New research in South Asian performing arts
IMR South Asia Music and Dance Forum
20 January 2012, 10am-5.30pm, Room G35, Ground floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
10-10.30 Coffee and registration
10.30-12.00 Video link with Indian Musicological Society Annual Conference, Mumbai, India
10.30-11.15 (16.00-16.45 Indian time), Presentations from Mumbai
Chair: Arvind Parikh
Aneesh Pradhan
Suresh Chandvankar
11.15-11.45 (16.45-17.15 Indian time) Presentations from London
Chair: Richard Widdess
Francis Silkstone (composition)
Anna Morcom (film music)
Brahma Prakash (ethnomusicology in an Indian context)
12.00-2.00 Lunch break
2.00-3.30 New research in Indian performing arts
Chair: Richard Widdess
2.00-2.30 Richard David Williams (King's College London), 'Participation through poetry in the Radhavallabh Sampraday: music and the divine encounter'
2.30-3.00 James Sykes (King's College London), 'Hearing like a State: Sri Lanka and the Ethics of Musicology'
3.00-3.30 Menaka PP Bora (University of Oxford), 'Mudra, Manuscript & Music: A contemporary study of a 16th century Sanskrit manuscript from the Bodleian Library in Oxford'
3.30-4.00 Tea
4.00-5.30 New research in Indian performing arts
Chair: Anna Morcom
4.00-4.30 Sangita Shrestova (University of Southern California), 'Dancing to a Global Bollywood Beat? Between Film and Live Performance'
4.30-5.00 Stacey Pricket (Roehampton University), 'Ticking the boxes: Kathak, hip-hop and contemporary identities'
5.00-5.30 Brahma Prakash (Royal Holloway, University of London), 'Paradox in Performance and Paradox of Performance: Performing a Lower-caste identity in Bihar (India)'
Enquiries, please contact Anna Morcom, anna.morcom@rhul.ac.uk
Advance registration advised. Waged £10 contribution to costs, on door. Students/unwaged free of charge. Email music@sas.ac.uk to register
Abstracts
Menaka PP Bora (University of Oxford)
‘Mudra, Manuscript & Music : A contemporary study of a 16th century Sanskrit manuscript from the Bodleian Library in Oxford’
This paper-performance is based on my forthcoming article in The Bodleian Library Record journal highlighting a rare Sanskrit manuscript entitled Sr?hastamukt?val?, MSS. Wilson 234, which contains an elaborate treatise on the use of hasta or hand gestures in traditional Indian performance. Authored by Subhankara Kavi, a noted scholar on Indian music and dance, this particular version was hand written by Sri Raghava Khuna Pandit in eastern India. Although there is no exact information about the date of this Indian manuscript, the local scholars have argued that it was written sometime in the middle of 16th century AD on the basis of the citations of Subhankara Kavi. This Bodleian copy manuscript was collected by Horace Hayman Wilson, a distinguished Sanskritist of his era, who was the first Boden Professor of 'Sanskreet language' at Oxford in 1832. This text was written in a combined Bengali-Assamese script belonging to West Bengal and Assam in eastern India. Both these languages are derived from Sanskrit. In the first section of this text (Folio 22-24), each page has six lines of text and in the later part (Folio 25-61) there are five lines of text. The names of the hand gestures appear from the first page onwards. There are references in related studies suggesting the use of some of these hand gestures by the Hindu monks to depict stories from the Ramay?na and Mahabh?rata through performances of a 15th century living performance tradition called Sattriya in Assam. I hope to propose that a study of this Bodleian copy of Sr?hastamukt?val? provides ample scope for understanding the unique characteristics of the classical Assamese music and dance traditions. In the wider context, this study raises issues on how a study of manuscripts can be applied to the development of performance traditions in contemporary India.
Stacey Pricket (Roehampton University)
‘Ticking the boxes: Kathak, hip-hop and contemporary identities’
This paper examines the work of Sonia Sabri, a prominent kathak classical soloist who also choreographs contemporary dances that push boundaries of the kathak form. Based in Birmingham, Kathakbox is a collaborative production that integrates hip-hop (dance, beatbox and poetry) with tabla and kathak to contest the tick-box identity constructions constantly under negotiation. In addition to the performance event, Kathakbox’s outreach projects provide rich material to interrogate a range of identity constructions. New constituencies (such as Muslim women) are reached through Kathakbox’s innovative mix of styles, its use of text offering opportunities for narrative strands to be drawn from the personal stories of workshop practitioners. Cultural geographer Claire Dwyer’s (1999, 2009) research into young Muslim British women’s negotiation of diasporic identities and Judith Hamera’s (2007) conceptualisations of dance technique as inscribing the body inform this investigation, situated within discussion of larger issues of diasporic identity and hybridity.
