Music and Dance As Everyday South Asia

This book offers an inclusive lens through which to study the music and dance of South Asia, its diasporas, and the people who produce and use these cultural expressions. Each chapter's central argument ties into a participatory exercise that provides active ways to understand and engage with cultural meaning.

List of contents

• Introduction: Comprehensive Approaches to South Asian Sound and Movement


• Sarah L. Morelli and Zoe C. Sherinian


• Section One: Identity in Place and Community


• Introduction by Peter Kvetko and Sarah L. Morelli


• 1. A Sense of the City: Embodied Practice and Popular Music in Mumbai


• Peter Kvetko


• 2. A Melody of Lucknow: Hearing History in North Indian Music


• Max Katz


• 3. Sufi Devotional Performances in Multan, Pakistan, a "City of Saints"


• Karim Gillani


• 4. Hale da Divan: Trance, Historical Consciousness, and the Ecstasy of Separation in Namdhari Sikh Services


• Janice Protopapas


• 5. "Small Voices Sing Big Songs": Music as Development in the Thar Desert


• Shalini R. Ayyagari


• Section Two: Performance Dynamics: Style, Genre, Coding, and Function


• Introduction by Zoe C. Sherinian


• 6. Changing Musical Style and Social Identity in Tamil Christian Kirttanai


• Zoe C. Sherinian


• 7. Professional Weeping: Music, Affect, and Hierarchy in a South Indian Folk Performance Art


• Paul D. Greene


• 8. Sindhi Kafi and Vernacular Islam in Western India


• Brian E. Bond


• 9. Music, Religious Experience, and Nationalism in Marathi Rashtriya Kirtan


• Anna Schultz


• 10. Prestige, Status, and the History of Instrumental Music in North India


• George E. Ruckert


• Section Three: Intersectional Dynamics: Caste, Class, and Tribe


• Introduction by Zoe C. Sherinian


• 11. Mundari Performance After the Revolution: Did Dance Save the Tribe?


• Carol M. Babiracki


• 12. Systematic and Embodied Music Theory of Tamil Parai Drummers


• Zoe C. Sherinian


• 13. Caste, Class, Aesthetics, and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam Dance


• Hari Krishnan and Davesh Soneji with a contribution by Nrithya Pillai


• 14. Sacred Song, Food, and the Affective Embodied Experience of Non-Othering in the Sikh Tradition


• Inderjit N. Kaur


• 15. Following in the Footsteps of Muria Music and Dance


• Roderic Knight


• Section Four: Identity in Gender and Sexuality


• Introduction by Zoe C. Sherinian


• 16. Bhangra Brotherhood: Gender, Music, and Nationalism in Rang De Basanti


• Pavitra Sundar


• 17. Disrupted Divas: Conflicting Pathways of India's Socially Marginalized Female Entertainers


• Amelia Maciszewski


• 18. "All the Parts of Who I Am": Multi-Gendered Performance in Kathak Dance


• Sarah L. Morelli


• 19. Music and the Trans-thirunangai Everyday at Koovagam, Tamil Nadu


• Jeff Roy


• 20. Performing Youthful Desires: Bihu Festival Music and Dance in Assam, India


• Rehanna Kheshgi


• Section Five: Technology, Media, and Transmission


• Introduction by Sarah L. Morelli


• 21. "We Know What Our Folk Culture Is from Cassettes and Videos": Rethinking the Popular-Folk Dynamic in the Indian Himalayas


• Stefan Fiol


• 22. The Female Voice in Hindi Cinema: Agency, Representation, and Change


• Natalie Sarrazin


• 23. Love Politics, and Life Between Village and City in Nepali Lok Dohori: One Album, Three Titles


• Anna Marie Stirr


• 24. Pedagogy and Embodiment in the Transmission of Kerala Temple Drumming


• Rolf Groesbeck


• 25. Sonic Gift-Giving in Sri Lankan Buddhism


• Jim Sykes


• Section Six: Diaspora and Globalization


• Introduction by Nilanjana Bhattacharjya and Sarah L. Morelli


• 26. Contemporizing Kandyan Dance


• Susan A. Reed


• 27. Desi Dance Music: A Transnational Phenomenon


• Nilanjana Bhattacharjya and Rekha Malhotra


• 28. Dance in The Round: Embodying Inclusivity and Interdependence through Garba


• Parijat Desai


• 29. Tamil Rap and Social Status in Malaysia


• Aaron Paige


• 30. Beyond the Silver Screen: Filmi Aesthetics in Bollywood Fitness Classes


• Ameera Nimjee


• Index

About the author

Sarah Morelli is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Denver and author of A Guru's Journey: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2019). Also a performing kathak dancer, she is a Founding Artist and Soloist with the Leela Dance Collective and Artistic Director of Leela Denver. kathak dancer, she is a Founding Artist and Soloist with the

Zoe C. Sherinian is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma. She has published the monograph Tamil Folk Music as Dalit Liberation Theology (Indiana University Press, 2014) and coedited Making Congregational Music Local: Indigenous Songs and Cosmopolitan Styles in the Music of Global Christianity (Routledge, 2017).

Summary

Music and Dance as Everyday South Asia offers an inclusive lens through which to study the music, dance, and allied arts of South Asia, its diasporas, and the people who produce and use these cultural expressions. The authors in this collection--ethnomusicologists, dance scholars, anthropologists, and practitioners--understand music and dance as everyday lived experience. "The everyday" comprises practices of South Asians in multiple countries, whose identities include numerous castes, classes, tribes, genders, sexualities, religions, nationalities, more than twenty languages, and other affiliations. With the goal to de-emphasize an approach that fetishizes analysis of classical form and its technical virtuosity, this book instead contextualizes the understanding of aesthetic meaning within six themes: place and community; style, genre, and function; intersectional identities of caste, class, and tribe; gender and sexuality; technology, media, and transmission; and diaspora and globalization.

The thirty chapters in this collection demonstrate how the arts are meaningful expressions of human identities and relationships for ordinary people as well as virtuosic performers. Each author ties their thesis to hands-on, participatory exercises that provide multiple entryways to understand and engage with cultural meaning. In so doing, they empower classroom dialogue that treats embodied experience as a vital mode of enquiry, supplementing critical textual analysis to cultivate attentive, responsive, and ethical dispositions toward the music and dance practices of other humans and their life experiences.

Additional text

Music and Dance as Everyday South Asia provides a fantastic sampling of current research on music and dance in South Asia and its diaspora. The thematic organization breaks down old divisions between the folk, popular, and classical that have long organized the study of music and dance in South Asia, and traverse national boundaries to explore the dynamics of how musical form and embodied dance practices encode, express, and enable different projects of identity and sociopolitical contestation. Audiovisual and supplementary materials on the companion website enable readers to directly engage with dance and musical forms, making this a unique and extremely valuable resource for teaching.

Product details

• Authors: Sarah L. (Associate Professor of Ethnomus Morelli, Zoe C. (EDT)/ Morelli Sherinian, Zoe C. (Professor of Ethnomusicology Sherinian
• Assisted by: Sarah L. Morelli (Editor), Zoe C. Sherinian (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.02.2025
• EAN: 9780197791974
• ISBN: 978-0-19-779197-4
• No. of pages: 544
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; Easy listening, MUSIC / Ethnomusicology, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / International, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Dance, Popular Music, Folk Dancing, Easy listening, MOR music