The place of Hindustani art music in Bombay

Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD is a Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Humanities, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, Advisor, Access to Knowledge

Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana

Programme, Centre for Internet and Society, Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc).

In collaboration with the celebrated film-maker, Surabhi Sharma, she has undertaken a video=research project to explore the place of Hindustani Art Music in the metropolis of Bombay/ Mumbai.

About her project, their project website states:

Our project is about the place of Hindustani art music in the metropolis of Bombay/Mumbai, and its role in the fashioning of public space from the early 20th century to the present. This music began to take root here in the late 19th century, and eventually became intimately associated with the city. The project aims to map music onto buildings, neighbourhoods and public spaces to produce a kind of sonic cartography.

Film-maker Surabhi Sharma

Uploaded on pad.ma are the research interviews of the project. We are also working on a documentary film (directed by Surabhi Sharma) and an exhibition (in collaboration with Kaiwan Mehta, Sonal Sundararajan, Farzan Dalal). 

Support for the project is from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Heritage Conservation Society. Some of the research is supported through a faculty grant to Tejaswini Niranjana from the Research Council of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.

Some time in May-June 2014, Dr. Tejaswini and Surabhi interviewed me as a part of the project. Their interview is shared here with their permission.