Dr Ashok Da Ranade Memorial Trust Presents

The Ninth Dr Ashok Da Ranade Memorial Lecture

“Ethnomusicology” as Ethnographic Method and as Music/Media Study – The Case of Brass Baja

Speaker: Dr Gregory D. Booth
(Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Auckland)
Date: December 5, 2020
Time: 11 am to 12.30 pm IST
Join Zoom Meeting at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89511576021
Meeting ID: 895 1157 6021
Passcode: musictalk
You can watch it also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4R8DWoMoI7CAwX8_LjQHig

About the speaker

GREGORY D. BOOTH is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland and has been engaged in the study of Indian music and culture for more than thirty-five years. He is the author of two books, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (OUP 2008) and Brass Baja: Stories from the World of Indian Wedding Bands (OUP 2005), as well as numerous articles on the music and film industry and culture in South Asia. He co-edited the 2014 OUP publication More than Bollywood –Studies in Indian Popular Music. He is currently studying India’s music and film culture-industries, focusing on a wide range of factors including intellectual property, technology, industrial structures, and the music-film relationship.

About the lecture

“One of Pandit Ashok Ranade’s many contributions to Indian (ethno-)musicology was his insistence on the importance of a version of the ethnomusicological project that held fast to “one principle: to keep the Indian performing tradition at the centre of all scholastic persuals.” My investigations into the world of Indian wedding bands show how ethnomusicology can work in India to expand our understanding of Indian performing traditions in the context of Indian society and can indeed to lead us to what Ranade Saheb called “a fuller interpretation of the Indian musical reality.” This talk will examine the complexities of a musical and ethnographic focus on the performing tradition encountered in the (north) Indian baraat and trace the ways that changing conditions alter socio-musical relationships throughout Indian music-culture and the socio-economic positions of the musicians involved.” – Dr Gregory D. Booth

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