Listening Out for Sangīt Encounters Dynamics of Knowledge and Power in Hindustani Classical Instrumental Music Dissertation zur Erlangung des philosophischen Doktorgrades an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen vorgelegt von Eva-Maria Alexandra van Straaten aus Haarlem, Niederlande Göttingen 2018 Inhaltsverzeichnis ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................... 3 “YOU’LL HAVE TO WORK ON THAT”: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 6 “THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THE MAIHAR GHARĀNĀ”: HISTORICAL FRAGMENTS ................................. 21 WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT SANGĪT ENCOUNTERS .................................................................. 27 HISTORICAL FRAGMENTS: ORIENTALISM ..................................................................................................... 30 HISTORICAL FRAGMENTS: NATIONALISMS .................................................................................................. 40 CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................................................................... 50 “THE DETAIL THAT MAKES THAT RĀGA ALIVE”: ON THE DOUBLE EXISTENCE OF LISTENING ............... 52 STRUCTURAL LISTENINGS IN HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MUSIC (STUDIES) ............................................................ 57 BEYOND STRUCTURAL LISTENING? ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DECOLONIZING MY EARS ...................................... 68 THE DOUBLE EXISTENCE OF LISTENING AS KNOWLEDGE PRACTICES ................................................................. 80 CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................................................................... 83 “IF YOU ARE NOT GONNA PLAY, AT LEAST WRITE IT DOWN”: METHODS AFTER METHOD .................. 85 ON BECOMING UNCOMFORTABLE: FORM AND RESPONSE_ABILITY ................................................................. 91 WHOSE MUSICAL PRACTICES? ................................................................................................................. 95 WHAT MUSICAL PRACTICES? ................................................................................................................... 97 WHERE? ON MULTI-SITED ETHNOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 100 HOW? LISTENING ................................................................................................................................ 105 HOW? PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION ......................................................................................................... 106 HOW? CONVERSATIONAL INTERVIEWS ..................................................................................................... 106 HOW? DISCOURSE ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................. 107 “THE MANY MAESTROS OF MAIHAR”: DYNAMICS OF CANONIZATION ............................................ 109 “THE EMPEROR OF MELODY”: ALI AKBAR KHAN ........................................................................................ 114 “THE GREATEST SURBAHAR PLAYER YOU NEVER HEARD”: ANNAPURNA DEVI ................................................... 124 “NINETY PERCENT PERSPIRATION, AND TEN PERCENT INSPIRATION”: NIKHIL BANERJEE ...................................... 133 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................................ 144 “THAT’S HOW I WANT MY SITAR TO SOUND”: QUALITIES OF SOUND .............................................. 146 SOUND IN THE MUSICOLOGIES ............................................................................................................... 150 THE SITAR JAVĀRĪ AND TĀRAF ................................................................................................................ 159 EMPLACEMENT THROUGH SATURATION AESTHETIC .................................................................................... 163 ACOUSTIC CLAIMS OF MUSICAL RELATIONSHIPS ........................................................................................ 170 SONIC DISCIPLINING ............................................................................................................................. 178 MUSICAL ORDER: SUR, RĀGA, FEELING ................................................................................................... 183 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................................ 185 “NOTES ARE NOT JUST ONE SOUND”: DIMENSIONS OF NOTE ......................................................... 187 NOTE WITHIN THE MUSICOLOGIES .......................................................................................................... 192 NOTE, MUSICAL PURITY, AND SIMPLICITY ................................................................................................. 198 NOTE AND SPEED ................................................................................................................................ 210 “BY PLAYING THAT NOTE, HE DESTROYED THE RĀGA”: NOTE AND RĀGA BOUNDARIES ....................................... 215 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................................ 220 “A LOT OF VIRTUOSITIES”: VIRTUOSITY BETWEEN “FLIRTING,” “RAPE,” AND “ABSTINENCE” ............ 222 VIRTUOSITIES WITHIN THE MUSICOLOGIES ................................................................................................ 229 “YOU HAVE TO BE JAMES BOND”: PLAY WITH BOUNDARIES OF A MUSICAL SYSTEM ......................................... 235 “THIS LEVEL OF DEPTH HE HAD ACHIEVED”: VIRTUOSITY, DEPTH, AND FEELING ................................................ 247 CONCLUDING REMARKS ........................................................................................................................ 256 1 “THE VERY INTRICATE THINGS … OF PRESENTING THE RĀGA”: CONCLUDING REMARKS .................. 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................. 268 DISCOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................................. 285 2 AcknoWledgements For trusting in my academic abilities far more than I trust them myself, I thank my first supervisor Prof. Dr. Birgit Abels. You seem to enjoy and even appreciate the weird jumps my mind tends to make and from the very beginning onWards have given me the feeling that you have complete faith in what I am doing. This gave me the courage to write this dissertation and sometimes lean towards trusting myself, peculiar jolts included. For being an inspiring combination of strength, warmth, and intellectual curiosity, I thank my second supervisor Prof. Dr. Regina Bendix. Your dedication to staying close to ethnographic material encouraged me to keep an intimate relationship with my data. Your openness about vulnerability inspired me to include my doubts, weaknesses, and confusion in this thesis. My third reader Prof. Dr. Andreas Waczkat, I thank for his helpful comments and stimulating questions in response to my presentations of parts of this work. These stimulated me to keep rethinking my own argument. I also thank my interlocutors, who spent (in some cases large amounts of) time with me, answered my many questions, were willing to chat, gossip, cook, eat, hang out, discuss music, practice together, and allowed me to listen to their teaching, performing, and practicing. You invited me into your lives, homes, and some of you into your hearts. In approximate order of appearances, I thank: Ken Zuckerman and his students, Daniel Bradley and his students, Swapan Chaudhuri and his students, Laurent Aubert, Felix van Lamsweerde, Wim van der Meer, Joep Bor, Jane Harvey, Darshan Kumari, Wieland Eggermont, Toss Levy, George Ruckert and his students, Warren Senders, Carl Clements, Stephen Slawek and his students, Indrajit Banerjee, Rick Henderson, Amie Macizewski, Alam Khan, Mary Khan, Manik Khan, Arjun Varma, Bruce Hamm, Graeme Vanderstoel, Joanna Mack, Mallar Bhattacharya, Chris Hale, Christopher Ris, Terry, Richard Harrington, David Roche, Rajeev Taranath, Peter van Gelder, Rhonda and Mark Gerhard, Teed Rockwell, Tejendra Narayan Majumdar and his students, Prasad Bhandarkar, Kartik Sheshadri, Paul Livingstone, David Trasoff, Josh Feinberg, Srinivas Reddy, Krishna Bhatt and his students, Peter Kvetko, Nityanand Haldipur and his students, Suresh Vyas, Hemant Desai, Meena Ashizawa, Nanda Sardesai, Leenata Vaze, Purbayan Chatterjee, Partha Chatterjee, Saswati Saha, Indrayuddh (Tun) Majumdar, Anupam Joshi, Pradeep Barot and his students, Anindiya Banerjee, Tagatha Ray Chowdhuri. Special thanks for Meena and Nanda, who took such good care of me during my dengue fever period, and for the friendship that 3 followed. Another special thanks to the knight without the silver armor, for rescuing me so many times and for his friendship. I have been intermittently learning sitar with several teachers, each of whom has helped me develop different aspects of my playing and listening. For introducing me to the first elements of learning to play this instrument, I am thankful to