Publications and Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 1994

Abstract

Under the impact of the mass media, capitalist socio-economic relations, and other aspects of modernity, many Indian folk music genres have declined visibly and even disappeared, and it may be tempting to conclude that folk music as a whole has suffered in the twentieth century. However, a number of significant folk music genres have not only survived but flourished in the twentieth century, in some cases by virtue of their ability to syncretize elements of other traditions. One such genre is rasiya, which, in its various substyles, is the most popular and widespread folk music genre of the Braj region. In this article I focus on the most prominent forms of rasiya, outlining aspects of their textual and melodic syncretism, and suggesting hwo these features contribute tot eh continued appeal of the genre. In the process I will also present a certain amount of relevant introductory descriptive data, given the dearth of available scholarly publications on the genre, which consist primarily of an earlier work of mine (Manuel 1993: ch. 9), and a very substantial, informative, but unfortunately unpublished Hindi Ph.D. these (Banerjee 1986).

Comments

This work was originally published in the Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.