National

Musical finale to Navy Week

MUMBAI: The Naval Central Band staged ‘Beating Retreat’ here on Tuesday evening to draw a ceremonial curtain on the Navy Week celebrations.

The band had fielded 106 sailors playing martial music, quick and slow marches with their wind and percussion instruments and making formations while parading at a naval stadium.

Led by Master Chief Ramesh Chand, the sailors played a special composition named after Mumbai’s Gate Way of India, ‘Gate Way Lullaby’ and the traditional ‘Abide By Me.’ The musical finale ended with a solemn masterpiece, ‘Sunset.’

The Naval Ensign (colours) was lowered as officers and sailors saluted. ‘Beating Retreat’ is now a musical climax to an important military ceremony unlike over a century ago when buglers and trumpeters sounded clarion call to end the fighting for the day at the sunset.

The soldiers of both sides would sheath their arms and retreat to their respective camps to dress their wounds and mourn the fallen comrades. But wars have changed now. No sunset stops the combat. Massed armies fighting pitched battles on static battlefields are now consigned to military history.

The 21st century combat is beyond the ‘push button’ era and is in the gigabyte age. In the latest net-centric warfare, one unit detects the enemy target using a satellite, passes data to a friend in a different dimension and domain that deploys a stand-off weapon from a far-off stealth platform in a long-range combat spread over a theatre of war.

In the modern high-tech time, however, the good-old buglers, trumpeters and drummers have survived.

“They not only give a cultural face to an armed force but also motivate them and help them build up morale and comradeship,” the Navy’s Director of Music, Captain P.G. George, told The Hindu.

He said that the Indian Naval Band has played in 35 countries and won laurels.

“Whenever a warship sails for a goodwill visit, the Naval Band is always embarked and these musicians enthral their hosts and deliver a piece of home to the Indian diaspora, with even Hindi film music,” he said.

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