Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
K. V. Cybil
(Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University, Delhi)
Will be presenting a paper on
Lines, Sounds and Colors of Flight: Movement as Music in kalam ezhuthu pattu
Date & Time: January 25th, 2018 (Thursday), 3.00 pm
Venue: CSSS Committee Room, SSS-II
Abstract: Despite classical forms of music in India having been derived from religious and folk sources, the study of its structure has seldom yielded to ethnographic methods because ‘the princely courts, priestly dignitaries and the strongly entrenched guilds that fixed the rules of living betrayed its rudiments of melody and harmony’. To the extent researched it has yielded to methods of participant observation of functionalists scholars, it has yielded insights into the emerging patterns of rendering classical music in a civilization grappling with changes of regime. Structuralist anthropology that began with Levi Strauss and Dumont never made any forays into the study of musical traditions by and large. The former gave a philosophical exegesis to the definition of modern music itself and its relation to anthropology. Jacques Attali’s insights give a fresh impetus to consider music from a plane of abstraction, that of recordings and the era of electronic music of classical old forms .While yielding to folklore most of the aspects related to study of Music, anthropological literature distanced itself more from the possibilities opened by Structuralism. In the ripening of theories about music itself, now anthropology stands at a cross roads where it has become possible to think conceptually about the nebulously interlinked networks in which markings of territory, history and people are assembled in music. Deriving from insights given by Deleuze and Guattari in their understanding of music as the refrain or that form which brings people closer to experience of eternity as a form of collective enunciation, this paper will examine how the music of a particular form of singing can become an expression of its people.
Bio: Dr. K.V. Cybil teaches political sciences at Ambedkar University, Delhi. He has completed his studies including MA, M.Phil and PhD from Jawaharllal Nehru Universiy, New Delhi. His areas of research specialization include social anthropology, sociology of religion and Dalit literature.
