What it's like to be a Bhangra drummer

As a young girl she fell in love with Bhangra music and the sound of the dohl.

Since then she has made a name for herself in this male-dominated industry and even been recognised by the House of Commons.

At the same time she has also helped to inspire other female musicians to follow in her footsteps through her own team Eternal Taal.

“The sound of the dohl drum is very intoxicating. You don’t need amplifiers, you don’t need backing musicians and you don’t need singers.

“All my life I have listened to Bhangra music and the sound of the dohl drum is the one that has stood out for me,” explains the 34-year-old.

Growing up in Smethwick, her home was used for rehearsals by her musical father Balbir Singh, who is the lead singer of a Bhangra band called Bhujhangy Group.

“There were rehearsal rooms or studios they used to come to our house to practice.

“Out of my three siblings, I was the only one who wanted to stay and watch them,” Parv tells us.

Bhangra is a form of dance and music which originates from the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. It took on it’s own unique identity in Britain in the 1960s when immigrants blended traditional Punjabi music with western influences.

Unable to resist the sounds Parv heard during her father’s rehearsals, she began picking up the instruments, include the dohl, a two-sided barrel drum beaten with cane sticks, and learning to play.

“When I was nine or 10, I started to play the piano, the dholak which is a small drum and the dohl. When it came to the build up to my GCSEs I knew music was what I wanted to do with my life. I studied music at GCSE and got an A*,” she says.

Parv began performing alongside her award-winning father’s group in 1995 and after leaving school in 1999, she decided to set up on her own. She started Eternal Taal, which means everlasting beats, and began running drumming classes after noticing a lack of female Bhangra musicians. And, in honour of her group, Parv has a unique tattoo on her wrist with the initials E.T for Eternal Taal and the two sticks used to beat the drum called the dagga and the tihli in Punjabi.

“In the 1990s, there were not female musicians doing any sort of Bhangra music. I would go to gigs and the musicians on stage would be men and the audience would be men, I couldn’t see any women.

“When I got to the age of 16, I thought ‘if men can do it, why can’t I?’ and that’s when I set up my own team,” explains Parv, who was recently recognised by Creative Black Country’s ‘100 Masters’ arts campaign.

Students from all over the Midlands joined and built a dedicated team that has performed at community events and celebrations as Glastonbury Festival, the Graham Norton show and Dermot O’Leary’s 24-hour Dance-A-Thon for BBC’s Comic Relief 2015.

“I’m still running the same drumming classes 18 years later. We’ve got 50 students, starting from the age of six, and we want to give them something to aim for.

“They aren’t just coming to classes, they can also have the opportunity to perform on stage with us in the future.

“It can take six to eight months to get the basic beats and about two years before they are in a position to perform on stage.

“But we are giving them this vision of what they can achieve. Also it may be that because of their culture, it’s not something they have been encouraged to get involved in before because of it being very male-dominated industry but because we are a female-only group, we’re giving them that opportunity,” explains Parv.

The group’s name was inspired by her family nickname of E.T. “I was born in 1983 and my dad loved the film E.T so I used to get called E.T. When I first set up the team, we used the the E.T group but it didn’t really work so we changed it to Eternal Taal,” she explains.

While she realised from her early age that music was her passion, her father had instilled in her the importance of staying on top of her education. Parv studied for a degree in ICT and education studies before completing a PGCE and a masters degree.

For the past six years, she has been working as a lecturer in ICT at Sandwell College.

It’s a combination that works well for Parv, who says: “I love being in the classroom teaching during the day and then teaching my drumming classes outside of work. Both are very rewarding.”

Parv is also hoping to follow in the footsteps of her father’s successful music career which has seen his group awarded the title of ‘Longest running Bhangra band in the UK’ by the Guinness Book of World Records.

“He’s been singing for more than 50 years. His group started and he’s still going strong at the age of 65 today. He has been very supportive and understood that while I enjoy what he does, I wanted to forge my own path in the industry,” Parv tells us.

In 2010, Parv was presented with the ‘contribution of Bhangra music in the UK’ award from the House of Commons where Eternal Taal were invited to perform.

“It’s great that we’ve made our mark on the industry in this way and we’ve continued to grow and success despite some obstacles along the way. As well as drummers we have dancers and DJs

Educating people about Bhangra music is very important to Parv, who has also been nominated for ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ by the Institute of Asian Businesses (IAB) and ‘Best in Arts and Culture’ by the Asian Women in Achievements and the British Indian Awards.

“We are the only female group doing this in the UK. We are introducing people to Bhangra music in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

l Weekly classes are held on Wednesdays and Fridays in West Bromwich and are split into four sessions of juniors, beginners, intermediate and advanced. Visit www.eternaltaal.com