Sangita Shrestova (University of Southern California)
‘Dancing to a Global Bollywood Beat? Between Film and Live Performance’
Today, Bollywood dance, a colloquial term used to describe choreography inspired by song-and-dance sequences in Hindi films, is fast becoming a global phenomenon in urban centers from Sidney, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Kathmandu, to London. Driven by enthusiasm expressed by Indian and non-Indian audiences to experience choreography contained in Hindi films, Bollywood dance has now emerged as a popular, lucrative, and recognized movement category. In Mumbai, the globally savvy film industry increasingly caters to diasporic tastes in hopes of capturing much coveted overseas markets. In the United States, staged interpretations of Bollywood film song and dance sequences dominate annual cultural shows organized by South Asian associations on college campuses. Around the world specialized schools advertise their ability to impart authentic Hindi film choreography to their students. Through an investigation of the increasingly dominant presence of Bollywood dance, this presentation explores the symbiotic relationship between film and live performance with a particular focus on the embodied dimensions of Bollywood dance. I argue that Bollywood dance represents a rather novel site of cultural reception in which performance, audience and commercial film cross reference, challenge and influence and remediate each other in ways that challenge conventional understandings of production and consumption, embodiment and migration.
Brahma Prakash Singh (Royal Holloway)
‘Paradox in Performance and Paradox of Performance: Performing a Lower-caste identity in Bihar (India)’
Reshma-Chuharmal is a love epic from the eastern Indian state of Bihar. It tells the story of Reshma, a daughter of a feudal landlord (or local king) who belonged to the dominant upper caste Bhumihar, and Chuharmal, a cowherd and wrestler who belonged to the lower caste Dusadh (Dalit) caste. For several decades the story has been a bone of contention between the upper-castes and the lower-castes in the south Bihar region. The story of Reshma-Chuharmal has led several caste-riots (or caste-wars) in Bihar. It is to be noted that in caste-based feudal society, asymmetrical love is taken as one of the biggest offences, particularly when the male belongs to dalit (untouchables) and the female belongs to the upper caste.
The story of Reshma-Chuharma is enacted in several folk genres, ranging from text to performance. It is performed as a ritual worship, as a gossip, as a legend and in ballad and theatrical forms. Most provocatively, it is performed in Bidesia style of theatre in which Reshma is enacted by a launda (female impersonator). The story is also printed and circulated in booklets and distributed in Dalit melas (fair) as part of dalit consciousness-raising campaigns.
Scholarly tendencies have been to see such performances as part of subaltern-elite discourses or as symbolic struggles of subaltern dalits and dominant upper-castes. In traditional performance genres the dalit discourses are still in flux. Reinelt argues that when discourses are in flux, then political struggles exist at various sites of contestation (2009:201). In the context of fragmented Indian society, the point can also be put the other way round: since political struggles exist at various sites, the discourse are in flux. Both these aspects have resulted in a very paradoxical nature of dalit-identity as well as of performance. This paper asks us to go beyond the usual subaltern-elite symbolisms in performance. On the basis of my ethnographic study of Reshma-Chuharmal I will show how Dusadh as a marginalized caste have used all possible strategies and symbols, from revolutionary to Brahminical and patriarchal to overcome their social marginality. The performance not only shows the paradoxical nature of lower-caste identity but also reveals the paradoxical nature of performance itself. Broadly, this paper attempts to study performance of a lower-caste identity on the line of performance of class (Willis 1977), ethnicity (Moerman 1974), gender (Butler 1990; Mendoza-Denton 1996) and sexual identity (Queen 1997).
