Battle Cries In The Time Of Peace

The worlds largest military band from one country puts up a rousing show

When Victor Duraisami was asked last September to conduct a mammoth band to coincide with Vijay Diwas, his colleagues joked amiably, Better put your cowboys to control them. On the evening of December 16 as the drummers did the roll, a spectator thought a Boeing had landed nearby. Duraisami was facing a phalanx of 4,459 men who had arranged themselves in the shape of V-I-J-A-Y-D-I-W-A-S, and beating time at ease to Amazing Grace.

The mass display, held at the Army Parade Ground in the Delhi Cantonment area, made history by pulling together the largest body of musicians from a single country, breaking the previous Guinness record of 6,000 musicians from 20 countries. I felt I was completely holding everybody together. Not physically but musically, he says.

 

At his Sena Bhawan office in New Delhi, conductor Lt Colonel Duraisami taps his fingers on his small desk covered with an uneven piece of rough blue felt. He breaks off haltingly: How sweet it sounds (pause) that (pause) saved a wretched like me (pause) .... We chose this old American hymn as the words are very soothing. But it was a whale of a job teaching those men.

In total, 249 pipes and drums, 30 military bands, two naval bands and four air force bands took part in the event. The musicians started trickling in to the Capital from November 20 and continued to arrive until December 5. They descended from regiments all over the country: Kashmir, Arunachal, Siachen, Wellington, Panchmarhi.

Most of these men have come from operational areas like the Line of Control. And due to the exigencies of service, some of them were out of practice. While some were already familiar with the tune, others werent, says Duraisami.

For four months before the show, it was music and more music for Duraisami. We had to fix maneouvres of entry and exit and how to spend maximum time on the ground. Those days, I just stopped pushing files, says Duraisami, who is advisor in music to the Army. You know, communication is a big problem when you are staging a show with so many people in it. We had to train each one of them individually.

His main problem, he says, was getting everybody to listen first and then teach them correctly before the combine practice. We could not imagine what the mass effect would be like when they came on the ground.

Every day until the performance, the sweat continued. First, the mass of men were organised into five groups with a leader, each in charge of 50 bands. A band consists of a band master and 33 musicians, whereas pipes and drums consist of a drum major and 17 musicians. The leaders used to communicate what was to be done. The mikes came later. The sessions started at 7.30 and continued up till 5.30, after which Duraisami remembers, The men rushed to their barracks like a Wild West stampede. The practice did not end there. They used to start off again after a wash and supper at 8.00 in their respective barracks.

There are currently a total of 7,500 band, pipes and drum players under the different wings of the forces, with respective units in charge of the upkeep of their bands. These regular force men double up as band players in return for monetary or other incentives, provided to keep them in the mood to play music.

At present, the three forces combined have a repertoire of about 6,000 martial tunes, ranging from Highland Laddie, Cock of the North and Zakhmi Dil of the British legacy to Latin to Irish songs to anything folksy. Homespun tunes like Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja by H B Brall, Godhuli and Deshon ka Sartaj Bharat by J N Roy Choudhury and the all-time patriotic goose-pimple-raiser Sare Jahan Se Achcha, and recent ones like Sound Barrier, India Gate, Chandni, Kedar Nath all between three and four minutes long are some of the popular tunes in the Indian martial music book, which has about 350 Indian compositions.

It was in the nineteenth century that the British brought pipes and drums, the soul of Scottish sound, in the Indian Army. They were first introduced in the Sikh, Gorkha and Pathan regiments. So were regimental march tunes and a wide collection of bugle calls like alarm, dinner, fall-in and ration calls. A ration call whose lyrics reflect the communal life in barracks went like this: Go for the rations, orderly man, stale bread and meat and plenty of bone.

The post-independence era saw the emergence of military bands as also the infusion of Indian flavour. The Military Martial Music wing was set up at the AEC Training college in Panchmarhi by Field Marshal Carriappa, Indias first commander in chief, along the lines of the UKs Royal Military School of Music. One of the directors of the music wing, Harold Joseph (who also founded the Delhi Symphony Orchestra and composed Hanse Lushai, which was heavily drawn from tribal music of the Lushais in Meghalaya), spent a career learning the signs of Indian music.

Folk music is best suited to martial tunes. Now an attempt is being made to introduce Indian instruments, but these are mainly confined to sit-in programme music, says Duraisami, who has composed two march tunes Gods of War and Canons.

The biggest disadvantage of Indian instruments is their weight, which makes them impractical to march with. But instruments like the pakhawaj, tabla, sitar and harmonium were introduced in programme music for the first time in 1996 at the Air Force Auditorium in New Delhi.

He continues: The essence of martial music is to instil vigour in men. To quote, a good march should be so forceful that it makes wooden legs step out.

But in peace time, bands dont need to double up as nursing orderlies or do what Colonel Bogey did for British troops fighting against the Japanese in the film The Bridge Over the River Kwai. So the bands business today wholly centres around playing for functions such as the annual Beating the Retreat or making hummable, jolly tunes for inaugural and wedding functions.

From behind his desk, Duraisami instructs Lt Colonel H G S Yadav from the ADGM centre at Nasik, one of the bands hopeful of being part of the 1998 Republic Day Parade. First prepare a log-book on all the band players, and keep a record of how the men are progressing. Get them to play music instead of picking grass or doing BPET (Battle Physical Efficiency Training) all the time. They have to know about counterpoint, harmony and melody. This is not baraati music.

We are practising a lot, nods Yadav. Every morning the men do a round of the residential area. They play really loudly near the seniors home so that they know they are practising.

Keep it up, commends band conductor Duraisami.