Inside the After-School Dhol Boom: The Tutors Building Bhangra's Next Generation

It is 9.15 on a Saturday morning in Southall, and the queue outside a community hall just off the Broadway is already three deep. Nobody is here for a wedding. They are here for dhol class. Inside, a dozen children aged between seven and 14 are strapped into drums that look almost as big as they are, working through a chaal pattern while a tutor counts them in over the noise. The youngest keeps losing the beat, laughs, and starts again.

This is the new Saturday-morning routine in pockets of Southall, Leicester and Glasgow. After-school and weekend dhol workshops, run by a mix of community organisations, independent tutors and gurdwara youth teams, are reporting waiting lists through 2026. The reasons are not hard to find: a post-pandemic hunger for in-person activity, a steady stream of dhol clips on social media, and parents who want their children to grow up with a bit of Punjabi culture that is not just a wedding playlist.

The Saturday-Morning Queue in Southall

Harpreet 'Harry' Sandhu has been teaching dhol for 11 years. Until 2023, he ran one class a week. Now he runs four, plus a beginners' session for five-to-eight-year-olds and a summer intensive. 'I used to chase people to come,' he says. 'Now I have to cap the class at 16 because the hall cannot take any more noise and I cannot take any more dhols in my car.'

Sandhu's classes are deliberately informal. No grades, no exams, no recital pressure. Children learn bols by copying, then move onto sticks, then join the older group for a full dholki circle. He charges £6 a session, with a sliding scale for families with more than one child. The instruments are provided for beginners, which matters: a decent dhol can cost £150 to £300, and parents are often reluctant to spend that before a child has shown real interest.

Similar scenes are playing out in Leicester, where Baljit Kaur runs a girls-only dhol workshop in Belgrave. Kaur started the group in 2024 after noticing that the few dhol classes in the city were overwhelmingly male. 'The girls were interested, but they did not want to be the only one in a room full of boys,' she says. Her Saturday session now has 22 regulars, aged nine to 17, and a waiting list. They have played at school fairs, a Leicester City community event and, yes, a few weddings.

In Glasgow, Ryan Singh has taken a different route. His workshops run out of a youth centre in Govanhill and are funded partly by a small National Lottery grant. That lets him keep the cost to £3 a session and lend out drums. 'The demand is there across the city,' he says. 'But the infrastructure is not. We need more instruments, more tutors and more rooms that do not mind the noise.'

Parents, Priorities and the Cost of a Dhol

The parents dropping off in Southall are clear about why they have signed up. For some, it is about cultural continuity. For others, it is about confidence. 'He was quite shy,' says one mother, waiting in the car with a coffee. 'Now he stands up in front of a room and plays. That is worth more than the £6.'

There is also a practical calculation. Wedding season in the UK runs from roughly May to September, and demand for dhol players is strong. A young player who can hold a beat and turn up on time can earn decent money at weddings, parties and community events. Several tutors mention that parents see dhol as a route to a skill that pays. But they are wary of the instrument being treated as a side hustle before it is treated as a craft.

The cost barriers are real. Hall hire in London can run to £40 an hour. Instruments need maintenance. Tutors need to be paid properly, which means either charging more or finding subsidy. Sandhu says he has turned down requests to expand into nearby towns because he cannot find another tutor he trusts. 'I could fill a class in Hayes tomorrow,' he says. 'But I am not going to put someone in front of 20 kids who has not been taught how to teach.'

The Wedding Season Trap

The bigger question is whether this grassroots energy can survive beyond the wedding calendar. Right now, much of the visible demand for dhol is seasonal. A teenager who learns a few beats in October may be asked to play at a family wedding in July, then drift away by the autumn. Tutors want progression routes: advanced classes, performance groups, opportunities to play at melas and festivals, and maybe a recognised qualification.

There are signs of movement. Some tutors are working with local music hubs and schools to offer dhol as an enrichment activity. Others are building youth teams that perform at community events, giving young players a reason to keep practising. But there is no national framework, no consistent safeguarding standard, and no obvious funding stream for grassroots Punjabi music tuition. The risk is that the current boom produces a lot of short-term enthusiasm and not enough long-term players.

'We are good at starting things in the community,' says Kaur. 'We are less good at joining them up.' She would like to see a regional network of tutors sharing resources, instrument loans and training. Sandhu wants a simple accreditation that parents can trust. Singh wants more youth centres to open their doors and a fund for instruments.

None of these are impossible. They are just unglamorous. They do not make good Instagram content. But they are the difference between a trend and a scene. The children in that Southall hall are not thinking about infrastructure. They are thinking about the next beat. The adults in the room should be thinking about how to keep them playing after the wedding season ends.