Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs, 1800-1947

Description

This book offers the first social history of music in undivided Punjab (1800-1947), beginning at the Lahore court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and concluding at the Patiala royal darbar. It unearths new evidence for the centrality of female performers and classical music in a region primarily viewed as a folk music centre, featuring a range of musicians and dancers -from 'mirasis' (bards) and 'kalawants' (elite musicians), to 'kanjris' (subaltern female performers) and 'tawaifs' (courtesans). A central theme is the rise of new musical publics shaped by the anglicized Punjabi middle classes, and British colonialists' response to Punjab's performing communities. The book reveals a diverse connoisseurship for music with insights from history, ethnomusicology, and geography on an activity that still unites a region now divided between India and Pakistan.

About the author:

Radha Kapuria is Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University. This book draws on her PhD work at King's College London, which was nominated for the 2019 Bayly Prize. Her work straddles history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, and gender studies. As well as interest in the Partition, she is currently also a co-editor and collaborator on projects exploring the intersections of regional, sonic, and environmental histories of South Asia.

Reviews

Music in Colonial Punjab is an important contribution to the cultural history of the Punjab. Kapuria has recovered an untold social history of music in the region that adds complexity to our understanding of colonial Punjab's history.

–Farina Mir, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In a remarkable effort steeped in the archive, Radha Kapuria busts the popular image of Punjab as a land of only folk and devotional music. She turns her attention to the classical, urbane, rāgadārī music, whether nurtured in the court of Ranjit Singh or in cis-Satluj states of Patiala and Kapurthala. Her social history of music focuses attention on the myriad performers and expositors of the classical, and other genres; various women performers and their changing class and cultural backgrounds; to the mirāsīs, and their protean and evolving lives in pre-colonial and colonial times. Kapuria must be commended for a path-breaking work that will open new vistas for studying the social, cultural, and musical histories of Punjab.        

–Anshu Malhotra, Professor & Kapany Chair for Sikh & Punjab Studies, Department of Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara

This rigorously researched book heralds the long overdue ‘depeasantification’ and ‘defolklorization’ of the Punjab region through three centuries of music making in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial Punjab. Replete with enlightening legends and anecdotes about kings and princes, courtesan queens and kanjaris, mirasis and missionary women and the progenitors of Punjab’s gharanas, the book poignantly throws light on the denigration and marginalization of the hereditary custodians of Punjab’s rich musical heritage with the birth of middle class performers and publics. The book promises to be an eyeopener in its unveiling of the region’s varied musical heritage inferioritized as folk music.

–Anjali Gera Roy, Professor, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur)

 This excellent study provides us with the first joined-up understanding of the complex roles that music and musicians (female and male alike) played in the socio-cultural and political history of the Punjab, as it moved to, through and away from colonial rule.

–Sarah Ansari, Professor, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London

Radha Kapuria's impressive scholarly work complicates our understanding of Punjabi cultural production, outside of the usual domains - the rural, the martial and the folk - that, while important, have too often obscured our understanding of Punjab's urbane cultural forms. This fuller picture restores something important to the history of the region--and reinserts Punjab in a broader historical of South Asian classical music--and brings crucial focus on the women and hereditary musicians/bards (mirāsīs) who warrant a central place in Punjabi history.

–Anne Murphy, Associate Professor in History, University of British Columbia (Vancouver)

For those intrigued at the complexity of Punjab’s colonial history, this fascinating read provides an entry point through music.

–Yogesh Snehi, Assistant Professor in History, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD)

Table of contents

•    List of Figures
•    Acknowledgements
•    Note on Translation and Transliteration
•    Prologue
•    Introduction

Chapter 1   Of Musicians, Dancers, and the Maharaja: Gender, Power, and Affect in Ranjit Singh's Lahore

Chapter 2   Mirasis, Missionaries, and Memsahibs: Folklore and Music in Colonial Punjab

Chapter 3   Gender, Reform, and Punjab's Musical Publics: Colonial Lahore, Amritsar, and Jalandhar, 1870s-1930s

Chapter 4   Princely Patronage and Musicians: Modernity and Circulation in Colonial Patiala and Kapurthala

•    Conclusion
•    Bibliography