Paper short abstract:

For centuries, the musical 'Naubat' has (re)presented times and spaces of divine kingship in North India. What drove the Merasi court musicians to halt its performance in the World Heritage Site of Jaisalmer? This paper considers how sensory ideologies and politics (trans)form heritage sites.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout history, the affective medium of music has been constitutive for local practices of remembering and place-making across the Rajput realms of North India. In the wake of globalization, however, the inherent visualism of the modern heritage industry has been gradually superseding sonic ways of representation in the epistemological economy of Rajasthan.

Drawing on collaborative, ethnographic research conducted in the city and former kingdom of Jaisalmer (2011-2018), this paper delves into the silence of the 'Naubat', a politicoreligious performance/clock that was central to endemic conceptions of heritage and yet was halted in 1997. Particularly, I focus on the "silencing" of its players, the hereditary royal musicians 'Alaamkhana Merasi', as a lens for examining how the perceptual is embroiled in politics of recognition.

First, I expose how the thundering Naubat, historically performed at umbrella-shaped pavilions guarding the palaces' entrance and aimed at making the Maharavals' power audible across the walled town, was a powerfully emplacing and a spatially encoded vehicle of memory for both local audiences and the Alaamkhana performers.

Then, I examine why the Naubat outlived the British Raj but became still at the turn of the millennium, unravelling the reasons why the Alaamkhana halted a tradition that was central to their senses of identity, and the reasons why the pavilions of sonic performance have been sealed with chains at the 'monumental' Mandir Palace.

I suggest that the silence surrounding the Naubat might be, precisely, what best speaks of the visual imageries and power politics (re)shaping "Jaisalmeri heritage" today.