James Sykes (Kings College London)
‘Hearing Like a State: Sri Lanka and the Ethics of Musicology’
This paper maps the interplay between disaster, local subjectivities and cultural practices in the eastern Sri Lankan province of Batticaloa. Deeply affected by Sri Lanka’s long-running civil war and 2004 tsunami, roughly half of Batticaloa’s population is Tamil-speaking Hindu, while half is Tamil-speaking Muslim. On and off for over twenty-five years, Batticaloa witnessed terrible brutality at the hands of the (northern Tamil-led) LTTE rebels and the Sri Lankan government forces, until hostilities concluded with the extermination of the LTTE leadership in 2009. During fieldwork (2004-2008), military personnel lined the streets, tanks roamed the area, and sporadic violence still occurred in and outside Batticaloa town. This paper focuses on a conundrum faced by Batticaloa’s musicians and musicologists in the wake of a civil war between two competing sovereigns deemed to reside elsewhere: precisely how one defines Batticaloa’s music (what ethnic/cultural languages one uses) appears to constitute calls for a particular mode of governance. This paper examines how musicians in Batticaloa manipulate their music historical narratives for the purpose of promoting their own ‘freedom’, and questions the possibility of achieving such freedom when attempts at a “liberated aesthetics” must proceed through the languages of community that so forcefully constitute the modern. Drawing on James C. Scott’s book Seeing Like a State, I suggest we musicologists “hear like a state” when we reduce calls for a liberated aesthetics to the communal languages necessary to the foreign sovereign powers that would (or would wish) to rule such regions – though our conundrum is the same in that we, too, seem incapable of representing a liberated aesthetics without using the very same communal languages that deny the possibility of its becoming.
Richard David Williams (Kings College London)
‘Participation through poetry in the Radhavallabh Sampraday: music and the divine encounter’
Though small and under-studied, the Radhavallabh Sampraday stands out among the devotional communities of Vrindavan. In the centre of Krishna worship in North India, this sect has elevated the status of the god’s consort, Radha, to the levels of a Supreme Being, rendering Krishna merely her companion. The full dynamics of this relationship, and its theological implications have largely been neglected, partly because the Samprad?y prioritises poetry and singing traditions, rather than strictly philosophical texts. This paper re-evaluates how we examine bhakti sources, drawing on translations from the eighteenth-century Braj Bhasha poet Chaca Vrindavandas, in order to demonstrate how song texts are not merely decorative accessories to worship. Examining these lyrics provides a rich sense of a ‘situational theology’, and indicates how music was understood not as a means of religious practice, but rather as a soteriological end in itself.
Technology and fusion in South Asian performing arts
IMR South Asia Music and Dance Forum
2 June 2011, 12am-4pm, The Court Room, 1st floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Followed by Lecture by Gert-Mathias Wegner at 5pm at SOAS
12.00-1.30 Panel 1, Chair: Anna Morcom
1.30-2.30 Lunch break
2.30-4.00 Panel 2, Chair: Katherine Schofield
4.00-4.30 Conclusion and tea
5.00-6.00 School of Oriental and African Studies, Room G2, Chair: Richard Widdess
Gert-Mathias Wegner, Freie Universität Berlin and Kathmandu University, ‘Musical change in Bhaktapur, Nepal’
Enquiries, please contact Anna Morcom, anna.morcom@rhul.ac.uk
Advance registration advised. Waged £5 contribution to costs, on door. Students/unwaged free of charge. Email music@sas.ac.uk to register
Abstracts
Avanthi Meduri, Dance Department, University of Roehampton, ‘Fusion/Hybridity in Contemporary Dance production in the UK’
This paper will explore issues around fusion and hybridity in contemporary Indian dance production in the UK and focus specifically on the choreographic and education work of Shobana Jeyasingh, acclaimed British South Asian dance choreographer. I will discuss Jeyasingh's opus by contexualizing her work within the context of British multiculturalism as it was articulated in the late 1980s. Specifically, I will describe how she contemporized the classical vocabulary of Bharatanatyam, and self-consciously integrated this ancient form into British multicultural arts initiatives of the 1990s, continuing into the present. Dancers have argued that Jeyasingh created fusion work, but the author describes her own work within the larger historical framework of dance migration, postcoloniality and hybridty. What is the difference then between hybridity and fusion? The paper will explore these two issues and do this by examining two major works, Bruise Blood and Faultline, created in 2000.
Viram Jasani, Director, Asian Music Circuit, ‘Fuse and destroy?’
In this presentation I reflect on the possibilities and limitations of fusion and Indian classical music in a wide range of musical contexts.
