Overview

An insider's eight-decade overview of South India's 20th century classical music culture. This book offers an account of Carnatic music culture drawing on the knowledge of T. Sankaran, a musician raised in an illustrious non-Brahmin devadasi family, and his long affiliation with cultural institutions including All India Radio (AIR) and the Tamil Isai Sangam (Tamil Music Academy). Sankaran examines the cultural and social matrix in which Carnatic music was cultivated and consumed in mid-twentieth century India, including the ways that musicians negotiated caste politics and the double standard for male and female musicians. The memoir provides insight into the way AIR worked as a modern, bureaucratic institution, and how the opening of government music colleges interacted with caste politics and the shifted womens' participation in public performance. The book is polyvocal, as Sankaran's writing is interwoven with passages from Daniel Neuman's book The Life of Music in North India, which inspired Sankaran's project, as well as transcripts from interviews with Sankaran by Matthew Allen. Includes rare archival photos.

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9780819500748

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Sankaran's perceptions and pointed observations are priceless, a rare insider's perspectives on the culture of Karnatak music. --Professor Emerita Bonnie C. Wade, University of California, Berkeley Simultaneously a compendium, a historical text, and a modern scholarly commentary, The Life of Music in South India complicates received histories and foregrounds issues such as caste and the social and political lives of musical production in South India. It is a must read for anyone interested in the anthropology and social history of modern Karnatak music. --Hari Krishnan, author of Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam This book is both an illuminating contribution to the social history of South Indian music, and an innovative intertextual dialogue between the principal author and the editors. --Richard Widdess, Emeritus Professor of Musicology, SOAS University of London

Author Information

T. SANKARAN [1906--2000] was a scholar and vocalist, and an officer at All India Radio and served as secretary of the Tami Isai Sangam (Tamil Music Academy. He wrote extensively for Sruti Magazine of Indian Music and Dance, The Indian Express, The Hindu, and other Madras and national newspapers. MATTHEW HARP ALLEN (Mansfield, MA) is professor of music, emeritus at Wheaton College and co-author with T. Viswanathan of Music in South India: The Karnatak Concert Tradition and Beyond. He has written several articles on the social history of South Indian dance and the classicization of Carnatic music. He studied Karnatak vocal music with the late T. Viswanathan and for several years was a vocal accompanist for the dance recitals of Viswa's niece Lakshmi Shanmukham Knight. DANIEL M. NEUMAN (Los Angeles, CA) is emeritus professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of numerous books, including The Life of Music in North India.

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