Copyright

Richard Widdess

Published On

2015-10-05

Page Range

pp. 231-246

Language

  • English

Print Length

15 pages

8. Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music1

Chapter of: Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India (pp. 231ā€“246)

Providing a fitting end to the chapter, Widdess emphasizes the role of performance in textual meaning. He presents a largely anthropological study about groups in a middle-caste Nepali farming community who perform songs from written books in language they generally do not much understand. The meaning of the songs for them is determined by the few words that do come through into their own language and the circumstances in which the songs are sung.

Contributors

Richard Widdess

(author)
Professor of Musicology in the Department of Music at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4300-8929

Richard Widdess is Professor of Musicology in the Department of Music, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research and teaching focus on the classical and religious musical traditions of South Asia, with reference to history, theory, ethnography, music analysis, and cognition. He has written three books on South Asian music: on The Rāgas of Early Indian Music (1995), tracing evidence for the development of the raga concept to c.1250; Dhrupad (with Ritwik Sanyal, 2004), on the oldest style of North Indian classical singing; and Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City (2013), a study of the music of temple singing groups in Bhaktapur, Nepal. His current research addresses the cognitive and cultural significance of musical structure in contexts of orality.