Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-pwrkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-20T02:57:50.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of Lack and Loss: Assessing Cultural and Musical Poverty in Uttarakhand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2018

Stefan Fiol
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I define cultural poverty as the absence or reduction of the means to express culture; and culture, in turn, consists of the shared habits of thought, feeling, and action that bind individuals to social collectives. Any absence or reduction of the means to musical expression may be termed musical poverty, which is a subset of cultural poverty. What does it mean for an individual or a social group to not have or to lose the ability for musical expression? Consider the case of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who famously prohibited musical performance throughout his empire in 1668. Or consider the frequent bans on musical expression by the Taliban in Afghanistan over the past two decades (Baily 2009), and more recently by Islamic extremists in northern Mali. It is possible that such official prohibitions led to an overall loss of musical expression in their respective societies, but it is difficult to know this for certain. Baily suggests that censorship in Afghanistan led to increases in piracy and clandestine musical performance (ibid.). But even if we are willing to accept the possibility of an overall decline in musical forms of expression, how can we know whether this was not compensated in other, non-musical forms of cultural expression?

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 45 , 2013 , pp. 83 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 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.)

References

References Cited

Baily, John 2009 “Music and Censorship in Afghanistan, 1973–2003.” In Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, ed. Nooshin, Laudan, 143–63. Surrey, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John L., and Comaroff, Jean 2009 Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erlmann, Veit 1998 “How Beautiful Is Small: Music, Globalization, and the Aesthetics of the Local.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 30:12–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiol, Stefan 2011a “From Folk to Popular and Back: Assessing Feedback between Studio Recordings and Festival Dance-Songs in Uttarakhand, North India.” Asian Music 42/1:24–53.Google Scholar
Fiol, Stefan 2011b “Sacred, Inferior, and Anachronous: Deconstructing Liminality among the Baddī of the Central Himalayas.” Ethnomusicology Forum 19:191–217.Google Scholar
Harvey, David L., and Reed, Michael H. 1996 “The Culture of Poverty: An Ideological Analysis.” Sociological Perspectives 39/4: 465–95.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael 2004 Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
International Fund for Agricultural Development 2012 “US$89.9 Million IFAD Loan to India for Poverty Reduction in Uttarakhand State.” http://www.ifad.Org/media/press/2012/6.htm (accessed 15 September 2012).Google Scholar
Kumar, Mukul 2010 “Poverty and Culture in Daily Life.” Psychology and Developing Societies 22:331–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mawdsley, Emma 2002 “Redrawing the Body Politic: Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India.” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 40/3: 34–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nettl, Bruno 1985 The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival. New York: Schirmer Books.Google Scholar
Petshali, Jugal Kishor 2002 Uttaranchal ke lok vadya [The folk instruments of Uttaranchal]. Delhi: Takshila Prakashan.Google Scholar
Silicon India 2012 “Good News: India Sees Biggest Dip in Poverty.” http://www.siliconindia.com/news/general/Good-News-India-Sees-Biggest-Dip-in-Poverty–nid-109843-cid-1. html (accessed 17 September 2012).Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark 1993 “A Reply to Veit Erlmann.” Ethnomusicology 37/2: 267–69.Google Scholar
Small, Mario Luis, Harding, David J., and Lamont, Michèle 2010 “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629:6–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turino, Thomas 2008 Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar