Copyright

Christian Lee Novetzke

Published On

2015-10-05

Page Range

pp. 169-184

Language

  • English

Print Length

15 pages

5. Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra

Chapter of: Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India (pp. 169–184)

This piece distils some of his ground-breaking work on badas, the notebooks of Namdev, which singers used as prompts for oral presentations. Novetzke abandons the familiar dialectic of literacy and orality for one of permanence and performance.

Contributors

Christian Lee Novetzke

(author)
Professor of South Asia Studies, Comparative Religion, and International Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at University of Washington
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7505-5962

Christian Lee Novetzke is Professor of South Asia Studies, Comparative Religion, and International Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work explores the histories, cultures, and religions of South Asia from the medieval period to the modern and contemporary. Novetzke's work includes three books: Religion and Public Memory (2008 and 2009); The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and Everyday Life in Premodern India (2017); and Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation, written with Andy Rotman and William Elison (2016).