'Performing’ Nature: Ecology and the Arts in South Asia

This book is the first to explore the interconnections between ecology and performance in South Asia. Aiming to ‘green’ studies of music and performance, this book explores intersections between ethnography, history, eco- and ethnomusicology, and film and performance studies by paying particular attention to the ecological turn more broadly visible in South Asian studies. The essays in the volume take inspiration from these different methodological strains in recent scholarship connecting the environment with South Asian music and performance traditions. The contributors address varied ecological settings of South Asian music and performance—from riverscapes to coastal communities, and from the locations of instrument-makers to negotiations of the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The book also covers the vast geographical sweep of South Asia: from Pakistan in the northwest to Sri Lanka in the south, and from Bangladesh in the east to the Malabar coast of southwest India. The novelty of the volume lies not just in mapping the dialogism between ecology and music through reflections on liminality, gender, resistance and identity, but also in bringing forth new archival strategies (digitisation and digital cultures) in conversation with ethnographic findings. This book will be of value to students and scholars of arts and environmental studies, particularly those interested in the relationship between art, culture and environment within the realm of South Asian music and performance traditions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and are accompanied by a new Foreword by Jim Sykes and an Afterword by Sugata Ray.

Table of Contents:
Foreword. Introduction: Ecology, Music and Community—Exploring Performance in South Asia 1. Music and Intermediality in Trans-Border Performances: Ecological Responses in Patachitra and Manasamangal 2. ‘Nature’ in the Ṭhumrī Genre as Performed by Some Female Exponents of the Pūrab Aṅg: Liminality, Identity and Resistance 3. Is There Singing in the Time of Crisis? Sounding Flood Songs of Coastal and Riverine Malabar in the Indian Ocean 4. Rain of Life, Rain of Music: Music as Life Power in Indian Thought and Contemporary Musical Traditions 5. Singing the River in Punjab: Poetry, Performance and Folklore 6. The Changing Ecology of the Kolkata Tanpura 7. The Changing Landscape of Punjab in Bollywood Film Songs 8. Choirs on the Coast: Impact of COVID-19 on Musical Pedagogy and Festivals. Afterword: An Ecology of Sound

About the Author :
Priyanka Basu is Lecturer in Performing Arts at the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, and the author of The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Routledge, 2024). Radha Kapuria is Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University, UK, and the author of Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs (2023).

Review :
“This variegated collection of essays explores the multifaceted emotional and pragmatic relationships that music and the performing arts in general have with the environment in the South Asian context. Ranging from “folk” to “classical” and “popular” genres, the contributors cover a significant number of geographical and linguistic locations, as they traverse the Indian subcontinent from the Bengali-speaking regions in the east to the Punjabi-speaking regions of the west, while also meandering to the Dravidian south and Sri Lanka. Peppered with fascinating narratives concerning performance and environment, the volume is a timely contribution to South Asian studies and the interdisciplinary world of the Anthropocene.” Frank J. Korom, Professor Emeritus of Religion & Anthropology, Boston University "This expansive volume is a critical contribution to the environmental turn in South Asian Studies, offering insights into the connections between the environment and performing arts in South Asia. Through a series of careful ethnographic and archival studies, the volume sheds light on the social and cultural politics of environmental and climate crises in the region. In so doing, it illuminates the necessity and possibilities for understanding ecological crisis in historical and geographic context more broadly. It will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies and the Environmental Humanities alike." Kasia Paprocki, Associate Professor in Environment, Department of Geography and Environment, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) “This pioneering volume on ecomusicology in South Asia offers deeply generative responses to the issues of climate change, climate crisis, and the Anthropocene from the standpoint of the study of performance in South Asia. From essays on hydropoetic vernacular song-texts to religious responses to the pandemic through music, this exceptional volume maps the ways in which intermedial somatic and performative practices come to bear upon issues of risk, crisis, and threat in the natural world. These instructive and persuasively argued essays provoke and challenge us to think about South Asian performance in expansive and timely new directions.” Davesh Soneji, Associate Professor, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania