rudra/knows

PlayGarba

Every garba song, and a garba night to dance it in

Status
Live
Year
2026
Disciplines
MusicSystems
playgarba.com
PlayGarba’s open ground at night, mid-song: rings of dancers turning round the lit garbo under strings of bulbs, the city’s lights beyond.
The open ground on a phone, mid-song: the circle round the lit garbo, you and your partner tagged, the song and its controls below.
Fig. 01The open ground, mid-song: the circle forms round the garbo when the music starts. The same night on a phone.

01 · Brief

Garba is danced in a circle round a lamp: a diya burning inside a pierced clay pot, the garbo, while the whole circle claps and steps anticlockwise, ring inside ring, for the nine nights of Navratri. Its music is everywhere and nowhere: cassettes, three-hour nonstop sets and live recordings, titles spelled five ways, no track lists. PlayGarba gathers it in one free place, and gives every song a garba night to be danced in.

songs across 302 releases, every one traced to a source
1,832
venues, each its own night: three open now, thirteen on the way
16
genres, from Traditional and Devotional to Sanedo, Dandiya and Fusion
10
guides to garba’s steps, clap patterns, styles and history
225

02

What garba is

The word comes from garbha deep, the lamp inside the clay pot at the centre. Dancers move round it anticlockwise, and the circle grows ring by ring as more join. The steps are named for their claps, be tali with two and tran tali with three, and for their turns: hinch, dodhiyu, popatiyu. It belongs to Navratri, nine nights for the Mother Goddess, and to weddings, and the music ranges from village folk and devotional aartis to sanedo couplets and dandiya raas with sticks.

  • 01Ten genres, from Traditional and Devotional to Sanedo, Dandiya and Fusion
  • 02Every step and clap pattern has a guide page of its own
  • 03In English, Gujarati and the Gujlish people actually type

03

A garba night you can walk into

Press play and you’re on a garba ground at night: a lit garbo at the centre, rings of dancers round it, a band on stage, food stalls at the edges, strings of lights overhead and tonight’s real moon in the sky. Everything moves with the song. The circles form when the music starts, the crowd lifts its phones, and people drift off to the stalls between songs.

  • 01Sixteen venues, from an open ground and a covered stadium to a sheri between houses
  • 02Lighting follows the music: oil-lamp warmth for Traditional, sweeping colour for Dandiya, neon for Fusion
  • 03“Tonight” plays a whole garba night in five parts

04

Where you stand, and what you hear

Dance in the circle with clappers all round you, watch from a bench far away, or stand up front by the band. The view and the sound both change: far off, the circle sounds softer and reaches you a moment late. Every venue is its own room, so the dhol booms under the stadium roof and flutters between the house walls in the sheri.

  • 01Crowd, claps, or the full circle all round you
  • 02Hand claps or dandiya sticks keep the beat
  • 03Tap the beat, then choose where the claps land: on the beat, be tali or tran tali

05

The stage, the band and the DJ

Each song’s own singers walk on, one, two or three of them, and walk off again between songs. The band has a dhol, keys, benjo and tabla, each player with flourishes of their own, under a truss of moving lights, with a big screen cutting from a drone over the garbo to close-ups of the singer and the two of you. Open Explore and you walk over to the DJ’s table, where he asks, in Gujarati, what you’d like.

06

You and your partner

You dance as a pair. Your names float over your heads, and you can give both dancers your own faces from a photo, cropped in a circle and worn in every view, even from behind. Up close the dancers have embroidery and mirror work, a gajra and paranda in the braid, and a pagdi wound in layers. Photos never leave the device.

07

Walk the ground

Hide the player and the whole screen is the venue. Walk with the arrow keys or a drag, and the stalls call out as you arrive: cutting chai, garam dabeli, pani puri, kulfi, fafda jalebi. Couples dance as a pair, children play tag by the stage, and older folk watch from the chairs.

08

Everything else it does

The garba ground and the simple player share one player, so the song never stops when you switch.

