Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:08:44.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Embodiment and Ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram Drumming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Richard K. Wolf
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Wolf: How long will the drums play before the procession starts? Bashir Husein Mazhar (Multan, Pakistan): The drums are playing for this, to show the sorrowness … one drum will be beating for happiness and also the drums beating are for, to show the sorrowness … and it is in our Arab culture to show the drums in our sorrowness.

In this article, I pursue a line of inquiry that contends with music and the emotions: how and in what circumstances does music represent or generate the often subtle range of emotions characteristic of mourning rituals for participants in those rituals? My preliminary insights draw on two-and-a-half years' fieldwork with ritual drummers, during which I lived in Lahore, Pakistan and Lucknow, India and traveled extensively in the subcontinent. Using the practice of drumming during the Shī'ī observance of mourning, Muharram, as a case study, I wish to illustrate how localized interpretations of drumming contexts tend to bleed into interpretations of drumming content, and suggest that the study of musical culture may provide a unique perspective on the emotional multivalence or ambivalence that diverse participants experience in Muharram more generally. In Section I, I begin with a brief theoretical review of two themes, “embodiment” and the “complexity of emotions.” In Section II, I proceed to provide further background on Shī'ism, Muharram, and the status of music. The body of the paper examines three ways in which drumming signifies in a general sense: Enduring contextual associations (Section III); assignments of meaning (Section IV); and aesthetics of drumming (Section V). Before laying the theoretical backbone of this exploration, however, it will be necessary to know a bit about Muharram as an occasion and why a person might feel ambivalent about it in the first place.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 32 , 2000 , pp. 81 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Versions of this paper were delivered at the 1999 Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and at the workshop, “Text, Context and the Constitution of Difference in Middle Eastern Studies” at the Ben-Gurion University in the Negev (June 2000). I would like to thank participants in these events for their critical suggestions. I also wish to thank Amy Bard, James Kippen, Frank Korom, C. M. Nairn, and Regula Qureshi for their helpful comments.

References

References Cited

Al-Faruqi, Lois 1985 The sound arts of music. In Islam and art, 175–209. Islamabad: National Hijra Council.Google Scholar
Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan 1832 Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of their manners, customs, habits and religious opinions made during a twelve years’ residence in their immediate society. 2 vols. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.Google Scholar
Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan 1974 Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of their manners, customs, habits and religious opinions made during a twelve years’ residence in their immediate society. 2nd ed., ed. with notes and an introduction by W. Crooke. Reprint of 1917 edition. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Ali, Shair 1990 Hosay: Symbols of martyrdom. Trinidad Guardian (17 July): 4. Cited in Korom 1994b.Google Scholar
Arnold, Alison, ed. 2000 South Asia: The subcontinent. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music volume 5. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.Google Scholar
Booth, Gregory 1990 Brass bands: Tradition, change, and the mass media in Indian wedding music. Ethnomusicology 34(2): 245–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cannon, Aubrey 1989 The historical dimension in mortuary expressions of status and sentiment. Current Anthropology 30(4): 437–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capwell, Charles 1995 Contemporary manifestations of Yemeni-derived song and dance in Indonesia. Yearbook for Traditional Music 27:76–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Census of India 1961 Muharram in two cities (Lucknow and Delhi). Monograph series, vol. 1. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General India, Ministry of Home Affairs.Google Scholar
Census of India 1971 A monograph on Muharram in Hyderabad city. Series 2: Andhra Pradesh. Field investigation and draft, Khaja Moinuddin, Scrutiny, V. Venugopal Rao, ed, T. Vedantam. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General India, Ministry of Home Affairs.Google Scholar
