After their immense success in Bollywood music, London-based ‘Bollywood Brass Band’ – popularly known as BBB – formed in 1992, embarks on a new journey to explore the southern states of India. As their brass meets the strings, they encounter the sonic wonders of violin gamakas (decorations), mridngam (double-headed hand drum) and morsing (jaws harp).
Accompanying them on their journey to the new territory is none other than Bangalore-born and Europe’s leading violinist from the Carnatic classical tradition, Jyotsna Srikanth.
The album has been chosen as one of Songlines Magazine’s 10 Albums of the Year for 2016, while The Guardian’s Robin Denselow describes it as “rousing, exuberant and exquisite”. Simon Broughton of London Evening Standard writes,
Says Jyotsna, a former pathologist who quit her medical career in 2007 to become a full-time musician:
In the Carnatic tradition with a classical melody in Raga Mayamalava Gowla, Jyotsna leads BBB in Deva Deva Kalayami with improvisation and through the incorporation of the interplay of jugalbandi.
It is her first collaboration with a brass band.
Mark Allan, the manager who was instrumental in forming the BBB, is upbeat about his band and the new album:
Mark plays baritone sax – apart from mixing sound and video for the Band’s live gigs.
According to Allan, another number from the album – Drum Dance – accompanies the epic scene where 400 dancers perform on top of huge drums; the drums open up to reveal soldiers who attach the stronghold “Trojan Horse”. Once inside the castle, the two leading men undertake the sword fight.
Allan, incidentally, started off playing tenor sax with the Fallout Marching Band in the 80’s.
Yet another beautiful piece of music in this album is sourced from the 1948 black-and-white Tamil film Chandralekha. The film inspired Sarha Moore, one of the key musicians of BBB, and Kay Charlton, the project manager of BBB (who has also composed brass tutor books called ‘Bollywood Blast’) to compose a new soundtrack for the finale of the film.
Charlton said,
The other numbers included in the album are: Why This Kolaveri Di composed by Dhanush for the Tamil psychological thriller film 3 and Aa Ante Amalapuram by Devi Sri Prasad for Arya.
What were the challenges the team faced while working for the album?
After an overwhelming response from music lovers across the UK, BBB is all set to come up with another bang next year. To celebrate the 50th birthday of two-time Academy Award winning composer AR Rahman, BBB is planning to release an album which will feature the Indian music maestro’s best compositions, informed Allan, who’s an ardent fan of Rahman.
(Anjana Parikh works with the healthcare sector in the UK. She's also a freelance writer based in Manchester. Before relocating to the UK in 2013, she worked as a full-time journalist with some of India's leading dailies like The Times of India, Deccan Herald and The Sunday Guardian. She also worked as the News Editor for a leading British Asian weekly Asian Lite. Apart from reading and writing, she also loves rambling and singing.)
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