Sikh Religious Music in a Migrating Context: The Role of Media (original) (raw)
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THE MUSIC OF THE SIKH GURŪS’ TRADITION IN A WESTERN CONTEXT: Cross-cultural pedagogy and research
Sikh formations, 2011
Teaching a religious musical tradition within a Western (secular) context, such as the University, involves important aspects of intercultural pedagogy and research in cross-cultural perspective. The Sikh Gurūs' tradition is here analyzed through an anthropological and semiotic approach that locates Gurmat Sangīt within the academic field of international musicology. Considered for a long time to be a devotional genre of music, the great contribution of the Sikh Gurūs' tradition to Indian music is yet to be discovered. Academic discussion should involve old and new generations of musicians, as well as Indian and Western scholars trained in the tradition, to highlight historical and practical aspects of performance. This article suggests some issues that could be developed involving students from Western universities in academic research, and suitable dissertation topics. Among these, the vocal techniques in relation to the musical genres, and to the yoga of sound, is one of the most interesting aspects of research and analysis on Gurmat Sangīt.
Kashmir, due to its geographical location and a current status of a borderland, had experienced various cultural influences, resulting in the formation of a specific local culture. The symbolic concept of kashmiriyat, dated back to 16th century, generally covers most of the aspects of Kashmiri Muslims’ culture perceived as traditional. However, in the modern era of globalization and rapid growth of the media, particularly the Internet, the world is changing really fast, together with local cultures and identities. Budding influence of social media on the culture, transforming it to the one of participation, opens a new field for artistic activity. It is especially the younger generation, prone to rebel against the existing reality, who make use of those aims to express oneself. One of the most alluring means to do so, is music. It stimulates people’s awareness and tends to unite people beyond boundaries by its universal language. Thanks to its emotional potential, popular music recently gathered its momentum among Kashmiri Muslims as well. In his paper I will present the examples of two young Kashmiri musicians, MC Kash and Ali Saffudin, as the carriers of Kashmiri Muslim cultural identity. Pointing out the traditional symbols, how they are being reinterpreted and mixed with the elements of current reality and Western culture, I will try to show some aspects of this identity, focusing on the place of regionalism in it.
The Influence of Hindi Film Music on Muslim Hausa Popular and Religious Music
This paper is a study of how transnational musical genres and forms, specifically from Hindi film music, became appropriated and domesticated by Muslim Hausa of northern Nigeria and integrated as part of their youth popular culture, as well as religious musical performances. It specifically analyses how the Muslim Hausa music of northern Nigeria became transformed first as a result of Islamic encounters, and subsequently as a result of global media flows which appraises the musical relationships that have been formed and continue to be formed between different regions of the world of Islam. It looks at how Hindi film music became appropriated by the Muslim Hausa and recast as a new form of secular and religious performance in an Islamicate society, and the consequences of such circulation on the structural character of Hausa traditional music.
Transported by Song: Music and Cultural Labour in Dharwad
Sangeet Natak, 2009
This essay is an exercise in thinking through the issues involved in putting together a new project. It will aim to set out some of the problems I am encountering as I try to formulate my research questions-the dilemmas over directions to take or avoid; the anxiety about how to interpret diverse sorts of materials; about what methods to adopt; about how to constitute my archive. My last project took me deep into the analysis of Caribbean popular music in terms of the social grids that sustain it. The book, Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and Trinidad (2006), was followed by a documentary film called Jahaji Music (dir. Surabhi Sharma, 2007). The film engaged with the musical culture of the Caribbean through the journey and collaborations of an Indian musician, Remo Fernandes. The Remo project-which tried to pursue the possibility of connection in another sphere, that of actual musical practice-seemed to be a logical if somewhat unexpected outcome of the earlier scholarly endeavour. Perhaps the most predictable direction I could have taken next would have been to pursue the story of the Indian diaspora and its musical negotiations in the United Kingdom for example, where once again the Indian and the African come together to form different sorts of cultural equations. However, the insights I gained from thinking about music, nationalism and race in Trinidad took me in another direction altogether. The point of the comparative frame I proposed in my book was not simply to look at two different contexts, but to see how the questions I was asking could be brought back 'home' to India. What did I gain from thinking about popular music in Trinidad? That consolidation and displacement occur together and form part of a continuing process. [Here the consolidation and displacement had to do with notions of racial identity and citizenship.] That this complicated process is often manifested most visibly as cultural practice, and as music production in particular. That in our modernity-fashioned as it is through and in the wake of colonialism-thinking about the music might help us see one of the important ways by which ideas of who we are/who we want to be are put together, circulated, and gain purchase. That music is related to the structure of social aspiration and issues of social mobility. That female sexuality is central to processes of nation-making and the production of modern subjects, and that music is one such process. Thinking about these issues has brought me to my own cultural context, which is that of southern India.