Cole, J. R. I. 1989. Roots of north Indian Shīism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and state in Awadh, 1722-1859. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, Henry George 1939 The instruments of music on the Ṭāq-i Bustān bas reliefs. In Studies in oriental musical instruments, 70-85. Glasgow, The Civic Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Feener, Michael 1999 Tabut: Muharram observances in the History of Bengkulu. Studia Islamica 6(2): 87–130.Google Scholar
Feener, Michael 1995 Upacara Tabot: Muharram tradition and the imagination of Bengkulu. M.A. Thesis, Boston University.Google Scholar
Flora, Reis 1995 Styles of the śahnāī in recent decades: From naubat to gāyaki ang. Yearbook for Traditional Music. 27: 52–75.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred 1996 The anthropology of time: Cultural constructions of temporal maps and images. Reprint (originally published, 1992). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Good, Mary-Jo Delvecchio and Good, Byron. 1988. Ritual, the state, and the transformation of emotional discourse in Iranian society. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 12(1): 43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grabes, Herbert 1997 Aesthetic emotion. In Emotion in postmodernism, ed. Hoffman, Gerhard and Hornung, Alfred, 321–45. Heidelberg: Universität C. Winter.Google Scholar
Grima, Benedicte 1993 The performance of emotion among Paxtun women. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hasan, Mushirul 1990 Sectarianism in Indian Islam: The Shia-Sunni divide in the United Provinces. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 27(2): 209–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasan, Mushirul 1997 Traditional rites and contested meanings: Sectarian strife in colonial Lucknow. In Lucknow: Memories of a city, 114-35, ed. V. Graff. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hasnain, Nadeem and Husain, Sheikh Abrar 1988 Shias and Shia Islam in India: A study in society and culture. New Delhi: Harnam Publications.Google Scholar
Islam, Riazul, ed. 1980 Maḥmū d b. Amīr Walī Balkhī, The Bahr ul-Asrār travelogue of south Asia. Introduction and annotation by Riazul Islam. Karachi: Institute of Central and West Asian Studies, University of Karachi.Google Scholar
Kartomi, Margaret 1986 Tabut—A Shī'a ritual transplanted from India to Sumatra. Nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia: Essays in honor of Professor J. D. Legge, 141-62, ed. Chandler, David P. and M. C. Ricklefs. Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Centre of Southeast Studies Monash University.Google Scholar
Korom, Frank 1994a The transformation of language to rhythm: The Hosay drum of Trinidad. World of Music. 36(3): 68–85.Google Scholar
Korom, Frank 1994b Memory, innovation, and emergent ethnicity: The creolization of an Indo-Trinidadian performance. Diaspora 3(2): 135–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumar, Nita 1988 The artisans of Banaras: Popular culture and identity, 1880-1986. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kupperman, Joel J. 1997 The disunity of emotion. In Emotion in postmodernism, ed. Hoffman, Gerhard and Hornung, Alfred, 363–381. Heidelberg: Universität C. Winter.Google Scholar
Laxmaiah, M. 1998 Cappannu jātula ‘dū lāṭ’ pīrlapandaga [Telugu]. Janapāni, (May): 18-19Google Scholar
Leavitt, John 1996 Meaning and feeling in the anthropology of emotions. American Ethnologist 23(3): 514–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyon, Margot 1995 Missing emotion: The limitations of cultural constructionism in the study of emotion. Cultural Anthropology 10(2): 244–63.Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine 1988 Unnatural emotions. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malarney, Shaun Kingsley 1996 The limits of “state functionalism” and the reconstruction of funerary ritual in contemporary northern Vietnam. American Ethnologist 23(3): 540–60.Google Scholar
Masselos, Jim 1982 Change and custom in the format of the Bombay Mohurrum during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (Nedlands, Australia) 5(2): 47_67CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, Peter and Huntington, Richard 1991 Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mines, Mattison 1975 Islamisation and Muslim ethnicity in south India. Man n.s. 10(3): 404–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moezzi, Mohammed Ali Amir 1994 The divine guide in early Shi'ism: The sources of esotericism in Islam. Tr., David Streight. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Moffatt, Michael 1979 An untouchable community in south India: Structure and consensus. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Myers, Fred 1988 The logic and meaning of anger among Pintupi Aborigines. Man n.s. 23(4): 589–610.Google Scholar
