Creating Stylistic Identity through Musical Hybridity in North India: Histories, Politics, and Theories for the Benares Gharana Público
Hazera, Eduardo Iskender (2012)
Published
Abstract
When a classical vocalist starts singing at a concert in North
India, the audience can often
hear the vocalist's hereditary identity. Audience members
may commend the musician for
authentically performing his genealogical style or perhaps deride
him for modifying his
ancestors' aesthetics. Such hereditary sounds emerged within
gharana lineages that were formed
in the early nineteenth-century. Typically, gharanas create
distinct artistic identities by
maintaining a specific set of musical characteristics across
multiple generations. For example,
vocalists in the Agra gharana created a consistent musical
persona by maintaining a style of
open-throated vocal projections over the past six generations.
Almost every other gharana
reflects this process in which collective identity emerges through
the maintenance of distinct
musical sounds. Conversely, vocalists in the Benares gharana
create a unified audible identity by
hybridizing a diversity of musical characteristics instead of
perpetuating a singular stylistic
sound. For instance, while taking voice lessons in Calcutta, I
learned about the ways in which
Benares gharana vocalists integrated the melodic sentiments
of semi-classical genres with
formal structures from high-classical genres. I explore such
examples of musical hybridity in the
Benares gharana by outlining two broad categories of
sociomusical activity in the early
nineteenth-century. Afterwards, I situate my ethnographic data on
the musical identity of the
Benares gharana within the interstitial space between these
two broad categories. To offer an
interpretive solution to the ambiguity of this in-between identity,
I deploy the history of musical
patronage in the Mughal Empire and examine the transformations were
enacted by British
colonialism. Finally, I argue that the interstitial musical
identity that developed in this colonial
period does not conform to the liberal theoretical paradigms of
hybridity and liminality. Rather,
the ambiguous musical identity of the Benares gharana
demands an understanding of hybridity
as a form of hegemony: the musical identity of the Benares
gharana is an embodiment of the
political tool of artistic hybridity that was patronized by two
rulers in the city of Benares during
the nineteenth century in order to create an insular identity for
their citizens that could emerge as
an organized political entity to confront British
imperialism.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Prefacing and Acknowledging ----- 1
Ch. 1) Introducing the Study of Music in India ----- 5
Ch. 2) Organizing Musics and Musicians in North India -----
12
2.1) Sounds and Performers
2.2) Performing
Sounds: Ragas or "Melodic Modes"
2.3) Performing Sounds: Talas or "Rhythmic Cycles"
2.4) Sounding Performances: The Light Classical Genre of
Thumri
2.5) Sounding Performances: The High Classical Genre of
Khyal
2.6) Organizing Performers: Mirasis in
Biradaris
2.7) Organizing Performers: Kalawants in
Gharanas
2.8) Dyadically Framing Sounds and Performers
Ch. 3) Fieldworking between Liminal Sounds and Performers in
Calcutta ----- 47
3.1) Confusing a Fieldworker
3.2) Writing Identity: Brothel or Gharana?
3.3) Hearing Identity: Imitating the Sounds and Gestures of
Sarangi and Shehnai
3.4) Hearing Identity: Borrowing Amir Khan's Khyal in
Rag Hamsadhvani
3.5) Hearing Identity: Integrating the Sounds and Sentiments of
Khyal and Thumri
3.6) Patronizing Identity: 19th Century Rajas and a 21st Century
Undergraduate
Ch. 4) Historicizing Identity through Patronization ----- 93
4.1) Setting the Stage
4.2) Creating Gharanas: Politics and Technology Transform
Patronage
4.3) Becoming Patrons: Benares Rajas Promote Aesthetics of
Hybridity
4.4) Birthing the Benares Gharana: The Patronage of
Hybridity Creates Musical Identity
Ch. 5) Understanding Hybridity without Liberal Ideology -----
108
5.1) Two Paradigmatic Theories of Hybridity
5.2) Liberal Ideology and Turnerian Liminality
5.3) Colonial Critiques Create Postcolonial Hybridity
5.4) Hegemonic Hybridity in the Stylistic Identity of the Benares
Gharana
Glossary ----- 118
References -----120
Appendix of Benares Lineages ----- 125
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