Dance of the Cobra (2013)
12 tracks, 52 minutes
Spotify · iTunes
Brass bands have a rich history in India, evolving from the military bands imported by the British colonial rulers. Moving away from their original function, the brass bands eventually became the stalwarts of weddings, and Rajasthan had the best bands of all.
In the UK, it is the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band that are best known of the Rajasthani brassheads – they’ve released two albums, tour semi-regularly and they’re always a smash hit at festivals. They’re loud (blaring trumpets, honking euphoniums, shrill clarinets and loads of snares and cymbals), they look great (rainbow turbans, rainbow angarkhas, pristine white pyjamas. Sharp.) and they bring a dancer and a fekir in tow to do some mad tricks (watching a man repeatedly bounce a 10kg granite ball off his elbow is really...sickening).
This album is their most recent and the music featured in it is basically standard wedding repertoire: folk songs, pop songs, Bollywood hits, all that good stuff. This is one of those albums that I’ve picked for one track more than anything else. The song ‘Gore Gore O Banke Chhore’ has a long history: originally based on a cod-salsa piece sung by Carmen Miranda in the 1945 film Doll Face, adapted as a Bollywood song for the 1950 film Samadhi and sung by Lata Mangeshkar, and now it’s here as a brass band piece. Give it a listen:
What I love about the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band version is that it is obviously a footy chant waiting to happen. That melody is so easy, so fun and so catchy without getting annoying after five seconds. I don’t even know the words and I want to sing them while stumbling down the street after a few too many. I’ve told this to lots of people and I won’t stop until I hear The England Band play a shoddy version of it at an obscure European qualifying tie against Lithuania in Vilnius, uninspiring 2-0 win, yes m8.
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