 formations and performance behaviours 220-7 in Varanasi 240 musical structure 217 Pakistani barat 227-9 participants 209-10, 238, 2445, 253, 260,262 performances structure 21527, 260, 279, 310-15 processional repertoires 24456 ritual structure 217-19 tipping at 159 Bashir'uddin, Muhammad 34 Basora bands 118, 120 Bassoorns 152-3 Basuri (tram-verse (bamboo) flutes) 156 Bayley, Susan 96, I68n, 169, 302 Bayly, Christopher 38, 41, 52n, 79, 8"/n, 96 Beck, Theodore 203, 207

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

Been Music 285-6 Bengal National Band 111 Berreman, Gerald D. l 13n-14n, 115 Besant, Annie 133 Beteille, Andre 38, 39n, l 13n Bhagwan Dass brass bands 190 Bhairavi rag 296 Bhajan Lal 232-3, 271, 278 Bharat Band 64, 83 Bharatiya Band 117-18 Bhojappa 59 Bhola Band 117 Bismillah Band 128 Bittuappa 58 Blacking, john l ln Bombay Band 64, 81, 83 Bombay Native (Punjab) Band 47, 50, 73, 137 Bombay Native Band 34 Boonzajer-Flaes, Rob 51 Boosey & Co. 178 Boosey & Hawkes 178-9 Booth, Gregory, D. 7, 51, 254, 277,283,290n Boy Guides 44 Brass bands in India, amplification use by 288-90 bagpipes in purab and Punjab 192-7 bandmasters from Rampur 141-5 bandsman and bandmasters 89-93 barats and 202, 2o6-29 British military instruments and 152-65, 170 business cards 186-7, 192 careers in 129-45 caste level migration 127-9 castes and 37-43, 294 change and tradition in 19th and 20th centuries 165-74, 183200

01g1tlz•dby

Google

325

changesin 291-9,303 classical music 249-56, 272--f,, 295 competition amongst 114-20 competition in Patna 61-7 diachronic view of changes in 293-9 electronic transmission 276-9 elements of visual style 17983 European musical instruments in 149-50, 162-3,292 expenses 101-4 famllial continuity 13 family firm 76-89 fashion, tradition and cultural change 183-200 fashion trickling down theory 159-60 fees ~100 film songs 2~. 276-9, 299-303 formations and performance behaviours 22(}-.7 free enterprise 68-76 function of 3 gurus 272--f, historicalinfluences 127-9 history 14-20 identity 117-20 in late twentieth century 1227, 165-74, 183-200 instrumental fashions 186-92 instrumental transformation in Deccan ~ instrumentation/instruments 102-4, 149-50, 152-65, 170, 175-9,296 interaction with medium 276-

9 inter-caste transmission 61-7 jajmani 37, 43-4 ] ea bands 76-81 ladies band 105-8

Onginal fron1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

326

INO£X

Lakkara Ganj and 117-20 Langa Sheri and 115-17 leadership in 279-88 location of 114-20 marches 270, 272 marginality and s-8 margins of tradition and 299302 Marwarl families and 169 member..hlp flexlbllity in 2307 metaphor 14-20 Mumtaz Band 81-9 musical and Instrumental change 160--5 musical change and continuity 9-14 musical mobility 122-7 musical traditions as metaphors and history 302-5 Muslim families 51-5 nilnkbatai fellows 33-4 neighbourhoods 117-20 nocable c.h anges 291-3 ofM.G . RoaJKolkata 110-14 oral histories 51-3, 59, 61-2, 65,88, 100, 114, 127, 129-30, 137, 170-1, 175, 188, 252, 255, 274,297,299,303-4 oral transmission 271-2, 275 payments to 71, %-100 performance assessment 24,

267-90 performing on sneets 279-88 pop music orchestras 197-200 pre-capitalized space and organiZatlon 115-17 pre"