Priyanka Basu – författare

This book explores the ‘folk’ performance genre of Kobigaan, a dialogic song-theatre form in which performers verse-duel in contemporary West Bengal in India and Bangladesh.

The book shows how the genre, thought to be a nearly extinct form, is still prevalent in the region. The author shows how, like many other ‘folk’ practices in South and South-East Asia, the content and format of this genre has undergone vital changes, thus raising questions of authenticity, patronage, and cultural politics. She captures live performances of Kobigaan through ethnographies spread across borders—from village rituals to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and new media. While understanding Kobigaan from the practitioners’ points of view, this book also explores the crucial issues of gender, marginalisation, and representation that are true of any performance genre. Drawing on case studies, it underlines the issues of artistic agency, empowerment, cultural labour and heritage, rituals, authenticity, creative industries, media, gender, and identity politics.

Part of the South Asian History and Culture series, this book is a major intervention in South Asian folklore and performance studies. It also expands into the larger disciplines of literature, social and cultural movements in South Asia, ethnomusicology, and the politics of performance.

This book explores the ‘folk’ performance genre of Kobigaan, a dialogic song-theatre form in which performers verse-duel in contemporary West Bengal in India and Bangladesh.

The book shows how the genre, thought to be a nearly extinct form, is still prevalent in the region. The author shows how, like many other ‘folk’ practices in South and South-East Asia, the content and format of this genre has undergone vital changes, thus raising questions of authenticity, patronage, and cultural politics. She captures live performances of Kobigaan through ethnographies spread across borders—from village rituals to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and new media. While understanding Kobigaan from the practitioners’ points of view, this book also explores the crucial issues of gender, marginalisation, and representation that are true of any performance genre. Drawing on case studies, it underlines the issues of artistic agency, empowerment, cultural labour and heritage, rituals, authenticity, creative industries, media, gender, and identity politics.

Part of the South Asian History and Culture series, this book is a major intervention in South Asian folklore and performance studies. It also expands into the larger disciplines of literature, social and cultural movements in South Asia, ethnomusicology, and the politics of performance.

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.