The politics of performance and the creation of South Asian music in Britain: Identities, transnational cosmopolitanism and the public sphere

Abstract

The identities of the various South Asian communities are shaped and recognized not only by their place of origin and their specific contexts of migratory history, but also by very diverse post-migratory adaptive strategies and practices taken up by these South Asians. The complexities and debates that surround the roles and positions of music in British South Asian communities and their specific contexts are indicative of these adaptations and re-appropriation of South Asian transnational cultures in the British context. Using the Liverpool-based South Asian arts promoter Milapfest as a case study, this article critically examines the significances and implications of the development of new forms of South Asian music in Britain and how they relate to the broader issues of production and reproduction of South Asian cultures and identities in transnational and global contexts. It also argues that their musical practice and the associated politics of participation is necessarily located in the dialogic nexus between religious and secular, public and private, homeland and diasporas.