'I'm a lawyer by day, dhol drummer by night'

By day, Sandi Kaur is a lawyer... by night, she is a drummer in the UK's first and - they claim - only team of bhangra dhol players and dancers.

Eternal Taal have performed at Glastonbury, been in Hollywood films, appeared on The Graham Norton Show and most recently took to the stage at The European Athletics Championships in the city - but Kaur says, in some ways, her two "jobs" do not feel too dissimilar.

"When you're in the legal field... it's the meticulous attention to detail, it's clientele, but when I'm on these stages, I still feel these people are my beautiful clients, and I'm doing them a service - I'm providing something for them," she smiled.

Kaur, from Wolverhampton, joined the Birmingham-based group in 2019, and at her first performance, at Arts in the Park in Sutton Coldfield, she said she felt like "a baby swan being set loose in fresh lake waters".

Now, with nearly eight years of experience behind her, she said she was more confident on-stage.

"For me, it always feels so electrifying," she said.

"I mean we've got our professional careers, but when you take this music to these beautiful platforms around the country and around the world, it just always feels so invigorating."

"The enthusiasm and the passion, it just pipes through," she said of their audiences.

"Just their beams of smiles, their energy, it honestly takes my breath away. It's an honour, it's a privilege."

Dhol drumming is a high-energy South Asian musical tradition with players using two wooden sticks to beat a double-sided barrel drum.

Kaur has been present at many of the group's big performances, including the Commonwealth Games and the late late Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee.

"It was momentous when I was right next to Prince William in Westminster Abbey... playing the dhol," she said.

"We are breaking borders, were breaking boundaries, we're putting our culture, women, on the map - saying: 'We can do it, so can you'."

She described the group's founder, Parv Kaur, as the "pied piper of the dhol", setting a path for women to pick up instruments and take them out there.

Parv began to enjoy music from a young age through her father, Balbir Singh Khanpur.

He, alongside his late brother, formed the Bhujhangy Group in Smethwick in 1967, and today is the sole member still continuing to perform.

When Parv left school in 1999, she formed Eternal Taal - hoping to promote and perform bhangra music to wider audiences and showcase female talent across the world.

"I only had flyers that were printed out at my dad's factory that I handed out by hand in Smethwick 30 years ago, to promote myself, to promote my team," she recalled.

"It was hard to engage in an Asian community that didn't give me that hug that I needed."

She was turned down for events in favour of people's regular musical contacts - who were usually men, she said.

Parv added she had high standards for the group.

"I want to give people a service where hairs are standing on the back of their necks," she said.

"It's amazing to see lots of females doing their thing."

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