Radha Kapuria – författare

Punjab Sounds nuances our understanding of the region''s imbrications with sound. It argues that rather than being territorially bounded, the region only emerges in ‘regioning’, i.e., in words, gestures, objects, and techniques that do the region. Regioning sound reveals the relationship between sound and the region in three interlinked ways: in doing, knowing, and feeling the region through sound.

The volume covers several musical genres of the Punjab region, including within its geographical remit the Punjabi diaspora and east and west Punjab. It also provides new understandings of the role that ephemeral cultural expressions, especially music and sound, play in the formulation of Punjabi identity. Featuring contributions from scholars across North America, South Asia, Europe, and the UK, it brings together diverse perspectives. The chapters use a range of different methods, ranging from computational analysis and ethnography to close textual analysis, demonstrating some of the ways in which research on music and sound can be carried out.

The chapters will be relevant for anyone working on Punjab’s music, including the Punjabi diaspora, music, and sound in the Global South. Moreover, it will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the following areas: ethnomusicology, cultural studies, film studies, music studies, South Asian studies, Punjab studies, history, and sound studies, among others.

Punjab Sounds nuances our understanding of the region''s imbrications with sound. It argues that rather than being territorially bounded, the region only emerges in ‘regioning’, i.e., in words, gestures, objects, and techniques that do the region. Regioning sound reveals the relationship between sound and the region in three interlinked ways: in doing, knowing, and feeling the region through sound.

The volume covers several musical genres of the Punjab region, including within its geographical remit the Punjabi diaspora and east and west Punjab. It also provides new understandings of the role that ephemeral cultural expressions, especially music and sound, play in the formulation of Punjabi identity. Featuring contributions from scholars across North America, South Asia, Europe, and the UK, it brings together diverse perspectives. The chapters use a range of different methods, ranging from computational analysis and ethnography to close textual analysis, demonstrating some of the ways in which research on music and sound can be carried out.

The chapters will be relevant for anyone working on Punjab’s music, including the Punjabi diaspora, music, and sound in the Global South. Moreover, it will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the following areas: ethnomusicology, cultural studies, film studies, music studies, South Asian studies, Punjab studies, history, and sound studies, among others.

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.