Having been brought up with Indian classical music from early childhood, I have performed extensively as a sitarist in India and Europe and have also taken part in numerous fusion projects involving Indian classical music as a performer and a producer. These have included Rock and Jazz fusion in some of its earliest manifestations - for example with Jimmy Page, Led Zepellin, Stan Tracy, Mike Garrett and George Martin. I have commissioned works with the composer Michael Nyman and the Indian musicians Rajan and Sajan Misra and U. Srinivas, and also various ‘world music’ fusions such as ‘Les Dangerueses’ involving Indian thumri - Malian griots and UK Jazz; ‘Desert music’ with Rajasthani folk music and Afel Bochum from Niafunke-Mali; and a Flamenco fusion project with Paco Pena and Nishat Khan.
Reflecting on this experience, I question whether fusion projects can produce a depth of expression that can compare with that of their constituent traditions; I question also whether they can be anything more than transitory and temporary phenomena, unable to gain a status, identity or presence that can make them equal to or even more than the sum of their parts which have emerged and evolved over many years. I also reflect on different modes of learning and different mindsets relating to the place of the individual in Indian classical music as opposed to western traditions, and how this affects the success of fusion projects.
Francis Silkstone, Centre for Contemporary Music, Goldsmiths, University of London, ‘Co-composing with Indian maestroes: Methodology and creativity’
Pandits Rajan and Sajan Misra are amongst India’s greatest middle-generation khyal singers. Improvisation is the essence of their art. There is no constraint upon khyal singers’ spontaneity, because they are accompanied only by a drone and tabla (drum). A key problem in creating our intercultural music, is that replacing these traditional accompanists by a Western new-music ensemble greatly reduces singers’ freedom to improvise. Unless there is an equally significant gain to compensate for this loss, the music will be diminished.
After summarising issues and progress from our collaborations in 2008 & 2009, I will focus on methods and processes from our latest work in June-Aug. 2010:
I will conclude by outlining our plans for further collaborations in 2011-12, in which we are exploring synergies & contrasts between Christian & Hindu myths of erotic/divine love; St. Mary Magdalen/Jesus; Radha/Krishna.
My ongoing collaboration with Pdts. Rajan and Sajan Mishra, since August 2007, is the core of my 5-year AHRC Creative Fellowship - Intercultural Composition: Arranging Marriages Between Western and South Asian Art-Music (2007-2012). My approaches build upon my study of Hindustani music since 1974, my work as composer of intercultural Indian/Western music since 1983, and my work as a consultant on projects ranging from Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) to Ensemble Modern’s Rasalila (2003/2005).
Dr Shihan de Silva, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, ‘Kaffrinha: Music, Song and Dance of Sri Lanka’
Scholarship tends to overlook the cultural flows emanating from the global expansion of trade. Merchants, missionaries, mariners, mercenaries and colonization have been the focus of research. The intangible heritage resulting from colonial encounters is given little attention. A form of music, song and dance in Sri Lanka called Kaffrinha, associated with the Portuguese era (1505-1658), is an example. Oral traditions, inevitably, change over time and space and Kaffrinha has evolved over the centuries. Late nineteenth century/early twentieth century records are a useful source to study this change. Amongst the descendants of the Portuguese (Portuguese Burghers) Kaffrinha is considered to be part of their Lusitanian heritage; they are an essential part of their traditions and customary practices. On the other hand, the word Kaffrinha is associated with Africans who came to the island during the colonial era. Moreover, as the incoming Africans became speakers of Indo-Portuguese, a creolised Portuguese which was the lingua franca of the day, they were ascribed a Portuguese identity. The entangled histories of Africans, Europeans and Asians complicates the analysis of Kaffrinha and offers a challenge to scholars.
Jeanne Miramon-Bonhoure, PhD candidate, Sorbonne University, ‘The Western touch: “Keep it classical based but make it sound more attractive” - fusion bands in New Delhi today’
This paper will examine the fusion band phenomenon among young musicians in New Delhi through the presentation of two popular contemporary bands in the Indian Capital: Advaita and Shwaas.
Coming from a classical background, and performing also as classical artists, leaders of these bands explore in their own terms ‘new ways to communicate their musical heritage to the young generation’. Classical bandiś with a guitar and drums accompaniment, traditional kurta with jeans and a virtuoso sarangi solo are some of the basic ingredients to stay traditional but ‘in’. Looking at the way they make music from studio to stage, I will explore the aesthetic of this fairly new genre through the analyses of live performances. I will try to understand what is at stake for these musicians engaged in fusion music nowadays and how features such as the choice of instrument, the setting on stage, the dress codes and the composition process reveal a complex social mechanism.