  • 01Play by world: Traditional, Dandiya, Devotional, Folk, Sanedo, Fusion
  • 02Nonstop sets with chapters, and 24/7 Live radio everyone hears in step
  • 03A Private Circle: a link or QR code and a group hears the same song at once
  • 04Explore by genre, artist and release; play any YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music link
  • 05Favourites, Up next, share cards, and Kukdu the rooster for help

09

Every song traced to its source

Every song, release and live set is catalogued from evidence. Unknown dates, lengths and credits stay blank until a source fills them, and a tip from a listener is a lead, not a fact. No music is ever copied: songs play from where they already live. Long nonstop sets and live recordings count as much as albums.

In the circle in the covered stadium: dancers all round the lit garbo on a printed mandala floor, chandeliers and the shamiana overhead.
Fig. 02In the circle, with the clappers all round you.
By the stage in the stadium: the singers and band under the lights, the crowd in front with arms raised.
Fig. 03By the stage, up front with the band.
Far off in the sheri: neighbours on chairs down the lit lane, the circle dancing beyond them between the houses.
Fig. 04Far off, from the chairs down the lane: softer, and a beat late.
The outdoor stage: the singers at the front, the band on its riser, flowers of light over the truss.
Fig. 05The song’s own singers, and the band behind them.
At the DJ’s booth: the DJ in his jacket over the decks, and his laptop open in front of you as the song list.
Fig. 06Ask the DJ: his laptop is where you choose the next song.
Walking along the stalls at night: the chai stall’s bulbs and striped awning, a dabeli counter alongside, people strolling past.
Fig. 07Walk the ground, and the stalls call out.
The stadium on a phone: the circle round the garbo under the striped shamiana, the song playing below.
Fig. 08The stadium, on a phone.
At the DJ’s table on a phone: the DJ with his headphones up, and Explore open below him.
Fig. 09And the DJ, on a phone.
The View card over the venue: how you dance, where you stand, a map of the ground drawn in light, and the venues.
Fig. 10View: the venue, where you stand, and who you are.
The Sound card over the stadium: who keeps the beat, the crowd and claps, and a place to tap the beat.
Fig. 11Sound: the crowd, the claps, and the beat you tap.
Explore in the main player: essential releases as album covers, then more collections below, while a song plays.
Fig. 12Explore the catalogue.
The list of nonstop sets, with how many chapters each has, over the lamp-lit player.
Fig. 13Nonstop sets, with their chapters.
The Private Garba Circle panel: faces to choose from, and a code to share.
Fig. 14A Private Circle: everyone hears the same song at once.
Live radio playing on the open ground, the circle dancing and the player marked live.
Fig. 1524/7 Live: one song for everyone, all night.
The Simple player: a lamp-lit palace courtyard with dancers either side and the song in the middle.
Fig. 16The Simple player, for lighter devices.

Schedule of venues

16 garba nights 3 open, the rest being built

  1. Outdoors, with a song playing

    Outdoors

    Open now

    An open garba ground at night, under floodlight towers and trees in fairy lights.

  2. Indoor stadium, with a song playing

    Indoor stadium

    Open now

    A big covered arena under a shamiana, with chandeliers and stepped stands.

  3. Sheri, with a song playing

    Sheri

    Open now

    A society’s garba in the lane between the houses.

  4. Obsidian Edge

    Obsidian Edge

    Being built

    An open basin on another world, under a ringed planet.

  5. Resham Dome

    Resham Dome

    Being built

    A canopy of red ribbons radiating from a lacquered mast.

  6. Chitra Aangan

    Chitra Aangan

    Being built

    A lime-plaster floor under great trees hung with light.

  7. Voltage Lab

    Voltage Lab

    Being built

    A warehouse of brick and steel with a turning LED mandala.

  8. Chandra Van

    Chandra Van

    Being built

    A moonlit banyan garden with a white marble floor.

