Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North IndiaIn Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium—the portable cassette player—caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism. Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture. |
Contents
Theoretical Perspectives | 1 |
2 The Impact of Cassettes on the International Recording Industry | 21 |
3 The Music Industry and Film Culture up to 1975 | 37 |
New Alternatives to His Masters Voice | 60 |
5 Cassettes and the Modern Ghazal | 89 |
6 Devotional Music | 105 |
TuneBorrowing in Popular and Folk Music | 131 |
8 Regional Musics | 153 |
A Case Study in Commercialization | 196 |
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advent of cassettes aesthetic akharas audience Bappi Lahiri Bengali bhajan bhakti Bhojpuri birha Braj cassette companies cassette culture cassette industry cassette producers cassette technology cassette-based chapter cinema classical commercial cassettes commercial rasiya composed constitute cover versions Delhi devotional music dholak dissemination diversity dominated elite emergence especially example film culture film melodies film music film songs film tunes film-music forms Garhwali gender genres ghazal grassroots Hathrasi Hindi film Hindu Hindustani Hindustani music Indian film Indian music interview katha Krishna languria light-classical live performance mainstream mass media modern ghazal music industry musicians Muslim nautanki North Indian noted pan-regional parody percent piracy Playback pop music popular music promote Punjabi qawwali radio Rajasthani rasiya recording industry regarded regional musics repertoire rupees secular settes Sikh sing singers Singh social song texts style sung T-Series Tanatan tapes temple tion traditional typical urban Urdu versions village vocalist Western women