A start-up that's all for shehnai-sitar-tabla wedding tunes, and why Indian Classical music has always been wedding chic

A live music performance at a wedding function. (Image courtesy Malhaar Centre for Performing Arts)

Bollywood movies of the 1940s - 1950s often signalled weddings with the sound of a Shehnai. This started to change in the decades that followed - replaced first by peppy Bollywood numbers where the hero and heroine romance (usually) at someone else's wedding, and then Bhangra beats - that incomparable foot-tapping beast which often makes conversation at parties impossible.

These reel-life shifts were of course mirrored in real life, with DJs to suit every budget. Through all this, a small section of weddings continued to play live Indian classical wedding music - complete with the Shehnai or Nadaswaram. To be sure, DJ weddings and the Bollywood-Pop-Bhangra jukebox are more popular today. But there persists a set that wants the live classical Indian wedding music experience, too.

Germ of an idea: Malhaar Centre for Performing Arts

Imagine this: Sunset on a Goa beach. Open-air mandap. A stage is set for the artistes in one corner, and enough chairs for the invitees face this stage. As the wedding guests enter the private beach, they're greeted by the cool sea breeze and live music - with Sohini Singha Mojumdar and Hetartho Chatterjee on vocals and Kalyanjit Das on sitar. As the pheras begin, the musicians perform evening ragas fit for a celebration. The hour-long performance segways into another: An Indo-Jazz programme with Jason Quadros on piano, Kalyanjit Das on sitar and Arindam Chakravarty on tabla over the wedding dinner.

"The programme began with Mangal Shehnai (by Hassan Haider Khan) on Day 1. Then there was a Dohar folk music ensemble from Bengal playing over Mehndi. For Sangeet, there was Bollywood music. Day 2 (the day of the wedding) began with morning ragas from 8-10 am, followed by Hindustani Classical Music artistes presenting the Shringar rasa," recalls Jogiraj Sikidar, a co-founder of Malhaar Centre for Performing Arts - Dubai, which had come up with the music programme for this wedding of an Indian-origin Silicon Valley entrepreneur and her fiancé.

Image from the March 2024 Malhaar wedding in Goa.

Sikidar and his co-founder Kruti Shah and business partner Chaitali Sarkar had in fact started Malhaar for a different purpose.

Sikidar had moved to Dubai in 2006. Two years later, he started Malhaar as a passion project to promote Indian Classical Music. He used his own savings - around 700,000 dirham (about Rs 1.5 crore today) - as seed money. "Indians are the biggest group of expatriates in the UAE. Hence, having a strong presence of Indianness in everything is obvious here. However, this was not the case when it comes to Indian classical music and dance 15 years back," says Sikidar who began training in Hindustani vocals from the age of 4-5.

Read 'Germ of an Idea' articles here

In 2016, Sikidar formally set up the Malhaar Centre for Performing Arts. And in 2017, Sikidar quit his job in the media to build Malhaar into an organization that could train Indian expats in the UAE in Indian Classical Music.

After much campaigning, Malhaar was able to make Indian classical music and dance training a compulsory subject in Indian schools in Dubai.

Malhaar now invites young Classical Music teachers from India to teach the Dubai school programmes. "Today more than 5,000 school children across the UAE are part of Malhaar’s in-curriculum school programme on Indian classical music and dance," Sikidar says.

Malhaar also opened three centres outside of the UAE schools, to train anyone who wants an understanding of classical music. There are programmes for kids as well as grownups, and special sessions for corporate workers who just want to start their day with Classical music. Online classes for remote learning are also an option.

Malhaar also organizes concerts, inviting artistes like Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Shubha Mudgal. Earlier this year, performing at Malhaar's "Romancing Tagore" concert in Dubai, Mudgal said: "(Malhaar's) achieved what I think many of us in India have not been able to achieve. Imagine that there are schools in Dubai that are teaching Hindustani music, Indian music as part of their curriculum. This is a long-held dream of mine. From 2005, I have been advocating this and been part of various discussions which have sent recommendations to the government, to say that please include arts in the regular (curriculum...)"

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Married to the tune of Indian Classical music

The wedding vertical is the newest and smallest part of what Malhaar does today, and it came about quite by chance.

Malhaar cofounder Chaitali Sarkar's daughter was getting married, and the family wanted to steer clear of the DJ-Jhankaar beats music and opt for more Classical strains. That became the first wedding that Malhaar scored and provided the entertainment for. As they do for their concerts, Malhaar invited musicians from India to perform at the wedding. As per Sikidar's account, the wedding was a tremendous success.

The next couple of weddings Malhaar did were of Malhaar students and those who had been to Malhaar concerts in the UAE.

In addition to providing its own musicians, Malhaar can also invite senior artistes for wedding functions - as per the family's request and budget, and the availability of the artistes. In that sense, Malhaar straddles the performance arts and events management space.

(Inviting senior artistes to perform live obviously has some unwritten rules attached. Malhaar helps oversee the baithak and setting some of the ground rules around what is appropriate when artistes are performing at a wedding function.)

Sikidar adds that in the weddings where Malhaar has done the music, often one person in the couple has been of Indian origin and the other partner is a foreigner. These people are also usually NRIs. This tracks, of course, with nostalgia and tradition forming an irresistible jugalbandhi for the great Indian classical wedding.

Instrumentalist Manish Vyas' experience is slightly different. He says couples where both partners are Indian are also adding Indian Classical performances to their wedding programmes, as a way to experience it at an important life event. "Of course, they can also have DJ music at another wedding function," he adds.

More options

To be sure, there are other musicians and bands bringing live Classical Indian music to weddings, too.

Manish Vyas, now 53, remembers the time when his band Celtic Ragas was invited to play at The Beatles singer-songwriter Sir Paul McCartney's wedding in 2002. "There was a lot of secrecy around the venue... we were to gather at Manchester airport, and from there we were taken to Belfast... the wedding was at this beautiful castle," he says about the event 22 years ago.

An Indian Classical instrumentalist, Vyas says that Paul McCartney had heard the Celtic Ragas CD somewhere and invited them to play at his wedding. "Those were the days of the CD".

Vyas played the tabla, as the band played their setlist of songs including "Mere Hamsafar", "Chance Meeting" and "Tara".

Celtic Ragas ended up performing their blend of Indian and Irish music for 2 hours instead of the planned hour-long performance. The Beatles' love of India and Indian music is well-known. This inclusion of Indian influences in a big wedding celebration was a testimonial to Paul McCartney's appreciation of all things Indian Classical. "He had taken great care," Vyas remembers, "there were Indian foods, Indian music at the wedding."

Now based in Switzerland, Vyas was in Udaipur in July 2024 to perform at an Indian wedding. The trend of Indian Classical music at weddings never went away, he says over the phone, but it has seen a spurt in the last 15 years.

And for those who find live music out-of-budget or those who only want a small sampler of live Indian Classical Music at a family wedding, there are of course recorded sets online - like this "Marriage Songs Collection" on the T-Series Classical YouTube channel.