6/11/11 Bollywood wedding at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia PA

My groom for this wedding inquired about Bollywood music for the cocktail hour. He hired a string trio (two violins, one violin who can also play guitar, and cello), asked me to score 9 Bollywood songs for string trio, and asked for Western classical music for the wedding ceremony.

The song list (and please note, some of these songs took 13 hours a piece to write out):

1. Ek Ladki
2. Tujhe Dekha
3. Hoton Se
4. Chandi Jaisa
5. Jai Ho
6. Kabhi Kabhi
7. Aapki Nazro
8. Chaiyya Chaiyya
9. Yeh Dil

Also of note: when I showed up for the wedding ceremony, the officiant asked if we had any traditional Indian classical music for the fire ceremony. The groom forgot to tell me about this. But wait, it ends well! Now, I studied South Indian (Carnatic) music for 10 years, and my teacher JUST cleared me to play in public (that's just the way it is in that tradition), so I sat down cross legged near the altar when the fire ceremony was about to start, detuned my violin, put coconut oil on my fingers, and played 10 minutes of the Chakravakkam raga for them.

The cocktail hour was an even mix of songs from my MTV fake book (the other violinist switched over to guitar sometimes), and the Bollywood songs. We had the crowd DANCING to acoustic music!

Every year, I end up with one big wedding that's the wedding of the year. I have to say, this wedding plus Lori's daughter's wedding (see next post) make it a magical year of TWO huge weddings! If you want Bollywood or classical Indian music (South Indian, aka Carnatic violin), I've got that too! I can't think of any other musician in this geographical area who can do both the music arrangements and traditional Indian classical music. Plus, we had a BLAST!

Love,
Catherine