WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER…
You’re as likely to have a DJ at your wedding as you are to have an asli wedding band, and this is not music to the ears of Kabirpur’s villagers. This village in Uttar Pradesh is also called Band Baja Gaon. Almost every household here is engaged in the brass band business. Elders say the tradition goes back about 200 years, to the era of the nawabs. There are 90 bands based in Kabirpur; the highest tally for any village in the state, they add. In a village of just 2,500 people, that’s about 1200 musicians.
“Our day starts with music and ends with it. It’s what made our village famous,” says bandmaster Gurucharan Sahu, 58.
Bahadur Ali, 52, owner of Mastana Band, adds that people from Unnao, Kanpur, Barabanki, Faizabad, Hardoi and Sitapur would come here to join the business.
Now, changing wedding trends are threatening this way of life. Traditional songs are not in demand. “People want soulful numbers. They want instrumental and soothing music, which our self-trained musicians can’t play,” says Sahu.
A UP government order on noise pollution issued in January feels like a final blow. It outlawed the conical speakers mounted on trolleys that have been the pride of Kabirpur.
“Their sound would travel almost a kilometre,” Sahu says wistfully.
Cities such as Delhi and Agra have also banned the movement of band trolleys on traffic-prone routes and issued strict norms for wedding processions.
“Our village has 90 trolleys. We can’t sleep at night thinking of what will happen,” says Ali.