Nicolas Magriel, SOAS, ‘1966, 1967, Psychedelia, and growing (sideways) into Indian music’
For many Westerners of my generation involved with Indian music, especially in the United States, first exposure came in 1966 or 1967, roughly concurrent with a flood of easily-available LSD and other psychedelic drugs and an explosion in their use—which sparked a widespread interest in Eastern mysticism. This presentation will address the linking of Indian music with psychedelia and mysticism in the film Chappaqua, in the Beatles’ and Rolling Stones’ pioneering masterpieces of fusion music, and in my own life, and give a glimpse of other early uses of Indian instruments in pop.
**************************************
Gert-Matthias Wegner (Freie Universität Berlin and Kathmandu University) was unable to give his paper on 'Musical change in Bhaktapur, Nepal' on 13 January because of ill health. We will re-schedule Prof. Wegner's lecture for a later date, as soon as it can conveniently be arranged.
Thursday 13 January 2011
Chancellor's Hall, Senate House
MUSICAL CHANGE
1.30 pm Registration
2.00 pm Introduction
2.05 pm
Chloe Zadeh (SOAS)
Cultivating a respectable femininity: gender and Girija Devi’s ṭhumrī style
2.35 pm
Nandini Muthuswamy (SOAS)
Music, Change and Meaning in the Performance of the Tēvāram in the Śaivaite temples of Tamil Nadu.
3.05 pm Break
3.20 pm
Menaka PP Bora (University of Oxford)
Musical change and continuity in Sattriya performance tradition of Assam, India (including film: Sattriya Music & Dance)
4.00 pm
Anna Stirr (University of Oxford)
Tending the Flower Garden: Forming Nepali National Unity and Diversity Through Music
4.30 pm Discussion followed by Tea
All are welcome. Advance registration advised. Waged £5 contribution to costs, on door. Concessions free of charge. Email music@sas.ac.uk to register.
Abstracts
Cultivating a respectable femininity: gender and Girija Devi’s ṭhumrī style
A cloud of suspicion surrounds the North Indian semi-classical genre ṭhumrī. In the nineteenth century, ṭhumrī was courtesans’ music: they sang it for elite gentlemen, often as a prelude to sexual relations. Nowadays, classical musicians of both sexes perform the genre in the concert hall; however, despite its new, respectable performance context, the genre has retained its association with courtesans and continues to exude an aura of disrepute. This threatens to damage the reputation of the women who sing it. Unlike their male counterparts (who may sing ṭhumrī with impunity), women ṭhumrī-singers are frequently suspected of hailing from a courtesan background; this can have detrimental effects on their status amongst classical musicians and often also on their careers. This paper will examine the musical style of Girija Devi, one of the foremost ṭhumrī-singers of the twentieth century. It will highlight some of Devi’s stylistic innovations, reading them as part of an attempt to raise the prestige of ṭhumrī and to assert her status as a reputable classical musician.
Nandini Muthuswamy (SOAS)
Music, Change and Meaning in the Performance of the Tēvāram in the Śaivaite temples of Tamil Nadu.
Singing of sacred hymns during rituals is widely found in the cultures of South Asia. This practice has existed in the ritualistic practices of the Śaivaite temples of Tamil Nadu, where sacred hymns known as the Tēvāram-s are sung by specialist temple singers known as Ōduvār-s. This tradition of singing the Tēvāram hymn-s was established in the 11th century A.D. and is still practiced in many temples of Tamil Nadu since it is believed that the temple rituals are incomplete without the performance of the Tēvāram-s. But this has not been a continuous tradition and with the passage of time this tradition has undergone several changes. Drawing upon my own fieldwork, this paper will examine the function of the Tēvāram performance in temple rituals. It will examine the musical characteristics of the hymns besides the various meanings of the Tēvāram performance. It will also deal with the changes in the music, context and performance of the hymns and the reasons for the changes that have occurred in this hymnal tradition.
Menaka PP Bora (University of Oxford)
Musical change and continuity in Sattriya performance tradition of Assam, India
This paper is an interdisciplinary study of ‘musical change’ of Sattriya performance culture of India. Sattriya culture is introduced as a rare 15th century old Vaishnavite music and dance tradition of male monks living in the Hindu monasteries of Assam in north-east India. Originally performed, preserved and practised as a sacred performance art exclusively by male monks, this culture is now developed into an inclusive contemporary classical performance through an ongoing period of professionalization and institutionalization in India. It has embraced three layers of transition: From a ritualistic art form to that of a concert art form, from a male oriented performance form to that of a female oriented performance form and from an oral tradition based musical tradition to that of an institutionalized musical tradition.
