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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...
"'Raise your voice!' and 'Speak up!' are familiar refrains that assume, all too easily, that all who speak do so for themselves, and that doing so will lead to empowerment, healing, and reconciliation. Marlene Schäfers's Voices that Matter reveals where such assumptions fall short, demonstrating that "raising one's voice" is, in some contexts, an endeavor full of anxieties, struggles, and discontents. In its attention to the voice as form, this book examines not only what voices say, but also how they do so. By focusing on the social labor that voices carry out as they travel, vibrate, and produce sound, Schäfers shows that where new vocal practices arise, they can produce new selves and p...
Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, an ambitious study of two of South Asia's most popular cultural forms -- cinema and dance -- historicizes and theorizes the material and cultural production of film dance, a staple attraction of popular Hindi cinema. It explores how the dynamic figurations of the body wrought by cinematic dance forms from the 1930s to the 1990s produce unique constructions of gender, sexuality, stardom, and spectacle. By charting discursive shifts through figurations of dancer-actresses, their publicly performed movements, private training, and the cinematic and extra-diegetic narratives woven around their dancing bodies, the book considers t...
Volume V, ART: This volume contains 47 articles by scholars of Art History, representing various aspects of art. It covers the topics like the Buddhist narrative art and Buddha’s iconography with reference to Amaravati school of Art, Jaina Art, Terracotta art, Iconography of Siva, Vishnu, Surya, Mahishasuramardhini, Ganesa, Kartikeya, Dikpalas and Navagrahas and a few articles on Kuchipudi dance and folk art forms. This volume serves as a valuable source book for the students, research scholars and teachers as well in the fields. This volume also highlights the love and affection of Prof. P. Chenna Reddy enjoys in the intellectual world. The felicitation Volume is brought out in a series o...
Contemporary theories of modernity recognize the plurality or »multiplicity± of modernities. Often the differences are seen as institutional or cultural differences. Although this sort of research is important it cannot be ignored that it does not provide a clear understanding of the »human consequences±. The tradition that today is known under the name of Critical Theory, on the contrary, has been interested always first of all in the human consequences. This book wants to follow this ambition. The question it tries to search answers for is: what are the experiences that human beings are making in and within global modernity? Another question is important: what are the affinities and wh...
A radically new reading of the origins of recorded music Noise Uprising brings to life the moment and sounds of a cultural revolution. Between the development of electrical recording in 1925 and the outset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the soundscape of modern times unfolded in a series of obscure recording sessions, as hundreds of unknown musicians entered makeshift studios to record the melodies and rhythms of urban streets and dancehalls. The musical styles and idioms etched onto shellac disks reverberated around the globe: among them Havana’s son, Rio’s samba, New Orleans’ jazz, Buenos Aires’ tango, Seville’s flamenco, Cairo’s tarab, Johannesburg’s marabi, Jakarta’s kroncong, and Honolulu’s hula. They triggered the first great battle over popular music and became the soundtrack to decolonization.
How have sound and empire shaped one another historically? Acoustics of Empire recovers a sonic history that is bound up with imperial power and colonial rule. Bringing together contributions from historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars, this book emphasizes the entangled histories of sound and empire. The intertwined legacies of sound and power are not simply historical curiosities; rather, they stand as formative influences in cultural modernity and its discontents that continue to shape the ways we hear and experience the world today.
"During China’s transition from dynastic empire to nation-state, the crowd emerged as a salient trope. Intellectuals across the ideological spectrum have used the crowd trope to ruminate on questions of selfhood and nationhood, and to advance competing models of enlightenment and revolution. Revolutionary Waves analyzes the centrality of the crowd in the Chinese cultural and political imagination and its global resonances by delving into a wide range of fiction, philosophy, poetry, and psychological studies. Bringing together literary studies, intellectual history, critical theory, and the history of human sciences, this interdisciplinary work highlights unexplored interactions among emerg...
Musical identity raises complex, multifarious, and fascinating questions. Discussions in this new study consider how individuals construct their musical identities in relation to their experiences of formal and informal music teaching and learning. Each chapter features a different case study situated in a specific national or local socio-musical context, spanning 20 regions across the world. Subjects range from Ghanaian or Balinese villagers, festival-goers in Lapland, and children in a South African township to North American and British students, adults and children in a Cretan brass band, and Gujerati barbers in the Indian diaspora.
The Sounds of Silent Films is a unique collection of investigatory and theoretical essays that, for the first time, unite up-to-date research on the complex historical performance practices of silent film accompaniment with in-depth analyses of relevant case studies.