Polyvocality and forgotten proverbs (and persons)
Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and Shambhu Das
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v8i1.68Keywords:
critical ethnography, George Harrison, historiography, polyvocality, South Indian (Carnatic) music, spiritualityAbstract
In 1993, Sara Cohen issued a challenge to popular music scholars, asserting that the ethnography of local amateur bands could be as theoretically fruitful as studying celebrities. This article suggests a third angle and related challenge, problematizing the inclusion of testimonies by musicians who play an important role in the collaborative constellation around celebrities, but are placed decidedly in the margins of dominant narratives of popular music history. George Harrison’s sitar studies led to his creating a new hybridic musico-spiritual sound that was heard on Beatles’ albums, infusing the sixties’ psychedelic soundscape with ‘raga-rock’. According to my interviews with Shambhu Das, Ravi Shankar’s disciple appointed initially to assist Harrison with sitar fingerings, Das played a much more significant role than previous historical accounts have admitted. This raises important questions about the theoretical approach and methodological application of a polyvocal texture where contradictions and ambiguities are revealed that challenge heretofore unquestioned narratives.
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Tosh, John. 1984. The Pursuit of History. London: Longman.
Wade, Bonnie. 1979. Music in India: The Classical Traditions. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. 1977 [1946]. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship.
Bellman, Jonathan. 1998. ‘Indian Resonances in the British Invasion, 1965–1968’. In The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman, 292–306. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Callaway, Helen. 1992. ‘Ethnography and Experience: Gender Implications in Fieldworks and Texts’. In Anthropology and Autobiography, ed. Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, 60–85. New York: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203450536_chapter_2
Clifford, James. 1986. ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 1–26. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cohen, Sara. 1991. Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, Sara. 1993. ‘Ethnography and Popular Music Studies’. Popular Music 12/2: 123–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000005511
Das, Shambhu, and Samprasad Majumdar. 1996. Music and Meditation. Toronto (unpublished booklet).
Farrell, Gerry. 1997. Indian Music and the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gergen, Kenneth J. 1999. ‘The Self: Death By Technology’. The Hedgehog Review. University of Virginia: Centre for Religion and Democracy-Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/Identity/1.1EGergen.pdf (accessed 14 December 2013).
Hall, Stuart. 1978. ‘Popular Culture, Politics and History’. Popular Culture Bulletin 3. Open University duplicated paper.
Harrison, George. 1980. I Me Mine. New York: Simon and Shuster.
Kaemmer, John. E. 1993. Music in Human Life: Anthropological Perspectives on Music. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Kippen, James. 1988. The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition. Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laing, Dave. 1969. The Sound of Our Time. London: Sheed and Ward.
Leng, Simon. 2003. The Music of George Harrison: While My Guitar Gently Weeps. London: Firefly Publishing.
Massot, Joe. 2000. Wonderwall: The Book. London: Pilar.
Merriam, Alan P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Michelsen, Morten. 2004. ‘Histories and Complexities: Popular Music History Writing and Danish Rock’. Popular Music History 1/1: 19–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/pomh.1.1.19.56022
Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Muller, Michael J. 1997. ‘Ethnocritical Heuristics for Reflecting on Work with Users and Other Interested Parties.’ In Computers and Design in Context, ed. Morten Kyng and Lars Mathiassen, 349–80. Boston: MIT Press.
Negus, Keith. 1996. Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Neuman, Daniel M. 1990. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Originally published in 1980 with Wayne State University Press.
Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. 2007. Master Musicians of India: Hereditary Sarangi Players Speak. New ed. New York: Routledge.
Reck, David R. 1985. ‘Beatles Orientalis: Influences from Asia in a Popular Song Tradition’. Asian Music 16/1: 83–149. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/834014
Saltzman, Paul. 2000. The Beatles in Rishikesh. New York: Penguin Group.
Sanger, Pamela Chapman. 2003. ‘Living and Writing Feminist Ethnographies: Threats in a Quilt Stitched From the Heart’. In Expressions of Ethnography: Novel Approaches to Qualitative Methods, ed. Robin Patric Clair, 29–44. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Shankar, Ravi. 1968. My Music, My Life. New York: Simon and Shuster.
Shankar, Ravi. 1999. Raga Mala: The Autobiography of Ravi Shankar. Ed. and introduced by George Harrison. Surrey: Genesis Publications.
Slawek, Stephen M. 1991. ‘Ravi Shankar as Mediator between a Traditional Music and Modernity’. In Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History, ed. Stephen Blum, Philip V. Bohlman and Daniel M. Neuman, 161–80. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Thornton, Sarah. 1990. ‘Strategies for Reconstructing the Popular Past’. Popular Music 9/1: 87–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000003755
Tosh, John. 1984. The Pursuit of History. London: Longman.
Wade, Bonnie. 1979. Music in India: The Classical Traditions. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. 1977 [1946]. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship.
Published
2014-02-07
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Cupchik, J. (2014). Polyvocality and forgotten proverbs (and persons): Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and Shambhu Das. Popular Music History, 8(1), 68-90. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v8i1.68
