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Music and Society in Late Colonial India: A Study of Esraj in Gaya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2019

Tirthankar Roy
Tirthankar Roy*
Affiliation:
Tirthankar Roy ([email protected]) is Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indian classical music was in transition. Most readings of the transition stress the choices of the professional musicians, as these musicians and the institutions in which they functioned were caught up in political and economic movements such as nationalism and commercialization. This article studies a different type of transition: when a small-town professional group with a strong associational culture became musicians. This second process, standing in contrast to the received narratives, suggests novel lessons in the history of urban cultures during a time of change.

Keywords

colonial IndiaesrajGayaGayawalsgharanasharmoniumIndian classical musicnationalismurban culture
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 25 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2019

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