This paper will explore the relationship between musical continuity and change of Sattriya performance tradition within and outside the monasteries using audio-visual materials. How does the process of change take place? What is the role of the ‘guru’ in making changes to a tradition? Whose voice is included and whose voice is excluded in this process? What kinds of musical changes are taking place and for whom?
As a case study, I will be discussing my own short ethnographic film entitled, Sattriya Music & Dance.
Anna Stirr (University of Oxford)
Tending the Flower Garden: Forming Nepali National Unity and Diversity Through Music
What is known as Nepali dohori song today has grown out of many different forms and practices of dialogic song. This paper traces the genealogies of musical tropes in dohori and the umbrella genre of national folk song (lok git) through a history of musical nationalism, and associated musical and language ideologies. It looks at song genres chosen to represent the nation after the founding of the national radio in 1951, and how the radio shaped Nepali national folk. It also tells the story of national dohori competitions and the emergence of a private music industry, and how they, along with the radio, consolidated dohori into its current generic parameters. It examines the power dynamics of region, caste, gender, and ethnicity, showing how the attempt to unite Nepal’s musical diversity into an all-inclusive national genre ended in the over-representation of particular regional styles, and, most importantly, how the music chosen brought the marginalized rural, feminine, and indigenous into the heart of the national imaginary.
**************************
13:30
Nicolas Magriel (SOAS)
Observing Children's Musical Progress in Hindustani and Manganiyar Contexts
14:00
William Tallotte (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris)
Beyond the notion of model in improvisation. A South Indian case study
14:30
Richard Widdess (SOAS)
Implicit rāga knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley
15:00
discussion
15:30
TEA BREAK
16:00
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Role, hierarchy and contestation in khyal performance
16:30
Nikki Moran (University of Edinburgh)
Double Act: North Indian musicians' communicative co-operation
17:00
Laura Leante (Open University)
The hills are alive with the sound of ragas: Listening to North Indian classical music.
17:30
discussion
18:00
Summary: Katherine Butler Brown (KCL)
Advance registration advised via music@sas.ac.uk. Waged £5 contribution to costs on door. Concessions free of charge.
ABSTRACTS
Nicolas Magriel: “Observing Children's Musical Progress in Hindustani and Manganiyar Contexts”
'Beyond Text: Growing into Music' is a three-year AHRC-funded study of musical enculturation in oral traditions including Mali, Cuba, Venezuela and Azerbaijan as well as India. I have been working in Azerbaijan—and in India, with mainly hereditary Hindustani musicians in Delhi, Bhopal, Benares and Kolkata as well as Qawals in Delhi and Langa and Manganiyar musicians in Jodhpur, Barnava, Hameera, Bisu and Sinhaura. As we reach the mid-point of this largely video-based project, I am beginning to wrestle with the challenge of collating and presenting the project's longitudinal aspect. What are the markers of children's musical progress? Why do some youngsters achieve a high level of musical proficiency before adolescence while others simply flounder? How is it that unmotivated kids who never practise and receive scant talim, sometimes go on to become proficient musicians simply by virtue of growing up surrounded by music? Some hereditary musicians cite economic imperatives and the importance of schooling as justification for their children’s musical atrophy, yet in other families, both hereditary and non-hereditary, a disciplined approach balances the demands of education and music practice—producing children who excel at their exams and also start performing professionally in their early teens.
The film I am presenting today is a preliminary excursion into exploring these themes by combining clips from around 180 hours of video filmed during fieldwork in 2009 and 2010 with some morsels from my work with sarangi families during the 1990s—which first inspired my interest in musical enculturation. Time allowing, it will touch upon Manganiyar music acquisition, accomplished nearly exclusively through osmosis, as well the Hindustani system of exposure, conceptualisation, teaching and practice.
William Tallotte: “Beyond the notion of model in improvisation. A south Indian case study.”
To describe, explain and analyse improvisation, ethnomusicologists have developed a method that mainly focuses on the identification of “models” or “referents” – which could be defined as the musical and technical knowledge that a performer uses as a basis for improvising. It can nevertheless be stressed, quite paradoxically, that this approach is principally effective in localizing and understanding elements prior to improvisation. In other words, “models” cannot fully inform us about performance processes since they do not refer to the improvisation itself (as a creative and spontaneous act).
