Diversifying the Curriculum through Bollywood

Kay Charlton explores the ACE-funded education projects which brought Indian music to hubs, services and schools across England

I have been lucky to spend a lot of my performing life playing with Bollywood Brass Band - a nine-piece band playing, you guessed it, Bollywood music - songs written for the world-wide phenomenon that is Hindi movies Not only do we play at festivals, venues and (of course) Indian weddings all year round, but we love to work with children and young people in schools whenever we can.

The band is mixed and diverse, playing brass, sax and drums, including the Indian Dhol drum which is guaranteed to get everyone up and dancing whether we are performing at a festival or in a school! As well as instrumental expertise, we bring the diversity of Bollywood, music with its roots in Indian classical and folk music and the absorption of influences from music around the world.

I’ve always combined performing with teaching - instrumental, WCET and curriculum, and this led to the foundation of the Bollywood Brass Academy a few years ago. The initial project with young instrumentalists from Music Hubs in Bedford and Slough was funded by the Arts Council and it enabled us to write and arrange easy Bollywood songs, create backing tracks and host the resources as free downloads on our BBA website. The easy repertoire is driven by my passion for WCET and the promotion of instrumental learning, with a focus on brass. Our large-scale, ACE funded ‘Progression Project’ with Hubs in south and west Yorkshire, Birmingham and Kent (2019-2022) led us to develop our easy repertoire to include strings - a welcome addition to WCET repertoire.

This year we delivered a follow-on project in Bradford from January to March, culminating in a performance with young brass and string players over two nights at their Youth Proms. The aim of the project was to embed diverse repertoire into the curriculum, and we started with a CPD session on 2nd January (a rude awakening to the new term for all of us!) where I delivered a session to instrumental tutors on Bollywood music, teaching WCET and creative approaches to using our repertoire and backing tracks.

This was followed later in the month by visits to four primary schools by a sixpiece version of BBB where we did interactive performances in assembly - .introducing Bollywood and our instruments, and did workshops for brass/clarinets and strings on the three-note tunes. The local tutors then continued to use the songs and backing tracks as part of their lessons in the spring term. We used two original songs - ‘Yeh Dosti’ from the 1970 hit movie Sholay and BBB’s funky version of Bally Sago’s remix of the Punjabi folk song ‘Gurh Nalon Ishk Mitha’, both songs had the teachers and TA’s jigging in their seats and one pupil came up to tell us that Yeh Dosti was his Dad’s favourite song - yes, good choices! The children were very excited to be able to play a reduced version of these tunes along to the backing tracks, making them feel like they were playing along with the Bollywood Brass Band.

The string pieces were two originals composed specifically for WCET by myself and Sarha Moore, BBB’s sax player - with welcome support by Bradford string tutors! Both pieces explore South Indian ragas, using D E F# and open strings. Again, backing tracks brought the pieces to life in the classroom.

The next step for me was a visit to Bradford’s Education Conference where I delivered sessions on diversifying the curriculum to instrumental tutors, KS2 and secondary music teachers - each session requiring a different approach In these sessions discussed how to find and utilise diverse repertoire, drawing on my wide playing and teaching experience. On classroom instruments we learnt to play a South African tune as well as Jai Ho - always a favourite (and so easy to play) and we improvised too of course, with some tutors inevitably feeling out of their comfort zone, but joining in never-the-less.

The final part of this project was the performance at the School’s Prom in March - the culmination of the tutors’ (and children’s) hard work over a short term! BBB went up to Bradford in time to rehearse with the children in the afternoon and perform in the evening - brass one day, strings the next. What fun! BBB performed a couple of songs on our own and then were joined by the children and tutors - they did a great job and I could see all eyes on me as the children found themselves on the huge stage of St George’s Hall, playing with live musicians - sounding different from the backing tracks!

Carl White, Head of Service at the Music & Arts Service, Bradford said: “I would like to say a big thank you for all of your help and support in preparation for the Prom, Conference, CPD and school workshops. It has been fantastic for our staff and schools to benefit from your expertise and the legacy continues as some staff commented after the Prom that although they hadn’t used the material yet, they are definitely going to this term having seen the impact and how it works live!”

This September found us in Abingdon playing in primary schools and one afternoon workshopping two songs with 65 children in just one hour! As well as the easy threenote versions, the BBA website hosts intermediate and advanced versions of the same songs, if your stage is big enough, the beginners can see their progression route to intermediate ensembles and beyond.

Helen Ecclestone, Director of Abingdon Music Centre said, “Thank you so much for the wonderful primary workshop yesterday afternoon. I really appreciated all your expertise in the planning process, your organisation but also your patience and flexibility to work round our needs. The workshop itself was very well paced to learn both songs in such a short time and you had a great rapport with the kids. From speaking to some of the children afterwards they loved hearing your band play and then the buzz that came from feeling that they were able to play with you I know that some would have happily stayed and played with you for much longer ”

To book workshops, school performances (or weddings/festivals!), contact bollywood@bollywoodbrassband co uk, or to download free resources visit this link