Two Men and Music: Nationalism In The Making Of An Indian Classical Tradition
- Author: Janaki Bakhle
- Publisher: Orient Blackswan
- ISBN: 9788178242354
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What does it mean to invent a classical national tradition in this critical study of the development of north indian classical music, janaki bakhle examines the role of colonialism in the making of a tradition that is often incorrectly assumed to possess an unbroken history from antiquity to the present at the end of the nineteenth century, two men with very different visions vn bhatkhande and vd paluskar worked to give indian classical music, as we understand it today, its distinctive shape, form, and identity where previously no particular ideology, religious group, or ethnic identity had dominated, in the hands of paluskar, a bhakti (or devotionalist) nationalist music was to be cleansed of its bawdy associations and put in the service of hindu proselytizing bhatkhande, a secular musicologist, on the other hand, hoped that through systematic classification and categorization, music would become a new modern, national, academic art, avoiding religious entanglement bhatkandes politics were ahead of his time, but the victory has been paluskars the victory of sacralization, not secularism viewed against the backdrop of colonial modernity, the different projects of these two men exemplify not only the success of a reformist modernization of music, but also the failures, contradictions, and compromises that accompanied north indian classical musics transformation in relation to gender, caste, religion, and the public cultural sphere a provocative examination of musicians negotiating the forces of the modern in order to ensure the survival of their musical traditions, this book also lays bare how art and music in particular can, at crucial moments, be itself successfully wielded as a modernizing tool.
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