Brought to Life by the Voice

Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-0-520-37706-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 270 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 352 g

Reihe: South Asia Across the Disciplines

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weidman, Amanda

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musikethnologie

Über Autor(innen)

Amanda Weidman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College and the author of Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India.