• ISBN13: 9780199474905
• Binding: Paperback
• Subject: Sociology and Anthropology
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: September 16, 2017
• Pages: 344
• Original Price: INR 395.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 340 grams

Most Indians are familiar with the sights and sounds of a wedding procession led by musicians clad in brightly coloured uniforms. With their sounds and physical selves, these bandsmen lend prestige to the procession and help control the public spaces through which so many Indian families have moved. Fulfilling a specific cultural and historical demand for processional music, bandsmen and their music are symbolic of the association between musical and cultural change in South Asia. Brass Baja examines the reality of the low musical and social status ascribed to Indian bandsmen, as well as changes in musical repertoire and instrumentation. Rich in symbolic and factual detail, it focuses on the ways in which Indian processional music has changed over time and on the socio-economic gulf between bandsmen and their patrons.

Gregory D. Booth is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is an expert on the music cultures of India, where he regularly conducts ethnographic and historical research.