This communication simply proposes or suggests, through the case of south Indian oboe (nāgasvaram) players, new ways for apprehending improvisation in order to go beyond, as far as possible, the notion of model.
Richard Widdess: “Implicit rāga knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley”
The term rāga is current not only in the classical traditions of North and South Indian music, where it is the subject of an extensive written and oral theory, but also in many non-classical traditions especially of religious music in South Asia. For example, devotional songs sung in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, are regularly attributed to rāgas; but there is little explicit (i.e. verbally expressed) knowledge about rāga among the performers of this music. The question whether the concept has any musical meaning in terms of melodic structure, and/or symbolic, cultural or historic meanings, can only be investigated through comparative musical analysis combined with ethnographic observation. In 1997, Grandin analysed songs in the rāga Basanta, and concluded that a consistent modal identity is present; he interpreted this finding as evidence for the transmission of a musical Great Tradition from India to Nepal via local court musicians. Grandin’s analysis, however, omitted consideration of several key factors, notably the rāga-prelude (rāg kāyegu) traditionally sung before each song. Analysis of these preludes suggests that they follow a standard formal schema, that each prelude is a fixed melody, and that different singing groups sing the same preludes. It is also suggested that a rāga-prelude constitutes a melodic model that underlies songs in the same rāga. These findings are consistent with Grandin’s, and with his historical interpretation, but go further in revealing an implicit modal system that does not depend on performers’ explicit knowledge.
Reference:
Grandin, Ingemar: “Rāga Basanta and the spring songs of the Kathmandu Valley. A musical Great Tradition among Himalayan farmers?”, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 12–13, 1997
Martin Clayton: “Role, hierarchy and contestation in khyal performance”
This paper reports on recent ethnographic interviews and observation of performances, concerning the relationships between members of performing groups in the Hindustani tradition. An archetypal khyal party features a main vocalist with tabla, harmonium and one or more tanpura players (typically students of the main vocalist who may also provide vocal support). I will discuss different dimensions of the relationships between the members of the group – particularly, the interacting hierarchies of ‘role’ and ‘seniority’ – in the light of contrasting descriptions of these interactions as either ‘team work’ or a struggle for ‘dominance’. The ways in which socio-musical intimacies and confrontations are acted out in front of audiences, and the attempts of musicians to conceal the latter from their listeners, will be discussed with the help of interview and performance video clips.
Nikki Moran: “Double Act: : North Indian musicians' communicative co-operation”
This presentation describes empirical research on nonverbal communication
between North Indian duo performers, examining the idea that musical
performance is a form of social interaction. In this case of North Indian
classical instrumental duos, the musicians themselves emphasise the
importance of a sympathetic and responsive duo partner. The study presented
here demonstrates how a combination of social and musical factors influence
the way in which the musicians co-operate to create a joint performance.
Laura Leante: “The hills are alive with the sound of ragas: Listening to North Indian classical music.”
In this paper I will discuss the reception of Hindustani classical music by South Asian audiences. I will consider how listeners can express emotions elicited by and meanings they attribute to the music through imagery, and I will investigate how these images reveal processes of embodiment of patterns of movement encoded in the music.
This paper stems from research carried out within the AHRC-funded project “The Reception of Performance in North Indian Classical music” and is based on extensive ethnographic carried out with listeners in the states of West Bengal and Maharashtra between 2007 and 2010.
***********************************************************
“What's in a name? The vagaries of Mughal classifications of performing artists.”
One of the central historiographical debates in studies of the transition to British colonial rule in the subcontinent has concerned caste, and the extent to which it has always constituted the defining superstructure of Indian society. On the one hand, historians of colonial discourse have argued that the British virtually invented caste as a hierarchical set of impermeable social categories in the nineteenth century, in their attempts to gather knowledge of India in order to rule it, particularly through official censuses. On the other, historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have pointed out that both Mughal and Rajput rulers used many of the same social categories as the British to differentiate the populations they ruled, usually for tax purposes; and that indigenous scribes and collectors often formed the ground troops of British knowledge collecting activities. In relation to performing artists, from at least 1593 the Mughals did indeed recognise fine differences between communities of musicians, dancers and actors, and categorised them accordingly. This loose paper will look at Mughal and British classifications of communities of male and female musicians, dancers and actors, and suggest that, while their classificatory system was more accurate and nuanced than the British censuses, the Mughals nonetheless frequently conflated apparently different groups, particularly of male dancer-actors. This raises questions about the extent to which Mughal categories were social or occupational, or a mixture of both, and hence the extent to which vagueness about the boundaries of community status indicates possibilities for social mobility.
