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H-ASIA August 31, 2013 Member publication _Music and Empire in Britain and India_ ********* From: Bob van der Linden vanderlinden.bob@gmail.com Dear all, I should like to announce the publication of my new book: *Music and Empire in Britain and India: Identity, Internationalism, and Cross-Cultural Communication (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013) * With very best wishes, Bob van der Linden *Summary* Partly because of academic disciplinary boundaries, music remains a neglected subject in the historiography of the British Empire and indeed intellectual history at large. *Music and Empire in Britain and India*, however, emphasizes that the imperial encounter by itself, at least in part, was a sound exercise, and that music is an essential topic for the discussion of processes of (national) identity formation as well as trans-national networks and patterns of cross-cultural communication between colonizer and colonized. As an interdisciplinary study, it aims to open up a new field for research by taking music as a lens through which to examine societal and intellectual change, assuming that it is closely embedded in society and formative to its construction, negotiation and transformation in terms of consensus and conflict. In the main, the book is concerned with the way in which some rational, moral and aesthetic motives underlying the institutionalization and modernization of ‘classical’ music making resembled each other closely at times in Britain and India (c. 1880-1940). In addition, it looks at ‘internationalism in music’ by discussing some subversive internationalist counter movements against the dominant nationalist musical establishments as well as the openness of some Britons and Indians to the possibility of learning from each other. Conversely, it highlights the linkage between the British folk song movement and the early twentieth century emergence of the discipline of Indian ethnomusicology. More immediately, *Music and Empire in Britain and India* shows how the imperial encounter led to certain dominant ideas about modern Indian music practice. Since the late nineteenth century, some Westerners and a smaller amount of Indians, for instance, saw Western and Indian music as being related through the prisms of evolutionism and Aryanism. Furthermore, both Westerners and Indians perceived Indian music as ‘different’ because of its *shrutis *(microtones), spirituality, lack of harmony, improvisation, and so on. Consequently, counter-cultural Western modernist composers and proto-ethnomusicologists became greatly interested in Indian music. At the same time, partially in reaction to Western Orientalist writings about Indian music, Indians re-empowered some traditional musical concepts. For example, ideas about *shruti*-intonation and the relationship between *raga* (generalized melodic practice) and mood (*rasa*) as well as the time of the day (*samay*) often gained more authority than before because they were rationalized in the processes of redefinition, institutionalization and canonization of Indian ‘classical’ music. All in all, the book investigates how through these dominant musical concepts meaningful music practices were created that positioned India and the West in relation to each other. Though musical boundaries were defined in this intriguing and complicated process, it generally underlines the intellectual interaction and cross-cultural communication between metropolis and colony. Thus, for example, Western modernist composers in search of an alternative to the existing dominant imperial culture reinvigorated their music tradition by appropriating Indian music. On the other hand, Indians emphasized the ‘difference’ of the Hindustani and south-Indian (Carnatic) music traditions but they simultaneously appropriated Western rational (scientific) ideas about the organization and practice of music. Also Western instruments like the harmonium, violin and saxophone were transformed into ‘Indian’ instruments. Alternately, the involvement in India of Western internationalists and proto-ethnomusicologists with ‘authentic’ Indian (folk) music strengthened Indian ‘difference’ in music. By looking at the meaning and life of some influential musical ideas that were enabled, materially and ideologically, by empire in Britain and India at the same time, the book ultimately intends to break down the simple dichotomy between metropolis and colony and contribute to the emerging field of global intellectual history. *Table of Contents* Preface List of Illustrations Introduction I Cyril Scott: ‘the Father of Modern British Music’ and the Occult II Percy Grainger: Kipling, Racialism and All the World’s Folk Music III John Foulds and Maud MacCarthy: Internationalism, Theosophy and Indian Music IV Rabindranath Tagore and Arnold Bake: Modernist Aesthetics and Cross-Cultural Communication in Bengali Folk Music V Sikh Sacred Music: Identity, Aesthetics and Historical Change Coda Endnotes Chronology Glossary of Indian terms Selected discography Works cited Index ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL:http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/ --
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