The Politics of Musical Time

Eben Graves

Description

Yale Macmillan Center article.

How do the temporal features of sacred music affect social life in South Asia? Due to new time constraints in commercial contexts, devotional musicians in Bengal have adapted longstanding features of musical time linked with religious practice to promote their own musical careers.

The Politics of Musical Time traces a lineage of singers performing a Hindu devotional song known as kīrtan in the Bengal region of India over the past century to demonstrate the shifting meanings and practices of devotional performance. Focusing on padābalī kīrtan, a type of devotional sung poetry that uses long-duration forms and combines song and storytelling, Eben Graves examines how expressions of religious affect and political belonging linked with the genre become strained in contemporary, shortened performance time frames. To illustrate the political economy of performance in South Asia, Graves also explores how religious performances and texts interact with issues of nationalism, gender, and economic exchange.

Combining ethnography, history, and performance analysis, including videos from the author's fieldwork, The Politics of Musical Time reveals how ideas about the sacred and the modern have been expressed and contested through features of musical time found in devotional performance.

Accessing Audiovisual Materials
Acknowledgments
Notes on Spelling and Transliteration
Notes on Representing Musical Sound
Notes on Dating Systems
Introduction: Kīrtan's Influence Derives from Time
Part I: Genealogies of Kīrtan
1. Temporality and Devotional Performance in Bengal
2. The Seeds of Kīrtan: Histories and Imaginaries of Devotional Song in Early Modern Bengal
3. Devotional Song Arrives in the City: Histories of Patronage and Images of the Devout Musician in the Colonial Period
4. Institutional Pasts and Professional Futures: Temporalities of Instruction and Performance in Contemporary West Bengal
Part II: The Devotional Aesthetics of Musical Expansion
5. Word-Pictures: Expansions of Mood and Meaning in Kīrtan Song Texts
6. Sonic Synchronies of Tāl Theory
7. The Divine Play of the Tax Collector: Musical Expansion, Embodied Response, and Didactic Storytelling in a Līlā Kīrtan
Part III: The Shrinking Markets for Expanding Songs
8. The Marketplace of Music Festivals: Modern Social Time and Musical Labor
9. Media Markets: Visualization and the Abstraction of Musical Time
10. Conclusion: Kīrtan Online
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• MUSIC
• South Asia
• Hindu saints
• Multiple signal classification
• Performance art
• General officer
• Hindu deities
• Ethnomusicology
• South
• History of Asia
• General
• Asia
• Performance
• ART

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253064400
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

THE POLITICS OF
MUSICAL TIME
THE POLITICS OF
MUSICAL TIME
Expanding Songs and Shrinking Markets in Bengali Devotional Performance

