Your musical group is planning to organise music shows next month on the occasion
of Navratras. You are Shahid Ahmed / Shahida Ahmed, the Band Leader of Sargam
Kendra , 65, Dwarka, Ahmedabad. You require certain musical instruments for the
smooth running of the event. Write a letter to the Store Manager, M/s. Sangeet
Instruments, Raj Nagar, Ahmedabad placing order for the specific instruments
required by you.
Answers
Answer:
Dressed in a green T-shirt, Noor Alam, a short man with fine-tuned muscles, is playing ‘O saathi re, tere bina bhi kya jina’ — the popular Kishore Kumar number — on a freshly-minted trumpet.
Not happy with the pitch, he changes position of his lips on the mouthpiece and blows harder. This time, the pitch comes out perfect and he goes on to play the full song. “We don’t have a testing laboratory here, but I can instantly recognize a false note,” says Alam, an instrument tester at Nadir Ali & Co, India’s biggest and oldest wind instrument makers in Meerut, a NCR town about 50km from Delhi.
Sabir Ali, a brass instrument maker, says that the business has dwindled over the years because of government’s apathy. ( Sanchit Khanna/ HT photo )
While the city is famous for its sports, scissors, and publishing industry, and of course, its pulp fiction writers, not many know that ninety-five per cent of wind instruments — trumpets, euphoniums, bugles, cornets, clarinets, used by wedding bands from Kashmir to Kanyakumari — are made in Meerut. Top bands from across the country, including those in Delhi such as Jia Band, Baldev Band and Maharaj Band, travel to a street called Jali Kothi in this western Uttar Pradesh town to buy these instruments.
Narrow, winding lanes and bylanes in the nondescript neighbourhood of tightly packed buildings boast several small musical instruments factories running out of homes, shops, basements. One can hear the sound of music as the artisans test and tune the instruments inside.
“Playing instruments made by Nadir Ali & Co. is an aspirational thing for musicians in a brass band,” says Anil Thadani, owner of Jia Band, one of Delhi’s oldest bands, which has played at several celebrity weddings. “Every wind instrument maker has his own specialty in Meerut.”
It all started in 1885, when Nadir Ali, a band leader in the British Army, took early retirement and raised his own wedding band with his cousin, Imam Buksh. Perhaps India’s first wedding band, Nadir Ali & Co was an instant hit. Soon the band started importing instruments from Europe.
Faced with custom-related problems, it decided to make its own instruments in Meerut in 1911, the year the country’s capital was shifted from
Kolkata to Delhi.