Music and Migration, 2010
Music and Migration is a special issue in two book like volumes (in English (278 pp) and in Portuguese (298pp)) with 12 scientific articles by ethnomusicologists, music historians, sociologists and political scientists from different schools, on subjects related with music and migration from all over the world (Dan Lundberg on Kurdish, Turkish, Irish, and former Yugoslavian groups – Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, Croatians, … in Stockohlm; John Baily on Afghans in Australia, Dieter Christensen on Kurds in Berlin; Mark Naison on Jazz and social urbanization in the Bronx, in New York; Martiniello and Lafleur on Latin music on the Presidential elections of 2008 in the US, among others on the music of other populations such as Indo-Pakistani Bollywood consumers in Spain, Cape-Verdean and Goan music producers and consumers in Portugal, Portuguese Fado musicians in the US, …). Besides the 12 articles it contains also 18 opinion and research notes by musicians, teachers, researchers, students, music managers and interested listeners on subjects related with the topic. A substantial introduction includes theoretical considerations connecting these with earlier ethnomusicology writings on music and migration (namely those on the volume edited by Baily and Collyer, among others) and presents the volume in which music deals with basic citizenship and migration rights and specificities, unmasking boundaries, nurturing participation, pacifying emotions and acknowledging its power to inflame them, challenging categories and definitely renewing references in the current global era.
Challenging opportunities: When Indian regional music gets online
Along with better connectivity, massive free music downloading and streaming have reached the Himalayan ranges of the Garhwal region (North India) in the 2000s. It has been a game-changer for the creation, circulation and consumption practices of Garhwali music, a repertoire sung in the local dialect. Mp3s and mp4s are gradually replacing DVDs and CDs on the market, and the economic scenario is comparable to that of national creative industries: a more scattered distribution of content and profits, a tougher competition for visibility. Yet Garhwali music also faces specific challenges due to its topography, its high percentage of emigrants and its labeling as “regional music”; these challenges can be analyzed ethnographically from the point of view of artists and audiences. Indeed, Garhwali music’s diffusion lies increasingly in the hands of the listeners on one hand, who upload content, circulate it offline, act as trend setters and make it a matter of collective cultural heritage; and in the hands of bigger third-party players on the other hand, who like label T-Series are engaged in a battle against piracy. In such online distribution channels, visibility is the key value and the law is not always the reference for authority or authorship. The situation is dire for most local artists and producers, but strategies are being experimented to take advantage of this new environment.
Introduction to a Forum on Religion, Popular Music, and Globalization
Journal for The Scientific Study of Religion, 2006
This issue of the JSSR brings together scholars from mass communication, ethnomusicology, religious studies, and the sociology of religion to explore how practices and understandings of religion might be changing in the context of a global, mediated capitalist marketplace. Each of these essays foregrounds music as a particular cultural form with a unique role to play in the maintenance and change of religion's character and practices in the global marketplace. This forum therefore resonates with the forum on religion and place that appeared in this journal last year (September 2005, vol. 44, no. 3), as this set of essays, like that one, seeks to locate the study of religion "outside of scriptures or texts, and to therefore study history, context, and practice," as Elizabeth McAlister wrote in the previous forum (2005:254). Religion, as scholars in the sociology of religion and in religious material cultural studies have pointed out, is about much more than what happens during services or prayer times, and is much more than a set of beliefs or ideological commitments (see, e.g., Ammerman 2006; Hall 1997; Morgan 2005; Promey and Morgan 2001). Religion is lived and embodied. It is not static and it is not only written down, but rather is mobile and anchoring, personal and collective, dynamic and staid. It is also, in many cases, commercialized and global.
Music and Nationalism in India
Within South Asian studies, anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have engaged in an extensive discussion of the role music plays in forging nationalism in India. Music can articulate both distinct regional identities and a broader pattern of national assimilation, as well as religious, class, and caste differences. In the past, the classicization of musical traditions has often been seen as a nationalist response to colonialism. Music in religious contexts can evoke nationalist sentiments and ideologies, as well as expressions of identity that have political meanings. Economic development and the media consumption of rising middle classes have also contributed to a more widespread dispersal of popular music, strengthening the possibilities of greater collective sharing in national identities as expressed through musical forms. Although their focuses and perspectives differ, all the authors discussed in this review frame music as a significant social force that can generate conflict, change, and meaning. The authors address the various facets of music in nationalist discourse through the lenses of regionalism, religion, and class conflict, utilizing a diverse range of methods including historiography, ethnography, and analysis of the music itself to discuss these themes.