The Bollywood Brass Band is a brass band

Brass band

A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...

 playing Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 and traditional India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n music, based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The band was formed in 1992 to perform with the Shyam Brass Band from Jabalpur, India, at the International Festival of Street Music in London. They have continued to perform and record in a wide variety of musical styles, including Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 hits, Bhangra, qawwali

Qawwali

Qawwali is a form of Sufi devotional music popular in South Asia, particularly in the Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan, Hyderabad, Delhi, and other parts of northern India...

, Punjabi

Punjabi people

The Punjabi people , ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ), also Panjabi people, are an Indo-Aryan group from South Asia. They are the second largest of the many ethnic groups in South Asia. They originate in the Punjab region, which has been been the location of some of the oldest civilizations in the world including, the...

 folk songs, and wedding songs, tinged with influences from jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, other world musics, and modern dance music

Dance music

Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...

. They perform at weddings, world-music and street-music festivals, and cultural festivals.

The Bollywood Brass Band is made up of more than ten musicians, playing saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

s, trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

s, trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

s, sousaphone

Sousaphone

The sousaphone is a type of tuba that is widely employed in marching bands. Designed so that it fits around the body of the musician and is supported by the left shoulder, the sousaphone may be readily played while being carried...

, and snare

Snare drum

The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...

 and bass drum

Bass drum

Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

s and also features Johnny Kalsi

Johnny Kalsi

Johnny Kalsi is a British Indian dhol drum performer residing in London. He rose to prominence as a former member of Transglobal Underground and the founder of the Dhol Foundation. He also performs with the Afro Celt Sound System and The Imagined Village....

 and members of the Dhol Foundation

Dhol Foundation

The Dhol Foundation is both a dhol drum institute in London and a musical group playing bhangra music. The dhol school was founded in 1989 by former Alaap member Johnny Kalsi when several musicians asked him to be their teacher, and a first album was released by Kalsi and his students in 2001...

 on dhol

Dhol

Dhol can refer to any one of a number of similar types of double-headed drum widely used, with regional variations, throughout the Indian subcontinent and nearby regions. Its range of distribution in India and Pakistan primarily includes northern areas such as the Assam Valley, Bengal, Gujarat,...

 drums.

In 1995 the band created a parallel performing group: SamBhangra! plays both Indian and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian music, and consists of the horns and drums section of the Bollywood Brass band together with a samba

Samba

Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...

 bateria

Bateria

The term bateria means “drum kit” in Portuguese and Spanish. In Brazil, the word is also used for a form of Brazilian samba band, the percussion band or rhythm section of a Samba School...

 (a nine-piece percussion section), the Dhol Foundation (five Indian dhol drummers), the Four by Four Dancers (four Bhangra–Punjabi folk-style dancers), and four Brazilian samba dancers.

Discography

• 1999: The Bollywood Brass Band
  The Bollywood Brass Band (album)
  The Bollywood Brass Band is the first album by The Bollywood Brass Band.Of the seven pieces , five are from Indian films The Bollywood Brass Band is the first album by The Bollywood Brass Band.Of the seven pieces (of which two are also provided as remixes), five are from Indian films The Bollywood...
  
  (Emergency Exit Arts)
• 2002: Rahmania (Emergency Exit Arts)
• 2005: Movie Masala (Emergency Exit Arts)

Sources and external links

• The Bollywood Brass Band home page
• "East Meets West Meets East Meet…" — by Teed Rockwell for India Currents