"Brass and ceremonial bands known in India as "Band Baja"occupied an unexpected place in the narrative of anti-colonial resistance. The British Empire used military brass bands as a tool of sovereign display, projecting order and cultural authority across its colonies, India and Ireland among them. Yet in both nations, these same musical forms were turned against their original purpose: revolutionaries and nationalists adapted brass instrumentation, martial rhythm, and the public parade into vehicles formass mobilization and national sentiment, repurposing an instrument of empire into one of resistance."
- Adeela Suleman, 2026
Grosvenor Gallery, in collaboration with Canvas Gallery, Karachi, is delighted to present The Rising Crescendo of the Band Baja, an exhibition of new works by acclaimed Pakistani artist Adeela Suleman, on view from 14 October to 6 November 2026.
In this new body of work, Suleman turns her attention to the exuberant spectacle of the South Asian Band Baja. Drummers, trumpeters and uniformed bandsmen appear amid dense forests, flowers, foliage and wild animals, creating scenes that are at once celebratory, theatrical and strangely dreamlike.
The band walla is a familiar presence at weddings and public celebrations across the subcontinent: brightly dressed, highly visible and inseparable from the noise and excitement of the procession. Suleman removes these figures from their expected surroundings and places them within richly imagined landscapes. The implied clamour of drums and brass instruments is held within the silence of the image, lending the works an underlying sense of anticipation and unease.
Behind this familiar spectacle lies a more complex history. Brass and ceremonial bands were employed across the British Empire as expressions of military order and imperial authority. In India, however, their music, instruments and public spectacle were absorbed into local culture and given new meanings. Martial rhythms and processions could become expressions of collective identity and, within the independence movement, instruments of mobilisation and resistance. Suleman’s Band Baja therefore carries histories of both ceremony and authority, celebration and defiance.