Eben Graves
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Eben Graves
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Graves, Eben, author.
Title: The politics of musical time : expanding songs and shrinking markets in Bengali devotional performance / Eben Graves.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022023402 (print) | LCCN 2022023403 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253064370 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253064387 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253064394 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Kirtana (Hinduism)-India-West Bengal-History and criticism. | Hinduism-Prayers and devotions-History and criticism. | Devotional literature, Indic-History and criticism. | Popular music-India-West Bengal-Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC ML3748 .G73 2022 (print) | LCC ML3748 (ebook) | DDC 782.00954/14-dc23/eng/20220711
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023402
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023403
For Pandit Nimai Mitra
C ONTENTS
Accessing Audiovisual Materials
Acknowledgments
Notes on Spelling and Transliteration
Notes on Representing Musical Sound
Notes on Dating Systems
Introduction: K rtan s Influence Derives from Time
PART I : Genealogies of K rtan
1. Temporality and Devotional Performance in Bengal
2. The Seeds of K rtan: Histories and Imaginaries of Devotional Song in Early Modern Bengal
3. Devotional Song Arrives in the City: Histories of Patronage and Images of the Devout Musician in the Colonial Period
4. Institutional Pasts and Professional Futures: Temporalities of Instruction and Performance in Contemporary West Bengal
PART II : The Devotional Aesthetics of Musical Expansion
5. Word-Pictures: Expansions of Mood and Meaning in K rtan Song Texts
6. Sonic Synchronies of T l Theory
7. The Divine Play of the Tax Collector: Musical Expansion, Embodied Response, and Didactic Storytelling in a L l K rtan
PART III : The Shrinking Markets for Expanding Songs
8. The Marketplace of Music Festivals: Modern Social Time and Musical Labor
9. Media Markets: Visualization and the Abstraction of Musical Time
10. Conclusion: K rtan Online
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
A CCESSING A UDIOVISUAL M ATERIALS
AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS FOR THIS VOLUME can be viewed online at https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/643999tp3p . Information and links for each individual entry follow.
Audio Example 0.1: re mora re mora gaur ga r ya , Som T l hek , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/366613sp14 .
Audio Example 0.2: suradhun m jhe y nab na n bika hoi sahacara miliy khel ya , Loph T l hek and khar, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/811k52193q .
Audio Example 1.1: brindabaner l l gor r manete pa ila , Som T l hek , Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/x11x41sj10 .
Audio Example 6.1: brindabaner l l gor r manete pa ila , Som T l hek , Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/425k32755p .
Audio Example 6.2: brindabaner l l gor r manete pa ila , Som T l k n, Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/8515649s3q
Audio Example 6.3: yamun ra bh ba suradhun re karila , Bir m Da ko T l hek , Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/w72b29h31x .
Audio Example 6.4: yamun ra bh ba suradhun re karila , Bir m Da ko T l k n, Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/g74q57ts58 .
Audio Example 6.5: khol karat l gor sumela kariy , Jh nti T l hek , Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/8418617p06 .
Audio Example 6.6: d n deho d n deho bali gor ke , Jh nti T l hek , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/188158hj9w .
Audio Example 7.1: n m k rtan , Alpana Naskar, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/217q67qm7f
Audio Example 7.2: h tu i , Rahul Das, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/f85n305w2n .
Audio Example 7.3: ma gal cara , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/n89d17jm8q .
Audio Example 7.4: bhaja gaur pada pa kaja yugal m , Gaura-bandan , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/k12831jk5s .
Audio Example 7.5: gaur ga c ndera mane ki bh ba u hila , Som T l hek , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/029p09c155 .
Audio Example 7.6: jaya r dh -m dhaba ku ja-bih r , Radha-Krishna bandan , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/n89d17jm7d .
Audio Example 8.1: re mora re mora gaur ga r ya , Som T l hek and k n, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/k61r46ws3m .
Audio Example 8.2: suradhun m jhe y nab na n bika hoi sahacara miliy khel ya , Loph T l hek and khar, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/z20s75kh2c .
Audio Example 8.3: prabhu k n m japo man mere , Hindi devotional song, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/g15b39d24h .
Video Example 6.1: khol pran m , Nimai Mitra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/z01069f58z .
Video Example 7.1: dhvani , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/r171886j1w .
Video Example 7.2: gaur ga c ndera mane ki bh ba u hila , Som T l hek , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/g94h63zt0m .
Video Example 7.3: gaur ga c ndera mane ki bh ba u hila , Som T l k n, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/g94h63zs8t .
Video Example 7.4: d n deho deho d n , khar and kath section, Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/r56n00gx8n .
Video Example 7.5: tomr dekho m der r dh r u ani pa eche from lalit bi kh s the , Dyuti Chakraborty, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/118r370s8r .
Video Example 9.1: Radha and Krishna awake in the morning, from Mural -b i VCD, Shampa Mishra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/831c585q6g .
Video Example 9.2: hari nija ncare r i mukha mochai , from Mural -b i VCD, Shampa Mishra, https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/h246735v89 .
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE POINT WHERE THE PEN hits the paper-or where the fingers meet the keyboard-suggests the presence of a singular writer assembling words, images, and thoughts into a book s final form. In reality, of course, there are dozens if not hundreds of people who have been involved in offering knowledge, advice, and support throughout a long process. This point surely holds true with this book as well. And, in addition to the usual types of interaction and assistance that mark the work of writing, there is another level of dependence involved in this book. Throughout my research, I have been keenly aware of the ways that studying pad bal k rtan -a musical genre that mostly depends on face-to-face acts of musical transmission-is especially reliant on the goodwill of others sharing their knowledge with me. It is here that my gratitude starts-with the dozens if not hundreds of k rtan musicians in Bengal with whom I studied, performed, traveled, drank tea, and more. At the top of this list is one of my main k rtan gurus and interlocutors, Pandit Nimai Mitra. While studying with him during extended periods of fieldwork, follow-up visits, and correspondence over the course of a decade, he proved to be a bottomless ocean of knowledge about k rtan. Even more amazing was his eagerness to share all of this with me at a moment s notice. With sadness, I note that he passed away in September 2021, as this book was in its final stages of writing. Nevertheless, I hope that the spirit with which he eagerly shared his love of k rtan is communicated in the pages that follow.
There is a long list of other musicians with whom I studied and discussed k rtan, all of whom were ready to answer my many questions as they arose. Dr. Kankana Mitra met with me regularly to study pad bal k rtan, share her research, and connect me with musicians and colleagues at Rabindra Bharati University. Rahul Das (Krishna Bharadwaj) and Dyuti Chakrabarty have been incredibly generous with their time and artistry, allowing me to travel with them throughout West Bengal and answering my unending questions about k rtan theory and performance. Many other k rtan musicians were instrumental in my research, including: Adhyapak Manoranjan Bhattacharya, Suman Bhattacharya, Rabin Sanfui, Ananta Nitai Das, Koumen Mondal, Shampa Mishra, Shrabani Mondal Mukherjee, Gobinda, Pratyasha De, Shampa Mishra, Shib Prosad Paul, Archana Das, Koumen Mondol, Vikas Nashkar, and Murari Hari Das.
Many others in Kolkata and across West Bengal and India were crucial guides during my research. Hena Basu connected me with key research contacts and sources in Kolkata and West Bengal; her knowledge of k rtan was also an invaluable resource as she assisted with many transcription projects and translation queries. I also owe her a special thanks for granting permission to use the beautiful painting of Chaitanya by Dipen Bose in chapter 1 . My longtime friend Bharati Roy offered invaluable assistance when tracking down sources and with Bangla translation work. The staff at the Bhaktivedanta Research Centre in Kolkata offered me use of their