Strains of friendship: post-partition rāgadārī music publics in London

Abstract

How is cross-cultural communication around music in the British Asian diaspora shaped by the Partition of 1947? This article will discuss this question through a case study of the writings and relationships of four key South Asian music enthusiasts: one female patron of music, and three male scholar-researchers of music who befriended each other, and in the process redefined rāgadārī (classical) music publics in Britain, beginning in the 1970s and 80s. Through a discussion of their life-stories and narratives I reveal the importance of (i) storytelling and memory in the creation of diasporic homemaking, (ii) a gendered politics of musical commemoration, (iii) the anecdote as ‘musical gift’ (qua Sykes), and (iv) postcolonial cultural custodianship, in producing a unique rāgadārī musical public in London, across the Indo-Pak national border.