This review was originally published in SAMAJ on January 13 ,2025
Richard David Williamsâs The Scattered Court: Hindustani Music in Colonial Bengal examines the Calcutta-based court-in-exile of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (1822-1887), the last ruler of Awadh who was deposed by the British in 1856. The book is based on Williamsâs doctoral thesis âHindustani music between Awadh and Bengal, c. 1758-1905.â It develops a social history of how Hindustani classical music and dance responded to the transition from the Mughal Empire to British colonialism. Using previously unexplored sources in Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi, Williams aims to demonstrate the importance of Wajid Ali Shahâs exile in Calcutta in enabling the rise of that city as a celebrated center of Hindustani music. As he writes in the introduction:
Establishing the connections between Lucknow in Hindustan and Calcutta in Bengal challenges the notion of distant, regional performance cultures, and underlines the importance of aesthetics and the performing arts to mobile elite societies. Since Lucknow is associated with late Mughal or nawabi society, and Calcutta with colonial modernity, examining the relationship between the two cities sheds light on forms of continuity and transition over the nineteenth century, as artists and their patrons navigated political ruptures and social transformations (p. 3).
Most previous studies of Wajid Ali Shah treat his thirty years of exile as a footnote to the culture of Lucknow.1 In contrast, Williams focuses on the court-in-exile at Matiyaburj (located in southwestern Calcutta) in order to examine the impact of the nawabâs presence in Calcutta on the development of Hindustani music in Bengal. He examines the circulation of musicians between the transposed court and musical soirees in North Calcutta. Through his reconstruction of musical life at Matiyaburj, Williams demonstrates that the nawabâs musical innovations continued in Bengal and that he was engaged with his surrounding environmentâfor example, by composing lyrics in a mixed Bengali-Hindustani register.
Williams provides a nuanced perspective on Wajid Ali Shah. He writes: Continue reading Review: The Scattered Court: Hindustani Music in Colonial Bengal by Richard David Williams
As a student of ethnomusicology trained in Hindustani classical music, I was intrigued by Fawzia Afzal-Khanâs latest book Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers. Afzal-Khan â a professor of English and Gender Studies in the United States as well as a vocalist trained in the Hindustani tradition â uses case studies of selected female singers to explore some of the contradictions of Pakistani society. On the one hand, Pakistan is a conservative Muslim-majority state where many people believe that the performing arts in general are contrary to religious injunctions and that women singers are not ârespectableâ women. Yet, divas such as âMadamâ Noor Jehan (1926-2000) are widely celebrated and have legions of fans. Afzal-Khan thus wanted to provide a more nuanced depiction of Pakistani society at a time when many people in the West have a very stereotypical image of Muslims and particularly of Muslim women, whom they believe lack all personal agency and are completely covered by the burqa. Clearly, the truth is not that simple. In this book, Afzal-Khan explores the ways in which great singers like Malka Pukhraj (1912-2004), Roshan Ara Begum (1917-1982), and Noor Jehan employed their personal agency within the constraints of a conservative Islamic society to fulfill their ambitions to become performing artists. 