'Performing’ Nature

This book is the first to explore the interconnections between ecology and performance in South Asia. Aiming to ‘green’ studies of music and performance, this book explores intersections between ethnography, history, eco- and ethnomusicology, and film and performance studies by paying particular attention to the ecological turn more broadly visible in South Asian studies. 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. The contributors address varied ecological settings of South Asian music and performance―from riverscapes to coastal communities, and from the locations of instrument-makers to negotiations of the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The book also covers the vast geographical sweep of South Asia: from Pakistan in the northwest to Sri Lanka in the south, and from Bangladesh in the east to the Malabar coast of southwest India. The novelty of the volume lies not just in mapping the dialogism between ecology and music through reflections on liminality, gender, resistance and identity, but also in bringing forth new archival strategies (digitisation and digital cultures) in conversation with ethnographic findings.

This book will be of value to students and scholars of arts and environmental studies, particularly those interested in the relationship between art, culture and environment within the realm of South Asian music and performance traditions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and are accompanied by a new Foreword by Jim Sykes and an Afterword by Sugata Ray.

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).