Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Neusprachliche Südasienstudien
SAI|Südasien-Institut

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The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia
Vortrag von Dr. Priyanka Basu, King's College London
10. Februar 2023, ab 14 Uhr, Raum 130.00.03

Die NSP-Abteilung lädt Sie herzlich zum Vortrag von Dr. Priyanka Basu ein.

Dr. Priyanka Basu ist Dozentin für Darstellende Kunst am Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London. Ihre erste Monografie, The Poet's Song: 'Folk' and its Cultural Politics in South Asia, erscheint demnächst bei Routledge (Reihe South Asian History and Culture).

Kobigaan (lit. song of the poet) is a verse-duelling and song-theatre genre practiced across the India-Bangladesh border. It is one of the many dialogic genres in South Asia highlighting the verbal virtuosity, bricolage, and storytelling abilities of performers (kobiyaals). While rural performances of this genre (most often tied with religious rituals and village fairs) can last as long as overnight sessions, Kobigaan’s other manifestations are often truncated and adapted according to diverse venues, audience tastes and artistic choices. This talk focusses on the questions of authenticity of Kobigaan as ‘folk’ genre while travelling with the performers as well as in and out of the literary archive. Caste, class, and gender, and identity politics intertwine with the larger cultural politics of ‘folk’ in the cross-border contemporary practices of Kobigaan. Consequently, several performing groups become ‘claimants’ of authentic Kobigaan as it travels from rural settings to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and the new media. Over time, the element of debate (kobir loraai) has become a synecdoche for Kobigaan. It has also come to signify people’s songs, national culture, folk heritage and even sound chronotopes (in cinema). Conflictingly, the perception of Kobigaan in Bengali cultural memory also relies on its status as ‘decadent’, ‘extinct’ or ‘obsolete’. This talk considers such varied conceptions of Kobigaan as a performance genre as it traverses local, national, and trans-national diasporic communities.

Weitere Informationen auf dem Poster.

Posted on 06 Mar 2023
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