In 1992, when I was still new as staff folklorist at Allied Arts of Chattanooga, some of my first fieldwork was in the South Asian community there. I was invited to this event, held at the UTC-Chattanooga gym, by a local Indian dance teacher. The garba was sponsored by the Engineers Group (a sub-set of the local Gujarathi Samaj, I think), and the singer was Rajesh Jyotishi of Atlanta.
Having just been studying the history of Appalachian dance while at my previous gig, as folklorist at the John C. Campbell Folk School, I was taken by the similarities of the garba to the Appalachian Big Circle. The band plays a medley of several songs over the course of one dance, like the "set" familiar to mountain dancer. The garba in this context is general participation, like most community dances---all ages, men and women, boys and girls. Everyone gets to dance with everyone else.
If you Google garba or garba ras, you're more likely to see a competition, with teams in uniform costume, or "folkloric" staged performances by uni-sex groups.
The garba ras (seen in the second and third videos) are a traditional stick dance, usually by teams of men, but in this case, open to the whole community. This has a parallel with the Morris Sword dance of Cotswold, England . . .
D.
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