'Performing' Nature

This book is the first to explore the interconnections between ecology and performance in South Asia.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.

Priyanka Basu is Lecturer in Performing Arts at the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King's College London, and the author of The Poet's Song: 'Folk' and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Routledge, 2024). Radha Kapuria is Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University, UK, and the author of Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs (2023).

Foreword. Introduction: Ecology, Music and Community-Exploring Performance in South Asia 1. Music and Intermediality in Trans-Border Performances: Ecological Responses in Patachitra and Manasamangal 2. 'Nature' in the -humr- Genre as Performed by Some Female Exponents of the P-rab A-g: Liminality, Identity and Resistance 3. Is There Singing in the Time of Crisis? Sounding Flood Songs of Coastal and Riverine Malabar in the Indian Ocean 4. Rain of Life, Rain of Music: Music as Life Power in Indian Thought and Contemporary Musical Traditions 5. Singing the River in Punjab: Poetry, Performance and Folklore 6. The Changing Ecology of the Kolkata Tanpura 7. The Changing Landscape of Punjab in Bollywood Film Songs 8. Choirs on the Coast: Impact of COVID-19 on Musical Pedagogy and Festivals. Afterword: An Ecology of Sound