The sound of the month

Gunla is a month of music as much as a month of pilgrimage, and Matya is its loudest day. The ensemble is built on the dhaa, the big double-headed drum that carries the rhythm, joined by the smaller naykhin, the mwahali reed and the basuri flute on the melody, the small taa and broad bhusya cymbals keeping time, and the long straight payentah trumpets punctuating it. Many groups now add a trumpet or clarinet to the melody line.

Why it sounds the way it does

Gunla bajan was not written for a hall. It was written for lanes two arms wide, with four storeys of brick on either side, and it sounds wrong anywhere else. On Matya the whole circuit is inside that geometry — the music arrives before the procession does, bouncing off the walls of a lane you cannot yet see down, and stays audible for a long time after it has gone past. Several groups walk the route at intervals, so the sound is essentially continuous across the city for the whole day.

Standing still in one lane and letting the day come past you is a better way to hear it than walking with a single group.