Not everyone was thrilled, he said. People would throw open their windows and yell at him, or call the police, who, he said, advised him kindly to move along.  As the years went by, he and his barrel drum were effectively banned from one neighborhood after another. He now restricts himself to a short stretch of Coney Island Avenue where many Pakistanis live.  Fearing that even that limited turf may be threatened real estate for him, he has modified his approach even further — playing at well below his customary volume, for only about 15 to 20 seconds in each location, and only once every three or four days.  The complaints have stopped, he said. But as he reflected on his early years of drumming in the streets of New York — before he knew better — wistfulness seeped into his voice. He rattled off the places he used to play, however briefly: “Avenue C, Newkirk Avenue, Ditmas, Foster, Avenue H, I, J and Neptune Avenue.”  “You know,” he reluctantly concluded, “in the United States you can’t do anything without a permit.”  Mr. Boota wants to be a good American, and a good Muslim. “I don’t want to bother other communities’ people,” he said. “Just the Pakistani people.”  Several prominent Muslim organizations in New York said they knew of no other drummers who played on Ramadan mornings. But while the custom’s usefulness has been largely eclipsed by the invention of the alarm clock, it has hung on in many places. Indeed, Mr. Boota said he continues the practice, in spite of the challenges and resistance, as much to keep a tradition alive as to feed a cultural yen of his countrymen.  “They’re waiting for me,” he said.  The daily Ramadan fast runs from the start of dawn to dusk. So shortly after 3 one recent morning, Mr. Boota left his wife, Mumtaz, as she prepared a predawn meal in their Coney Island apartment. About 15 minutes later he pulled his Lincoln to a stop in front of Bismillah Food, a small Pakistani grocery store on Coney Island Avenue, near Foster Avenue. Several men were inside; taxicabs parked outside suggested their occupation.  In one fluid motion, Mr. Boota popped the trunk, cut the motor, leapt out, hoisted the drum’s strap over his shoulder, greeted the owner — “Salaam aleikum” — and, standing in the sidewalk penumbra of the shop’s fluorescent light, began playing.  The men came to the door. “He’s a very popular man here,” one of them said, nodding at Mr. Boota, who wore his usual performance attire: a traditional shalwar kameez, a loose two-piece outfit, elaborately embroidered with gold thread.  Mr. Boota wielded his two drumsticks in a galloping clangor that echoed off the facades of the darkened buildings.  After about 20 seconds, he ended his performance with a punctuative smack of the taut drum heads. There was an exchange of mumbled pleasantries, the men moved back inside the store, and as quickly as he had arrived, Mr. Boota was behind the wheel of his car again, driving a block south to another Pakistani-owned business.  “A few seconds,” he said, as he cut the engine again. “Ten, 15 seconds, and bye-bye.”  For the next 20 minutes, he repeated this drill outside three Pakistani restaurants, four convenience and grocery stores and a service station.  No one complained — audibly, at least. And a close watch on nearby windows along the street revealed no annoyed, or even curious, residents.  “You see, nobody yelling at you,” Mr. Boota said cheerily. “Everybody happy to see you.”  He added, “I don’t want people unhappy.”  Drumming, Mr. Boota said, is a family tradition. He is a seventh-generation ceremonial drummer and is now training his 20-year-old son, Sher, one of eight children. In addition to his Ramadan reveilles, Mr. Boota plays at Pakistani weddings, birthday parties, graduation celebrations and other events.  “A lot of happiness hours!” he exclaimed.  During his rounds the next night, he stopped at a Pakistani-run service station and wandered with his drum into the service bay. He wanted to demonstrate the full capacity of his instrument. One of the mechanics slid the heavy doors shut, and Mr. Boota started to play at full volume, unleashing deafening sheets of sound. For three solid minutes he pounded out relentless, churning polyrhythms that filled the space like smoke.  Mr. Boota was obviously reveling in the power of his drum after a week of frustrated Ramadan duty. As the ringing in the listeners’ ears faded, he headed back to his car.  “It’s a great noise,” he said.  An article on Sunday about Mohammad Boota, a Brooklyn man who drums on the streets before dawn during the month of Ramadan to awake Muslims so they can eat a meal before the day’s fasting begins, misstated the date that Ramadan ends this year. The date, which varies by year, geographic location and religious sect, is either Saturday or Sunday, not Monday.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Awakening Brooklyn for Ramadan, With a Big Drum, at 4 A.M. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
During Ramadan, Mohammad Boota plays his drum to wake Muslim worshipers, but the limits of New York hospitality have modified his predawn performances.