The Music Box and its Reverberations

Transcription

1 The Music Box and its Reverberations Technology and Music in India January 2015 School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, Jawaharlal Nehru University Musical Performances at The School of Social Sciences Auditorium

2 Conference Concept Note The explosion of digital technologies for sound in the past two decades has thrown into sharp relief the tangled mediations of the musical, the technological, and the social-institutional. As a medium for aesthetic creation, the digital facilitates processes such as sampling and remixing that confuse popular notions of authorship and originality in music. The particular materialities of digital circulation, reproduction and storage of audio have simultaneously impacted established music industry norms and subjective engagements of listeners with music. Indeed, the digital s blurring of existing practices of creativity, circulation and listening draws our attention to music as a sonic-socialtechnological-legal assemblage (Born 2005, 2011). Debates about what the digital signifies in contemporary musical experiences also encompass reflections on previous technologies; especially, the digital s prolific remediation of previous technological formats gives rise to a provocative binary between it and the analogue. From this perspective, the digital allows us a unique opportunity to open anew conversations on the analogue, ranging from continuities and parallels between the two, to a radical split in the digital context. A way to historicize the digital, then, might be to peek at analogue sound technologies as mediums for aesthetic creation as well as circulation of/for different musical sounds and genres. This conference enters these discussions from the vantage point of India, taking the opportunity to rethink claims about the digital and its precursors through India s particular combination of several musical forms and technologies in modernity. We begin from the coordinates of popular music (film, vernacular) and classical music, aiming to open up routes that probe technologies as they intersect with questions about definitions of categories, re/configurations of genres, musicians livelihoods and music industries (especially popular music industries), and affective engagements of musicians and audiences. For instance, for music that continues to be associated with oral circulation specifically, the regional/vernacular and the classical/art technologization has been perceived as a singular mode of recording for posterity while simultaneously inciting anxieties about the loss of the liveness central to their performance and transmission. The digital, 2

3 in these contexts, is emphasized through its seemingly infinite possibilities for archiving and dissemination, and an ever-increasing attention to the live aesthetic. In contradistinction, with digital production tools, music genres that are ontologically technological for instance, Hindi and Bhojpuri film songs, remixes, Indipop have explicitly embraced new generic formations, and sonic and musical textures. Further, if it accentuates certain kinds of differentiation, the digital also flattens production hierarchies and differences by promoting new kinds of industry and engendering new modes of listening. Organized collaboratively by the Music Digitisation Mediation project based in the University of Oxford, UK and the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, the conference uses these lenses to trace musical experiences in the Indian context as they are mediated by technologies of music production, circulation and consumption. Choosing to concentrate on the aural as against the audiovisual (following Ochoa Gautier 2006), we draw upon scholarship from several disciplinary orientations to focus on selected domains of the interfaces between sound socialities and musical technologies. We aim to bring together perspectives from academics and practitioners through papers, roundtable discussions and performances. We propose the following themes, without being limited to them: Sonic technologies, aesthetic regimes and the crafting of genres/categories Technologies, digitization and film music industries Individuals, institutes and processes of collecting, storing and archiving music Amplification, circulation and the creation of musical/sonic publics Enmeshed technologies of the object and listening subject/s and practices Musical livelihoods, economies and sonic technologies Each conference evening will culminate in a performance/concert that will speak to the several musical practices that we are using as organizing schema. 3

4 PROGRAMME PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP WITH JONATHAN STERNE & GEORGINA BORN Wednesday, 14 January WORKSHOP I 10:00-12:00 Jonathan Sterne Introduction to Sound Studies 12:30-1:30 pm Lunch WORKSHOP II 1:30-4:00 pm Georgina Born Music, Sound and Space 4

5 INAUGURAL SESSION Wednesday, 14 January pm Registration 5:00-5:30 pm Tea/Coffee 5:30-6:00 pm Introduction and Welcome Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics Address by the Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University Introduction to the Music Digitisation Project by Prof Georgina Born, Oxford University KEYNOTE 6:00-8:00 PM Music, Technology, Aesthetics: A Conversation across Disciplines Amlan Dasgupta, chair Jonathan Sterne Stretching Time: Quantum Musical Legacies from Denis Gabor to Ableton Live Georgina Born Directions in Digital Musics: On the Entanglement of Technological, Social and Aesthetic Change 5

