Different Resistances: A Comparative View of Indian and Western Classical Music in the Modern Era.

If the notion of resistant materials in music has a Western modernist subtext, an alternative perspective is offered by Hindustani classical music. The latter's principal means of cultural transmission, the master–disciple tradition (guru–śiṣya paramparā), would ostensibly find resistance a foreign concept. Yet this precolonial tradition paradoxically played a part in the rise of Indian modernity, bound up as this was with resistance to British colonialist hegemony. Recording technology also played a role in this process, and, in its evolving forms, has been a (modernising) determinant on how Hindustani classical practitioners shape their materials in improvised performance. Analysis of a recordedrāgarendition can reveal just how extensively the formation of materials involves various forms of immanent resistance. Thus, allied to both conservation and emancipation, resistance can ultimately be seen to play a role no less formative on Indian than on Western music, albeit differently so. The text is supported by sound examples which appear as supplementary material accessible online via the article's Supplementary tab on the Taylor & Francis website (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]