Synopsis
This book takes readers across the polycentric world of the pre-colonial period in AfroAsia, which involved systems, processes and interactions that were interconnected through long-distance trade, slavery and migration. It was also punctuated by the movement of symbolic forms like music that were in deep interaction with local and regional contexts. Music and musicality are primary entry points into uncovering the connections. The book weaves the story through a description of the travels of a fictional character, Garai, who traverses the AfroAsian world in different periods, from Mapungubwe in southern Africa to northern Africa, southern Spain and India, and back to southern Africa. The historical and theoretical consequences of the research, and the methodological difficulties and breakthroughs it entails, are discussed. Different categories of music and associated communities of performers, which suggest historical connections around some of the routes of the Silk Road, Indian Ocean trade and other smaller routes, are identified and described.
About the Author
is an academic and musician, whose experience spans teaching and research in economics, development studies and popular music studies. She has taught in Delhi University and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi over a period of three decades, and is presently Director, Gender and Economics with International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). She is also a visiting professor at Ashoka University, the University of Cape Town and the Institute for Human Development, Delhi. Apart from her academic involvements as an economist and social scientist, she is also a singer and composer. Her archiving and documentation of the musical tradition of the Indian People’s Theatre Association from the 1940s and 1950s resulted in a book titled The Radical Impulse: Music and Politics in the IPTA Tradition (2017) and the album Songs of Protest. She has performed from the documented repertoire extensively in India and abroad. She has collaborated with poets and musicians from South Africa as a founder member of the award-winning Insurrections Ensemble, and has also directed a multi-institutional project around music and migration in pre-colonial AfroAsia from 2016 until the present, which has resulted in two musical productions and a book titled Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Pre-Colonial AfroAsia (2023).
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