Transcultural Sound Practices: British Asian Dance Music as Cultural Transformation

Listening to the sound practices of bands and musicians such as the Asian Dub Foundation or M.I.A., and spanning three decades of South Asian dance music production in the UK, Transcultural Sound Practices zooms in on the concrete sonic techniques and narrative strategies in South Asian dance music and investigates sound as part of a wider assemblage of cultural technologies, politics and practices. Carla J. Maier investigates how sounds from Hindi film music tunes or bhangra tracks have been sampled, cut, looped and manipulated, thus challenging and complicating the cultural politics of sonic production. Rather than conceiving of music as a representation of fixed cultures, this book engages in a study of music that disrupts the ways in which ethnicity has been written into sound and investigates how transcultural sound practices generate new ways of thinking about culture.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part One Toward a Cultural Analysis of Sound Practices 1. Renegotiating Culture in the Age of South Asian Dance Music 2. The Concept of Trancultural Sound Practices Part Two Listening to South Asian Dance Music 3. Re-Fusing and Reclaiming UK Bhangra: Apache Indian, No Reservations (1993) 4. Demystifying Asianness: Asian Dub Foundation, Community Music (2000) 5. Sonic Fictions, Global Noise: M.I.A., Arular (2005) and Kala (2007) 6. Performativity, Technology and the Body: Nathan 'Flutebox' Lee, Flutebox (2011) 7. The Sonic Politics of Place: Dusk + Blackdown's Margins Music (2008) Part Three Thinking Sound as Cultural Transformation 8. Conclusion - Transcultural Sound Practices in South Asian Dance Music 9. Outlook - On Transcultural Sound Practices beyond Music Notes References Index

About the Author :
Carla J. Maier is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Review :
Carla J. Maier has not only written a strong study on sound's importance for the notion of 'culture' and how it can be analyzed also in a non-representational way, but has done so in and as a series of interrelated arguments – sound studies, sonic fictions – that draw on practices, narratives and politics that relate the specific field of this study – British Asian Dance Music – to the larger field of aesthetics and 'the postcolonial condition'. This is an immensely ambitious and valuable project – and also a 'toolkit' for artists, educators and activists (almost calling for but also forging a 'conglomerate-type' of these three “professions”). A wonderful book! While paying due attention to postcolonial and cultural studies of new ethnicities and political positions, Carla J. Maier's insights into British South Asian music shift the emphasis to the 'transcultural fabric' of sounds. This book brings sound studies and digital technologies more concertedly into the mix, reminding us that musical sounds and techniques are key agents in cultural transformation and the decolonization of everyday life. This is a highly original and exciting study of some of the key figures who have defined South Asian musics in Britain. As much as that music was defined by its exciting 'fusions' (a word many of the artists disowned), this book treads a similar radical path, mixing sound studies, cultural studies and sociological approaches to popular music. This will appeal to anyone interested in British South Asian experience, and more broadly, to those interested in how sound itself articulates political and cultural identities.