Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs, 1800-1947

Review

Music in Colonial Punjab is an important contribution to the cultural history of the Punjab. Kapuria has recovered an untold social history of music in the region that adds complexity to our understanding of colonial Punjab's history.

–Farina Mir, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In a remarkable effort steeped in the archive, Radha Kapuria busts the popular image of Punjab as a land of only folk and devotional music. She turns her attention to the classical, urbane, r?gad?r? music, whether nurtured in the court of Ranjit Singh or in cis-Satluj states of Patiala and Kapurthala. Her social history of music focuses attention on the myriad performers and expositors of the classical, and other genres; various women performers and their changing class and cultural backgrounds; to the mir?s?s, and their protean and evolving lives in pre-colonial and colonial times. Kapuria must be commended for a path-breaking work that will open new vistas for studying the social, cultural, and musical histories of Punjab.        

–Anshu Malhotra, Professor & Kapany Chair for Sikh & Punjab Studies, Department of Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara

This rigorously researched book heralds the long overdue ‘depeasantification’ and ‘defolklorization’ of the Punjab region through three centuries of music making in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial Punjab. Replete with enlightening legends and anecdotes about kings and princes, courtesan queens and kanjaris, mirasis and missionary women and the progenitors of Punjab’s gharanas, the book poignantly throws light on the denigration and marginalization of the hereditary custodians of Punjab’s rich musical heritage with the birth of middle class performers and publics. The book promises to be an eyeopener in its unveiling of the region’s varied musical heritage inferioritized as folk music.

–Anjali Gera Roy, Professor, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur)

 This excellent study provides us with the first joined-up understanding of the complex roles that music and musicians (female and male alike) played in the socio-cultural and political history of the Punjab, as it moved to, through and away from colonial rule.

–Sarah Ansari, Professor, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London

Radha Kapuria's impressive scholarly work complicates our understanding of Punjabi cultural production, outside of the usual domains - the rural, the martial and the folk - that, while important, have too often obscured our understanding of Punjab's urbane cultural forms. This fuller picture restores something important to the history of the region--and reinserts Punjab in a broader historical of South Asian classical music--and brings crucial focus on the women and hereditary musicians/bards (mir?s?s) who warrant a central place in Punjabi history.

–Anne Murphy, Associate Professor in History, University of British Columbia (Vancouver)

For those intrigued at the complexity of Punjab’s colonial history, this fascinating read provides an entry point through music.

–Yogesh Snehi, Assistant Professor in History, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD)