The jajmani or yajman system is a socioeconomic system practiced for a century in the Indian subcontinent. Despite globalization and industrialization, it still exists in twenty-first-century South Asian societies. Shalini Ayyagari’s Musical Resilience: Performing Patronage in the Indian Thar Desert gives an excellent example of this system. The book is a fine ethnographic, anthropological, and sociological presentation of the Manganiyar community of hereditary musicians of Western Rajasthan in the Thar region of India, whose family lineages over multiple generations have been tied to jajmans (hereditary patron families) since premodern times. Through over one-and-a-half decades of ethnographic experience, interviews, interactions, stories, case studies, and events, Ayyagari chronicles the musical life as well as socioeconomic and sociopolitical landscape of the Manganiyar community. Ayyagari has taken “resilience” (lachila) as a chief theoretical framework to delineate the strategy undertaken by the Manganiyar community in order to maintain and sustain their musical heritage and economic viability in the neoliberal and post-patronage era of postcolonial India.
The introduction sets the background of the book, recounting the horrifying September 27, 2017, incident of the murder of Aamad Khan––a member of the Manganiyar community of hereditary musicians––and the turmoil, uprooting, and dislocation of Manganiyar families from the Dantal village of Western Rajasthan in the aftermath of the murder. Further, it outlines the rationale of the book, including socio-, religio-, and musico-cultural accounts of the Manganiyar community of the Thar Desert. The introduction is followed by four chapters, each framed within the theoretical idea of resilience. Chapter 1 recounts traditional patronage history in the Thar Desert, highlights key facets of its decline and continuation, outlines its impact on Manganiyar musicians, and describes their approach to cultural tourism, national and international touring, and commercial studio recording-based “lucrative contemporary forms of musical performance” (45) in sustaining their musical practices and livelihood. This chapter demonstrates how Manganiyar musicians remained resilient and continued their musical heritage in the context of occupational vulnerability, financial insecurity, and musical endangerment due to the decline in the traditional patronage relationship with their jajmans.
Chapter 2 adds further details to the Manganiyar’s post-patronage performance context, including their innovations with regard to musical forms, instrumentation, presentation styles, and personas to meet the needs of the audience and keep open their potential economic opportunities. In this chapter, Ayyagari complicates Manganiyars’ heavy engagement in post-patronage performances by describing their desire to maintain traditional patronage ties with their jajmans. She frames this tactic as a “strategic resilience” (81) and calls such kinds of resilience “subaltern chic”––the reinforcement and reclamation of subalternity to bolster post-patronage opportunities (82).
Chapter 3 discusses the development of the rhetoric and imaginaries massively popular among the Manganiyars in the aftermath of the 2006 flood. Ayyagari contextualizes the idea of neoliberal resilience in the cultural interventions––the emergence of numerous community-oriented sanstans (cultural organizations), community empowerment, resource access, sociocultural mobility, musical and cultural preservation, musical instrument revival, and cultural branding––undertaken by the Manganiyars to overcome the post-flood impact and to improve their post-patronage livelihood. Chapter 4 details the Manganiyar musicians’ engagement in sonic political jaagaran (awakening) during and after India’s 2014 Lok Sabha, House of the People, election. Ayyagari outlines the use of the Manganiyar’s musical heritage for political purposes such as promoting a candidate and supporting an election campaign. Here, she situates resilience in the Manganiyars’ continued use of music, technology, and social media to voice their issues and concerns resulting from political attacks on their religion, caste, class, and community after the repercussions of the Lok Sabha election result.
In the light of the ongoing loss, disappearance, or endangerment of music, culture, traditional arts, language, identity, and intangible expressions worldwide, driven by the forces of violence, poverty, displacement, natural catastrophe, social stereotyping, exclusion, stigmatization, discrimination, domination, and prejudice across the world (see Titon 2009, Grant 2014, Schippers and Grant 2016), the resilience demonstrated by Manganiyar hereditary musicians can be a remarkable example and strategy to music and cultural sustainability scholars. Further, in the context of the problematic ethical risk and hierarchy issues often discussed in relation to researchers, project leaders, and outsider-led and outsider-implemented sustainability strategies in communities (Giri 2022), the community-led participatory cultural intervention undertaken by the Manganiyar community is another extraordinary example in community-driven ownership and a potential approach to fill the gap of asymmetrical power relations in sustainability projects. For these two key reasons, Ayyagari’s book is a valuable contribution to the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and sociology. Yet one thing the book lacks is musical transcriptions of the Manganiyar repertoires. Although Ayyagari offers thick descriptions of their repertoires, transcriptions certainly would have contributed to the richness of the book.
In sum, Musical Resilience: Performing Patronage in the Indian Thar Desert is a rigorous ethnographic account of the Manganiyar community of hereditary musicians of Western Rajasthan’s Thar Desert. It is a stimulating work that portrays a unique story of musicians who thrived, continued, and sustained their musical heritage and livelihood during various upheavals, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities in their lives, and demonstrated that “[p]ostpatronage means resilience for the Manganiyar community” (170). The book can be beneficial for professionals, scholars, practitioners, government agencies, policymakers, and students who are engaged or interested in music and cultural sustainability, intangible cultural heritage, and community-based work. It can be equally relevant to sociology and anthropology scholars.
Works Cited
Giri, Subash. 2022. “Participatory Ethnomusicology: An Epistemic Approach to Social Justice, Human Rights, and the Sustainability of the Traditional Arts of Minorities,” International Journal of Traditional Arts 4:1-23.
Grant, Catherine. 2014. Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shippers, Huib, and Catherine Grant. 2016. Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 2009. “Music and Sustainability: An Ecological Viewpoint,” The World of Music 51:119-37.
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[Review length: 955 words • Review posted on December 6, 2024]