  9. Vrindavan Courtyard

    Vrindavan Courtyard

    Being built

    An old sandstone courtyard under the Milky Way.

  10. Tulip Grove

    Tulip Grove

    Being built

    A garden clearing lit by hundreds of tulip lamps.

  11. Lotus Amphitheatre

    Lotus Amphitheatre

    Being built

    An open bowl of eight stone tiers lit cyan.

  12. Vadodara Vision 2047

    Vadodara Vision 2047

    Being built

    Vadodara in 2047, a century after independence, among neon towers.

  13. Jyot Chowk

    Jyot Chowk

    Being built

    A cream stone courtyard lined with diyas.

  14. Tideglass Terrace

    Tideglass Terrace

    Being built

    A marble terrace over the sea under a huge low moon.

  15. Jyot Shikhar

    Jyot Shikhar

    Being built

    One great light sculpture in an open plaza.

  16. Kutch White Rann

    Kutch White Rann

    Being built

    A circle out on the white salt under the moon.

10

The hard parts and how they were solved

  1. Hundreds of dancers on a phone

    ProblemA garba ground is mostly people: rings of dancers, a crowd and a band, all moving to the beat at night under hundreds of lamps. Drawn the obvious way, a phone stutters.

    SolutionThe dancers are painted flat, ring by ring, each a fraction of a beat behind the next, over a 3D venue where everything that stands still is prepared in advance and the light from hundreds of lamps is painted in once. A whole garba night runs smoothly on an ordinary phone.

  2. Clapping in time with a song you can’t hear

    ProblemSongs play through YouTube’s own player, which is sealed: the app can’t hear a note of the music it has to clap along to.

    SolutionThe beat comes from you. Tap along and it works out the tempo, or let it listen through the microphone. Then 45 to 60 clappers placed round you clap on that beat, the far ones arriving a little late, as sound does.

  3. Everyone hearing the same moment, with no server

    ProblemA Private Circle is friends on separate phones who want to hear the same beat at the same instant, with no accounts and no server keeping them together.

    SolutionEverything they need travels in the shared link. Each phone sets its own clock against the internet’s, then gently speeds up or slows down until it’s in step. Measured across three phones: within about 30 to 40 thousandths of a second of each other.

  4. A night that never goes black or stalls

    ProblemSwitching venues used to freeze for a moment, Safari stalled, and iPads dropped the whole 3D view when memory ran short.

    SolutionVenues are prepared ahead of time, tablets keep one in memory, and every venue has a painted picture that covers the screen until the 3D is ready. Quality steps down on its own when a phone struggles, and back up when there’s room.

Under the hood

How it’s made

The technical side, part by part, for anyone curious about the engineering.

S-01PeopleA 2D canvas of dancers, about 6,000 lines: rings sized to their circumference, every dancer a fraction of a beat late, circles that form when the music starts
S-02Venuesthree.js on WebGL2, each venue its own lazily loaded module; geometry baked to vertex colour and merged, repeats instanced
S-03Light and skyEight light layers by colour temperature, from 4500 K floods to 1900 K flames, baked into light maps; tonight’s real moon phase
S-04SoundWeb Audio: an impulse response built for each venue, HRTF-panned clappers, distance delay and high-cut for where you stand
S-05BeatTap tempo by least squares, or a microphone beat follower in an AudioWorklet; be tali and tran tali scheduled on the audio clock
S-06TogetherPrivate Circle and Live radio share one clock, aligned from HTTP Date headers and held by playback-rate correction
S-07CatalogueOne JSON source of truth checked by 51 validators; every deploy publishes its commit, counts and digests so the live site can’t drift
S-08Reach248 pages, about 225 of them guides to garba’s steps, styles and history; English, Gujarati and Gujlish

Made withThree.jsWeb AudioPWA

Status

Live at playgarba.com. Thirteen more venues are being built.

See it for yourself at playgarba.com, or ask me how it’s made.

hello@rudraknows.com