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 1997 Islam and music: The legal and spiritual dimensions. In Enchanting powers: Music in the world's religions, 220-35, ed. Lawrence Sullivan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions.Google Scholar
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 1990 Music and discourse: Toward a semiology of music, tr. Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Nayyar, Adam 2000 Punjab. In South Asia: The Indian subcontinent, 762–72. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 5. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Nelson, Kristina 1985 The art of reciting the Qur’ an. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neuman, Daniel 1980 The life of music in north India: The organization of an artistic tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nizāmī, Sayyid ‘Alī'Abbās 1989 kh āndān-e-nizāmī kā'aqīdah vah distū r ul ‘amal: ‘urās buzurgān-e-dīn vah dī gar [Guidelines of Practice and Faith of the Nizāmī family for the urses of the great religious people and others]. [Karachi]: Special publication of the Nizāmī Institute.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry 1979 On key symbols. In Reader in comparative religion: An anthropological approach, 4th ed, 92-98, ed. Lessa, W. and E. Vogt. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Parks, Fanny 1850 Wanderings of a pilgrim in search of the picturesque, during four-and-twenty years in the East with revelations of life in the zenana. London: Pelham Richardson.Google Scholar
Pinault, David 1992 The Shiites: Ritual and popular piety in a Muslim community. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Pinault, David 1999 Shia lamentation rituals and reinterpretations of the doctrine of intercession: Two cases from modern India. History of Religions 38(3): 285–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qureshi, Regula 1981 Islamic music in an Indian environment: The Shiah majlis. Ethnomusicology 25: 41–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raheja, Gloria G. and Gold, Ann G. 1994 Listen to the heron's words: Reimagining gender and kinship in North India. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Rahman, Fazlur 1979 Islam 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizvi, Rizvi Saiyid Athar 1980 Shāh Walī-Allāh and his times: A study of eighteenth century Islām, politics and society in India. Canberra: Ma’ rifat Publishing House.Google Scholar
Rizvi, Rizvi Saiyid Athar 1982 Shāh ‘Abd Al-’ Azīz: Puritanism, Sectarian Polemics and Jihād. Canberra: Ma’ rifat Publishing House.Google Scholar
Roy Choudhury, M. L 1957 “Music in Islam.” Journal of the Asiatic Society. Letters. 23(2): 43–102.Google Scholar
Sakata, Hiromi Lorraine 1983 Music in the Mind: The Concepts of Music and Musician in Afghanistan. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
Schutz, Alfred 1964 “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship.” In Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. Ed. Broderson, A. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharar, Abdul Halim 1994 Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture. Trans. and eds. E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain. (Trans. of guzishtah lakhnau) Repr. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1965 guzishtah lakhnau yā mashraqī tamaddun kā ākharī namunah (tārī khī va jaghrāfīyā ī halāt). Reprint. Lucknow: Nasim Book Depot.Google Scholar
Strathern, Andrew 1993 Organs and Emotions: The Question of Metaphor. Canberra Anthropology 16(2): 1–16Google Scholar
Tingey, Carol 1994 Auspicious Music in a Changing Society: The Damāi Musicians of Nepal. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.Google Scholar
Turino, Thomas 1999 “Signs of Imagination, Identity, and Experience: A Peircian Semiotic Theory for Music.” Ethnomusicology 43(2): 221–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venbrux, Éric 1993 “Les politiques de l'émotion dans le rituel funéraire des Tiwi d'Australie.” L'Ethnographie 89(1): 61–77.Google Scholar
Wadley, Susan 1976 ‘The Spirit ‘Rides’ or the Spirit ‘Comes': Possession in a North Indian Village.” In The Realm of the Extra-human: Agents and Audiences, 233–51. Ed. Agehananda Bharati. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.Google Scholar
Wolf, Richard K. 2000 “Music in Seasonal and Life-cycle Rituals.” In South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent, 272–87. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, 5. New York: Garland Publishing Co. [Forthcoming] “Emotional Dimensions of Ritual Music Among the Kotas, a South Indian Tribe.” Ethnomusicology.Google Scholar