Indian classical music has long been fascinating to Western audiences, most prominently since the Beatles' sessions with Ravi Shankar in the 1960s. This fascination with the musical genre still prevails in the twenty-first century. Hindi Poetry in a Musical Genre examines Thumri Lyrics, a major genre of Hindustani music, from a primarily linguistic perspective. On a cultural level, it discusses the interface between devotional and secular poetry. Furthermore, it explains the impact of social and political change on the musical life on North India. Well-written and thoroughly researched, this book is a valuable contribution to the field of South Asian studies. It will be interesting to academics across the discipline, including linguistics, politics, sociology, cultural and gender studies.

Hindi Poetry in a Musical Genre examines thumri lyrics, a major genre of Hindustani music, from a primarily linguistic perspective. On a cultural level, it discusses the interface between devotional and secular poetry. Furthermore, it explains the impact of social and political change on the musical life of North India.

Indian classical music has long been fascinating to Western audiences, most prominently since the Beatles' sessions with Ravi Shankar in the 1960s. Du Perron examines Thumi Lyrics, a major genre of Hindustani music, from a primarily linguistic perspective.

This volume of original essays is dedicated to Owen Wright in recognition of his formative contribution to the study of music in the Islamic Middle East. Wright’s work, which comprises, at the time of writing, six field-defining volumes and countless articles, has reconfigured the relationship between historical musicology and ethnomusicology. No account of the transformation of these fields in recent years can afford to ignore his work. Ranging across the Middle East, Central Asia and North India, this volume brings together historical, philological and ethnographic approaches. The contributors focus on collections of musical notation and song texts, on commercial and ethnographic recordings, on travellers’ reports and descriptions of instruments, on musical institutions and other spaces of musical performance. An introduction provides an overview and critical discussion of Wright’s major publications. The central chapters cover the geographical regions and historical periods addressed in Wright’s publications, with particular emphasis on Ottoman and Timurid legacies. Others discuss music in Greece, Iraq and Iran. Each explores historical continuities and discontinuities, and the constantly changing relationships between music theory and practice. An edited interview with Owen Wright concludes the book and provides a personal assessment of his scholarship and his approach to the history of the music of the Islamic Middle East. Extending the implications of Wright’s own work, this volume argues for an ethnomusicology of the Islamic Middle East in which past and present, text and performance are systematically in dialogue.

Language is a Developmental, social and cultural phenomenon. When Urdu started its literary journey, writing also treasured it and today we are proud of the great collection of Urdu books. Urdu lovers have also done a remarkable job in writing books on various topics and in conveying the standard writings to the Urdu circles by giving them solid ink. This book although written in English, is one such masterpiece by Krishna S. Dhir. However, it clearly reflects the love of the writer for the Urdu language and its literature. The beginning of this book is an excellent illustration of how the various apabhransha of South Asia interacted with Perso-Arabic and European languages, to give rise to various languages, including Urdu and how they grew up through the time of the Mughals and the British. How all the major religions of the world originated in the Asian continent and the observation of Sufis are highlighted in the second chapter of this book. The role of social and economic institutions and traditions in the evolution of Urdu has been shed light upon. Krishna S. Dhir has painstakingly elaborated upon the protest literature and extensively quoted Mir, Ghalib, Daagh Dehlvi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Faiz Ahmad, Ahmad Fraz and other poets to prove how Urdu poetry has been used to protest against siege, raids, imprisonment, imperialism and colonisation, and to express love and peace. Finally, the writer explores how Urdu is deployed by the diaspora that uses it.

Revivals - movements that revitalize, resuscitate, or re-indigenize traditions perceived as threatened or moribund into new temporal, spatial, or cultural contexts - have been well-documented in Western Europe and Euro-North America. Less documented are the revival processes that have been occurring and recurring elsewhere in the world. And particularly under-analyzed are the aftermaths of revivals: the new infrastructures, musical styles, performance practices, subcultural communities, and value systems that have grown out of revival movements. The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival helps us achieve a deeper understanding of the role and development of traditional, folk, roots, world, classical, and early music in modern-day postindustrial, postcolonial, and postwar contexts. The book's thirty chapters present innovative theoretical perspectives illustrated through new ethnographic case studies on diverse music cultures around the world. Together these essays reveal the potency of acts of revival, resurgence, restoration, and renewal in shaping musical landscapes and transforming social experience. The contributors present research from Euro-America, Native America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the former Soviet bloc, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. They enrich the field by applying approaches and insights from across the disciplines of ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, historical musicology, folklore studies, anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and cultural studies. The book makes a powerful argument for the untapped potential of revival as a productive analytical tool in contemporary, global contexts-one that is crucial for understanding manifestations of musical heritage in postmodern, cosmopolitan societies. With its detailed treatment of authenticity, recontextualization, transmission, institutionalization, globalization, and other key concerns, the collection makes a significant impact far beyond the field of revival studies and is crucial for understanding contemporary manifestations of folk, traditional, and heritage music in today's postmodern cosmopolitan societies.

"How far did colonialism transform north Indian art music? In the period between the Mughal empire and the British Raj, did the political landscape bleed into aesthetics, music, dance, and poetry? The Scattered Court presents a new history of how Hindustani court music responded to the political transitions of the nineteenth century. Examining musical culture through a diverse and multilingual archive, primarily using sources in Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi that have not been translated or critically examined before, challenges our assumptions about the period. The book presents a longer history of interactions between northern India and Bengal, with a core focus on the two courts of Wajid Ali Shah (1822-1887), the last ruler of the kingdom of Awadh. Wajid Ali Shah was one of the most colorful and controversial characters of the nineteenth century and has had a polarizing legacy. According to political histories and popular memory, he was a failure of a king, who was forced to surrender his kingdom to the East India Company, on the eve of the Indian Uprising of 1857. On the other hand, in musical histories, he is remembered either as a decadent aesthete or a path-breaking genius. The Scattered Court excavates the place of music in his court in Lucknow and his court-in-exile at Matiyaburj, Calcutta (1856-1887). The book charts the movement of musicians and dancers between these courts, as well as the transregional circulation of intellectual traditions and musical genres, and demonstrates the importance of the exile period for the rise of Calcutta as a celebrated center of Hindustani classical music. Since Lucknow is associated with late Mughal or Nawabi society, and Calcutta with colonial modernity, examining the relationship between the two cities sheds light on forms of continuity and transition over the nineteenth century, as artists and their patrons navigated political ruptures and social transformations. The Scattered Court challenges the existing historiography of Hindustani music and Indian culture under colonialism, by arguing that our focus on Anglophone sources and modernizing impulses has directed us away from the aesthetic subtleties, historical continuities, and emotional dimensions of nineteenth-century music"--