Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan
(University of Sydney)
Georgia Curran (University of Sydney)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the tensions between continuity and change in relation to the vitality of performed culture. We welcome papers which discuss issues of essentialism, authenticity, and activism with respect to performed cultural practices including music and dance and other modes of performance.
Long Abstract:
"…it is through performances… that humans project images of themselves and the world to their audiences" (Palmer & Jankowiak 1996:226)
Yet the vitality of performances, whether storytelling, music, dance or any other aspect of performed culture, is often of deep concern for scholars and cultural practitioners. This is particularly the case for those working with endangered intangible heritage.
The purpose of this panel is to tease out some of the tensions between continuity and change in relation to the vitality of performance, especially when it is centred on valued aspects of people's cultural or ethnic identity. Building on the 2019 AAS panel on Valuing Musical Traditions, this panel seeks to expand discussions of the vitality and/or endangerment of performative traditions into questions about continuity and change. We welcome papers which discuss issues of essentialism, the "given" and "added", authenticity, and activism in the documentation of vulnerable performative cultural practices including music and dance but also other modes of performance more broadly. Of particular interest are the following questions:
• How do our positionalities as researchers interplay with concerns of continuity and change coming from the communities with whom we do research?
• What are some of the tensions that arise between the urgent need to document performative cultural practices and the challenges of significant anthropological currents and how do researchers and communities navigate such tensions?
Palmer G.B. and W.R. Jankowiak. 1996. "Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane." Cultural Anthropology 11(2): 225-258.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 November, 2021, -Mahesh White-Radhakrishnan (University of Sydney) Georgia Curran (University of Sydney) John Napier Jakelin Troy (The University of Sydney) Nicholas Ng (Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (WSU)) Lillis Ó Laoire (NUI Galway) Catherine Ingram (University of Sydney, Australia)
Paper short abstract:
Come join us for a captivating roundtable discussion on ‘continuity and change in performance’! This interdisciplinary discussion will feature varied scholarly and artistic takes while grappling with the conundrums vulnerable performative cultural practices pose for creative and activist scholars.
Paper long abstract:
“…it is through performances… that humans project images of themselves and the world to their audiences” (Palmer & Jankowiak 1996:226)
“… constant performance keeps a culture alive” (Bohannan 1991).
Yet the vitality of performances is often of deep concern for scholars and cultural practitioners. This is particularly the case for those working with endangered intangible heritage (Grant 2012) and First Nations cultures (see the Garma Statement, 2002).
As part of the panel on ‘Continuity and change in performance’ there will be a 1-hour roundtable discussion featuring varied takes from scholars and artists. Discussants will share their reflections on performance while grappling with the conundrums vulnerable performative cultural practices pose including issues of essentialism (Sayer 1997), authenticity, the “given” and “added” (Nettl 1983:30), activism and the urgent need for documentation.
References
Bohannan, P. (1991) We, the Alien: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press Inc.
Garma Statement on Indigenous Music and Performance 2002 accessed 24 June 2021
Grant, C. (2012). Rethinking safeguarding: Objections and responses to protecting and promoting endangered musical heritage. Ethnomusicology Forum, Taylor & Francis.
Nettl, B. (1983). "Ethnomusicology: definitions, directions, and problems." In Musics of many cultures: an introduction, edited by Elizabeth May, pp. 1-9. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Palmer G.B. and W.R. Jankowiak. 1996. “Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane.” Cultural Anthropology 11(2): 225–258.
Sayer, A. (1997). "Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond." The Sociological Review 45(3): 453-487.
John Napier
Paper short abstract:
I examine loss of song repertoire amongst the Kodava of South Indian in the late twentieth century, and a subsequent revival in recent years. I investigate the role of festival performance in this revival, and note that the 'burden' of maintenance is placed on particular groups amongst the Kodava.
Paper long abstract:
After recording Kodava songs in 2008, a singer turned to me. “This is our culture, for ourselves. Thank-you for being interested”. Dudikotpat (Dudi-beat-songs), the core male Kodava repertoire, are in no way secret, but projection through performance to a decontextualised audience is something that until recently has not been seriously considered, even rejected altogether. Many Kodava consider their music of little interest to others: their image, if it can be generalised, is of soldiers first, sports people second, and performers a somewhat distant non-place getter. A number of factors including increased affiliation to mainstream Hinduism, migration from the district, and the decline of traditional houses, prime loci of ancestral worship and animism, had resulted in a reduction of dudikotpat and its repertoires in the previous decades. Nevertheless, the last five years have seen revival, with Kodava returning with the purpose of learning repertoire from ageing relatives, the growth of more formal teaching at social institutions, increased dissemination of the songs through social media, and the instigation of competitive gala festivals. The latter are contentious from several perspectives, most notably for offering ‘performances’, and for who, amongst the Kodava, is represented, with a conflation in discourse of proficiency in traditional culture and ‘backwardness’. Moreover, performances in this context offer only fragments of more expansive songs and repertoire. It is unlikely that these will contribute much to averting loss of repertoire and a sense of ‘appropriateness’ of performance. Dudikotpat may still be songs they sing to themselves, about themselves, but incomplete ones.
Diana Chester (University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
By looking at Godly embodiment in the Theyyam Festival in India through creative exhibitions focused on caste, this paper considers the role creative response can play in holding up a mirror to the duality of treatment experienced by performance families when embodied versus when not.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will explore the performative culture of the Theyyam Festival in Keezhara Village, Kerala, India. By exploring a series of creative exhibitions that were erected of and during the festival by the author and her collaborator, a visual artist from the village, this paper considers the the role creative response can play in unpacking ideas about caste marginalization in the village, and the role the festival plays in complicating these same notions. These exhibitions were erected across from the main temple grounds and used visual and sonic imagery and iconography from the festival to raise questions about the treatment and opinion of the villages Theyyam performance families during the festival versus the remainder of the year. The exhibitions, like the festival, take as their starting point a basic tenant of Theyyam, that the performance families are uniquely endowed with the ability to be possessed/embodied by gods during the festival. The paper is interested in the notion of performance both as it exists as a corner stone of Theyyam, whereby members of the performance families dress, recite, and dance the unique stories of the festival, as well as the metaphorical notion of performance that the villagers participate in during the festival when they pray to and give monetary offerings to the embodied Theyyam performance family members, who are otherwise regarded as lower caste members of the community. The paper asks, what role if any does real-time creative commentary play in the evolution of this festival?