Brass Baja


Book Description

This book is the first study of the men who work in the brass bands that accompany wedding and devotional processions and the tradition that has become a core of Indian popular culture.




Brass Bands of the World: Militarism, Colonial Legacies, and Local Music Making


Book Description

Bands structured around western wind instruments are among the most widespread instrumental ensembles in the world. Although these ensembles draw upon European military traditions that spread globally through colonialism, militarism and missionary work, local musicians have adapted the brass band prototype to their home settings, and today these ensembles are found in religious processions and funerals, military manoeuvres and parades, and popular music genres throughout the world. Based on their expertise in ethnographic and archival research, the contributors to this volume present a series of essays that examine wind band cultures from a range of disciplinary perspectives, allowing for a comparison of band cultures across geographic and historical fields. The themes addressed encompass the military heritage of band cultures; local appropriations of the military prototype; links between bands and their local communities; the spheres of local band activities and the modes of sociability within them; and the role of bands in trajectories toward professional musicianship. This book will appeal to readers with an interest in ethnomusicology, colonial and post-colonial studies, community music practices, as well as anyone who has played with or listened to their local band.




HONK!


Book Description

HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism explores a fast-growing and transnational movement of street bands—particularly brass and percussion ensembles—and examines how this exciting phenomenon mobilizes communities to reimagine public spaces, protest injustice, and assert their activism. Through the joy of participatory music making, HONK! bands foster active musical engagement in street protests while encouraging grassroots organization, representing a manifestation of cultural activity that exists at the intersections of community, activism, and music. This collection of twenty essays considers the parallels between the diversity of these movements and the diversity of the musical repertoire these bands play and share. In five parts, musicians, activists, and scholars voiced in various local contexts cover a range of themes and topics: History and Scope Repertoire, Pedagogy, and Performance Inclusion and Organization Festival Organization and Politics On the Front Lines of Protest The HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands began in Somerville, Massachusetts in 2006 as an independent, non-commercial, street festival. It has since spread to four continents. HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism explores the phenomenon that inspires street bands and musicians to change the world and provide musical, social, and political alternatives in contemporary times. Visit the companion webiste: http://www.honkrenaissance.net/




Theorizing the Local


Book Description

Over the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.




Unfinished Gestures


Book Description

'Unfinished Gestures' presents the social and cultural history of courtesans in South India, focusing on their encounters with colonial modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.




South Asian Religions on Display


Book Description

Religious procession is a significant dimension of religion in South Asia. Processions are central not only in Hinduism, but also Islam, Christianity, Jainism and Sikhism, which have large procession rituals. The last years have seen an increase in processions and ritualizations of space both in South Asia and in the South Asian Diaspora. Processions are religious display events and the increase in processions are functions of religious pluralism and competition about public space as well as economic prosperity and a revival of religious identities. Processions often bring together religion and politics since they are about public space, domination and contestation. Written by leading specialists on religious processions and ritualization of public space in South Asia and in the Diaspora, this volume presents current research on the interpretations of the role of processions, the recent increase in processions and changes in the procession traditions. South Asian Religions on Display will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, religion and political science.




Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Colonialism in South Asia provides a comprehensive overview of the historiographical specialisation and sophistication of the history of colonialism in South Asia. It explores the classic works of earlier generations of historians and offers an introduction to the rapid and multifaceted development of historical research on colonial South Asia since the 1990s. Covering economic history, political history, and social history and offering insights from other disciplines and ‘turns’ within the mainstream of history, the handbook is structured in six parts: Overarching Themes and Debates The World of Economy and Labour Creating and Keeping Order: Science, Race, Religion, Law, and Education Environment and Space Culture, Media, and the Everyday Colonial South Asia in the World The editors have assembled a group of leading international scholars of South Asian history and related disciplines to introduce a broad readership into the respective subfields and research topics. Designed to serve as a comprehensive and nuanced yet readable introduction to the vast field of the history of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent, the handbook will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and global and world history.




Deceptive Majority


Book Description

This is an ethnographic history of religious majoritarianism and its sly subversion by one of India's most oppressed minorities.




Sounds and the City


Book Description

This book draws from a rich history of scholarship about the relations between music and cities, and the global flows between music and urban experience. The contributions in this collection comment on the global city as a nexus of moving people, changing places, and shifting social relations, asking what popular music can tell us about cities, and vice versa. Since the publication of the first Sounds and the City volume, various movements, changes and shifts have amplified debates about globalization. From the waves of people migrating to Europe from the Syrian civil war and other conflict zones, to the 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union and American presidential election of Donald Trump. These, and other events, appear to have exposed an anti-globalist retreat toward isolationism and a backlash against multiculturalism that has been termed “post-globalization.” Amidst this, what of popular music? Does music offer renewed spaces and avenues for public protest, for collective action and resistance? What can the diverse​​ histories, hybridities, and legacies of popular music tell us about the ever-changing relations of people and cities?




Marginalised Music


Book Description

4e de couv.: This volume presents the results of a pioneering anthropological documentation of hitherto unknown traditions of sacred music performed by marginalised musicians and priest-musicians of the Bora Sambar region of western Odisha. The work is based on ethnographic research in rural regions of western Odisha conducted between the years 2002 - 2010. The study presents the first documentation of a unique sound culture of India, Odisha. Local music is analysed as an indigenous theory, thus as a crucial medium of religion, culture and politics.