Practice, performance and the archive: Cases from Indian classical music genres

Abstract

Given their emphasis on oral pedagogy and improvisatory approaches, Indian classical music genres present a challenge for constructing historically nuanced studies of musical practices, shifts in them over time and their links to broader developments. Much scholarship on Indian classical music tends to maintain loyalties to disciplinary silos such as social and cultural history, cultural studies and ethnomusicology, often sacrificing aspects of the spectrum of musical experiences. The dispersed nature of musical networks has meant that the archive for studying the phenomena of listening to, learning and disseminating music is fragmented, mobile and multi-local, not easy to capture with conventional methodologies of historical reconstruction or even purely ethnographic fieldwork. A central concern that drives the articles in this issue is a focus on exploring musical sound, repertoire and practices as archives. Such a focus raises two kinds of challenges. One is the identification of archives that can capture the ephemerality and immediacy of these musical practices; the other is the question of interpretive methods that can faithfully reflect the aesthetic and affective dimensions of musical practice. The contributors to this Special Issue explore a range of historical records centred on music – notations, compilations, repertoires, biographies, texts, anecdotes, performances, recordings, pedagogic tools – as their primary archives. Drawing upon disciplinary insights from cultural history, ethnomusicology and sound studies, and often in conversation with musicians and listeners, they offer conceptual and methodological lenses for reading such archives productively.