Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern

Weidman Amanda J. Weidman

Description

While Karnatic music, a form of Indian music based on the melodic principle of raga and time cycles called tala, is known today as South India's classical music, its status as "classical" is an early-twentieth-century construct, one that emerged in the crucible of colonial modernity, nationalist ideology, and South Indian regional politics. As Amanda J. Weidman demonstrates, in order for Karnatic music to be considered classical music, it needed to be modeled on Western classical music, with its system of notation, composers, compositions, conservatories, and concerts. At the same time, it needed to remain distinctively Indian. Weidman argues that these contradictory imperatives led to the emergence of a particular "politics of voice," in which the voice came to stand for authenticity and Indianness.Combining ethnographic observation derived from her experience as a student and performer of South Indian music with close readings of archival materials, Weidman traces the emergence of this politics of voice through compelling analyses of the relationship between vocal sound and instrumental imitation, conventions of performance and staging, the status of women as performers, debates about language and music, and the relationship between oral tradition and technologies of printing and sound reproduction. Through her sustained exploration of the way "voice" is elaborated as a trope of modern subjectivity, national identity, and cultural authenticity, Weidman provides a model for thinking about the voice in anthropological and historical terms. In so doing, she shows that modernity is characterized as much by particular ideas about orality, aurality, and the voice as it is by regimes of visuality.

Sujets

• Biological anthropology
• India
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388050
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

  ,

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Singing the Classical,

Voicing the Modern

  

    

Amanda J. Weidman

Duke University Press

Durham and London

©     All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Bembo by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of Bryn Mawr College, which provided funds toward the production of this book.

Portions of chapter  were previously published as ‘‘Gender and the politics of voice: Colonial modernity and classical music in South India,’’ inCultural Anthro- pology, no.  (): –. ©  American Anthropological Association. $ Portions of chapter  were previously published as ‘‘Can the subaltern sing? Mu- sic, language, and the politics of voice in twentieth-century South India,’’ inIndian Economic and Social History Review, no.  (): –. $ Portions of chapter  were previously published as ‘‘Guru and gramophone: Fantasies of fidelity and modern technologies of the real,’’ in Public Culture, no.  (): –.

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Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

vii

ix

Note on Transliteration and Spelling

Introduction



. Gone Native?: Travels of the Violin in South India 

. From the Palace to the Street: Staging ‘‘Classical’’ Music 

. Gender and the Politics of Voice

. Can the Subaltern Sing?: Music, Language, and the Politics of Voice

. A Writing Lesson: Musicology and the Birth of the Composer 

. Fantastic Fidelities



Afterword: Modernity and the Voice

Notes



Works Cited

Index





xvii

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



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Illustrations

. Method of holding the fiddle and bow and tuning fork  . Mechanical violin player  . Violin advertisement  . ‘‘Magic violin’’ advertisement  .Mysore Yuvaraja’s Indian and European Musical Seriescover page . ‘‘Music hall silence’’ advertisement  . ‘‘Well done, sabha secretary!’’ cartoon  . ‘‘The nagaswaram player gets flustered’’ cartoon  . ‘‘The everyday excesses of the Bhavnagar Maharaja’’ cartoon  . ‘‘Music vidwans on the world stage’’ cartoon  . ‘‘Politics and Music’’ cartoon  . Idol of Thyagaraja being carried to his house in Tiruvaiyaru  . The excesses of Chief Minister Karunanidhi caricatured – . The music season threatens to swamp even Thyagaraja himself  . M. S. Subbalakshmi record jacket  . Binny Silks advertisement  . Sari advertisement  . South India Music Emporium advertisement  . ‘‘Musical angles’’  . Text explaining that Indian staff notation requires only three lines  . Text explaining notation for ornaments  . South Indian composition in staff notation  . ‘‘Abbreviations and Embellishments’’  . Composition in raga bilahari in sargam and staff notation  . Notation from Dikshitar’sSangīta Sampradāya Pradārṣini

. Composition in raga kedaram from Johannes’sBhāratha Sangīta Svāya Bōdhini . Composition in raga senjurutti from Pandithar’sA Practical Course in South Indian Music . Title page of Pandithar’sA Practical Course in South Indian Music . Notation from Ganghadar’sTheory and Practice of Hindu Music . Page from Sambamoorthy’sElements of Western Music for Students of Indian Music . Composition from Sambamoorthy’sElements of Western Music for Students of Indian Music . Cover page of Mudaliar’sGramaphon Sangeetha Keerthanamirdam . Advertisement for sruti boxes, electronic tamburas, and talometers  . ‘‘Concerto’’ model electronic tambura 

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Acknowledgments

My first contact with Karnatic music came unexpectedly in , when I happened to hear a concert of Karnatic violin. I remember being fasci- nated by seeing and hearing the violin—an instrument I had been play- ing for years—as it was played diagonally, its scroll resting on the seated player’s foot. The performer that evening was Adrian L’Armand, a West- ern classical violinist who had spent time in Madras in the s studying Karnatic violin. The Wednesday afternoons I spent at his house in Swarth- more, Pennsylvania, for the next two years, learning the beginnings of Karnatic music, opened me to a world of music and musicality that I had not known existed. Adrian is a supremely generous and gifted teacher. Over the years, I have learned much from him about music, the violin, improvisation, and teaching. In India, I had the opportunity to study with four teachers who each gave me something different. My main teacher, whose name I withhold here for reasons of privacy, has a style of violin-playing unique in its ele- gantly understated virtuosity. She generously took me on as her disciple in  and on my subsequent stays in Madras, allowing me to accompany her at her concerts and arranging performances for me. In the long afternoons I spent at her house, eating, napping, talking, and playing, she taught me to be a musician and, in her own way, forced me to become an anthropolo- gist. The stamp of her character, both musical and personal, appears often in these pages. In Madurai, N. S. Saminathan, violinist and nagaswaram artist, taught me not only a repertoire of Tamil songs and secrets of im- provisation, but also how to perform; then he arranged concerts for me in Meenakshi Amman Temple. His humor, iconoclasm, and intellectual interest in this project have helped me immensely. Also in Madurai, the midrangist C. S. Palaninathan gave me, with supreme patience, the gift of