Kathak, the “classical” dance of North India is described in histories of North Indian dance as having originated in Vedic times when story-tellers called “Kathakas” wandered the countryside reciting Hindu epics and mythological tales and illustrated them with dramatic gestures. Today’s dance is said to have evolved from these devotional beginnings and the hereditary dance families who use the name “Kathak” and claim ownership of the dance are understood to have descended from the priestly Kathakas. My research into the history of kathak finds little to support this version. After scattered references to “kathakas” in Sanskrit documents, there is a curious gap until performers identified as Kathaks appear in nineteenth-century censuses, travel writings, and Urdu treatises. They are most visible in the British census reports, where they are documented as singing and dancing masters or accompanists to courtesans, but they are also in travel writings (as dancing boys, or men dressed as women), and in two Urdu treatises, where they are masters of dance and expressive acting, but also play tabla, sarangi, and sing. Through an in-depth examination of these sources, I argue that the present Kathak caste of musicians and dancers separated from an existing group of hereditary performing artists sometime in the late 1700s. Adopting a new name, “Kathak”, as a designation first for their occupation and eventually for their caste they gradually raised their status by assuming higher ritual behaviours and eventually identifying themselves as Brahmins. My work demonstrates that caste and status are not only adaptable, but seem actively used by performers themselves to create new identities.
Before modern reforms, no married or marriageable woman could perform professionally in public or in front of men. Hence females who performed in front of men were of the courtesan type, belonging to matrilineal communities that existed outside of marriage. However, another group of erotic female performers in South Asia have also existed transgenders or effeminate men who are known as kothis in North India. Such performers are pan-South Asian, and constitute what can be described as a whole sector of Indian performing arts. In this paper, I examine how the status, gender, sexuality and eroticism of kothis compare with female erotic performers, and with other transgender performers in India, the hijras. I then look more closely at the social organisation of kothi performers, and the cultural and social space they occupy in India. Finally I address how radical changes in social class in India following industrialisation and liberalisation is affecting the social and cultural space of kothi performers and their identity and status as performers.
The division of Indian arts, problematically dichotomized by Milton Singer as 'great' and 'little', complicates yet continues to influence definitions of musical genre in India. In Maharashtra, the saint-songs of the Vārkarīs (a local devotional Hindu sect) have comprised an important vernacular canon since the 13th century. For the huge number of historically non-literate, lower castes of the countryside, these Marathi songs slowly became the central texts of a performance literature. The Vārkarī canon is preserved today within families of devotees, most carefully through the pakhawaj players who accompany performance, and who learn a variety of improvisational styles from a handful of established gurus. For some Maharashtrians, 'little' tradition becomes central, guarded and retained through years of study.
In this presentation I focus on the role of the individual music-maker in the construction of generic divisions of musical status. In so doing, I examine the ways in which stylistic markers allow these musicians to innovate, reify, and/or contest their own status as devotees. For the individual performer, genre boundaries are not definitive; rather they encompass a field of play upon which the negotiation of style, form, and even the practicalities of a musical career may take place.
How have vernacular language music industries in South Asia shaped trajectories of social mobility for Dalit musicians? By attending to the experiences of musicians from three hereditary caste communities in the Garhwal Himalayas – Baddi, Bajgi, and Jagariya – and by interrogating the body politics of a number of mass-mediated representations, this paper critiques the idea that new media and vernacular markets have had a democratizing influence on musical practice. Instead, it demonstrates that entrenched and widely-shared conceptions about caste-based status, function, musical style, and mobility continue to influence who is allowed to participate in regional studio recordings, and how they are ultimately represented on video and cassette albums.
IMR South Asia Music and Dance Forum
Katherine Brown <katherine.r.brown@kcl.ac.uk>
Anna Morcom <Anna.Morcom@rhul.ac.uk>
Richard Widdess <rw4@soas.ac.uk>
Institute for Musical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Valerie James <Valerie.James@sas.ac.uk>