6 CONFERENCE Thursday, 15 January 9:00-9:30 AM Registration PANEL I 9:30-11:30 AM Hindustani Classical Music: Histories, Sounds, Technology Chair/discussant: Vidya Rao Amlan Dasgupta Notes Towards a Possible History of Musical Sound: Interpreting Archival Evidence Justin Scarimbolo Commercial Recordings and the Construction of Gharana Identity Anubhuti Sharma Neutral operator or aesthetic tool? Kumar Gandharva and the question of technology 11:30 AM-12 NOON Tea/Coffee PANEL II 12 NOON-1:30 PM Music in South India: Shifting Aesthetic Paradigms in the Early Twentieth Century Chair/discussant: Bombay Jayashri Ramnath Vikram Sampath Creation of a Carnatic Music Aesthetic in the Early Twentieth Century Stephen Hughes Sound Unbound: Visualizing Technological Change in South Indian Musical Practice 1:30-2:30 PM Lunch 6

7 PANEL III 2:30-4:00 PM Vernacular Music Practices: Culture, Media, Politics Chair/discussant: Lakshmi Subramanian Aditi Deo Technologically Crafting Heritage: The Cultural Politics of Vernacular Music Documentation in India Stefan Fiol Khud Lagni Cha: A Social History of Music, Media and Folk Culture in the Garhwal Himalayas 4:00-4:30 pm Tea/Coffee Roundtable I 4:30-6:30 pm Archiving Music: Theory and Practice Moderator: Shubha Chaudhuri Participants: Suresh Chandvankar, Gopal Singh Chauhan, Bhaskar Kaushik, Sukanta Mazumdar, Yatindra Mishra, Vikram Sampath, Musical Performance I 7:00-8:30 pm, The School of Social Sciences Auditorium Bombay Jayashri Ramnath 7

8 Friday, 16 January Panel IV 9:30-11:30 am Meri Awaaz Suno : Cinematic and Aural Stardoms Chair/discussant: Ranjani Mazumdar Neepa Majumdar Music, Mediation, and Cinematic Self-Reflexivity Yatindra Mishra The Structure and Melody of Hindi Film Songs Amanda Weidman Constructing the Husky Female Voice in Analogue and Digital 11:30 am-12 noon Tea/Coffee Roundtable II 12 noon-2:00 pm Technologically Yours: Film Music and Sound Practices Moderator: Ira Bhaskar Participants: Jayashri Ramnath, Biswadeep Chatterjee, Sneha Khanwalkar, Arjit Dutta, Ravindhar Randhawa, Kunal Sharma. 2:00-3:00 pm Lunch Panel V pm Seeing Print, Hearing Film: Reception Histories of Music and Sound Chair/discussant: Ravi Vasudevan Madhuja Mukherjee To speak or Not to Speak: An Enquiry into Technology, Mediations and early Bengali films Vebhuti Duggal The Swarlipi in Madhuri and other stories: Tales of listening to the Hindi film song 8

9 pm Tea/Coffee Panel VI pm After the Great Divide: Digitization and the Vernacular Music Industries Chair/discussant: Ravi Sundaram Ratnakar Tripathy Enabling Music: A Comparative Perspective for Bihar and Haryana Gregory Booth The Long Tail in the Digital World: Musical Diversity and the Survival of India s Minor Labels Musical Performance II 7:00-8:30 pm, The School of Social Sciences Auditorium Moushumi Bhowmik and Satyaki Banerjee 9

10 Saturday, 17 January Panel VII 9:30-11:30 am The Business of Sounds: Music Industries, Retailing, Piracy Lawrence Liang, chair Vibodh Parthasarthy The Business of Making Sound: Entrepreneurial Practices at the dawn of the analogue Era, Jayson Beaster-Jones, Copy bhi milega [Copies are also available]: Reproduction and Distribution in India s Family Run Music Stores Bhagwati Prasad Kai Choti Kahaniya Banati Hai Badi Kahani 11:30 am-12 noon Tea/Coffee Panel VIII 12 noon-1:30 pm Fiddling with the Dials: Radio, Performance and Listening Cultures Chair/Discussant: Partho Dutta Srinkhala Sahai Alaap on the Airwaves: Indian Classical Music on Web Radio and Digital Technologies Ravikant Cinema on Radio: Voice, Music, Words 1:30-2:30 pm Lunch Panel IX 2:30-4:00 pm Noise, Technology and Music Chair/discussant: Jonathan Sterne Shikha Jhingan Music as Noise: Sonic Disorders, Mobility and Devotional Music 10

11 Samhita Sunya High-Fidelity Ecologies: India v. Noise Pollution in the Contemporary Public Sphere 4:00-4:30pm Panel X 4:30-6:00 pm Tea/Coffee Electronic Music Cultures Chair/discussant: Georgina Born Natalie Sarrazin The Rise of the Gigabyte Guru: Technology s Impact on Indian Music Education Ankush Gupta Electric Dreams: Questions of Gender and Technology 6:00-6:30 pm Vote of Thanks: Georgina Born and Kaushik Bhaumik Musical Performance III 7:00 8:30pm, The School of Social Sciences Auditorium Arijit Dutta and Vinay Lobo 11