1213 | 62 | Hindustani classical music: A parallel twentieth century history from small towns

North Indian classical music is seen as a national tradition. But in fact, it flourishes in only a handful of major urban centers, has a strong regional concentration, and is overwhelmingly upper class and upper caste. I set out to explore what, if any, classical music there was in small towns, and soon found it refracted into the full gamut of Hindustani music genres, a spectrum of higher- and lower-brow music with ‘classical’ music just a part. I realized that such a field revealed itself to me because I was following people and money rather than genre. As George Marcus explores, these are both methods to transcend the traditional single-site ethnography and work on and in the world system, or social processes that span time and space on a larger scale (1995). Following people and money uncovered Hindustani music as a political economy. It led from centers to peripheries and back again, showed their interconnection and interdependence, and illuminated hidden spaces and people. This contrasted with much scholarship on classical music which has followed genre, and reified a sense of classical music as a bounded phenomenon. As I describe, in the past, and today, classical music survives within and because of the distanced yet connected lower-brow genres. Crucially, while processes of caste-, class-, and nationalism-inflected distinction make boundaries, musicians cross them constantly to perform what they need to survive, particularly accompanists, who are lower status and more flexible. A sprawling and uneven world of Hindustani (not just classical) music is, as I describe, a more genuine national tradition of North India.

Anna Morcom
UCLA

ID Abstract: 62

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