Musical Resilience: Performing Patronage in the Indian Thar Desert

Indian regional musicians find resilience in a postcolonial world

In Musical Resilience, Shalini Ayyagari shows how professional low-caste musicians from the Thar Desert borderland of Rajasthan, India have skillfully reinvented their cultural and economic value in postcolonial India. Before India's independence in 1947, the Manganiyar community of hereditary musicians were tied to traditional patrons over centuries and through hereditary ties. In postcolonial India, traditional patronage relations faded due to new political conditions, technological shifts, and cultural change. Ayyagari uses resilience, one of the most poignant keywords of our times, to understand how Manganiyar musicians sustain and enliven their cultural significance after the fading of traditional patronage.

ISBN-13: 9780819500106

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Publication Date: 11-08-2022

Pages: 248

Product Dimensions: 8.60h x 6.20w x 1.10d

Series: Music / Culture

SHALINI AYYAGARI (Pittsburgh, PA) is an ethnomusicologist who works across the fields of musical culture, South Asian studies, critical ethnography, and development studies. She is an Assistant Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at the University of Pittsburgh.