There is no doubt that the Newar culture of the Kathmandu Valley has attracted a lot of scholarly attention. The presentation of Newar culture in focus here, however, is very different from the scholarly literature. It is made for Newars by Newars; it is in the form of a song with a video, not a scholarly text; and it is a presentation for children, not for learned readers. The song is called Kaulā Kachalā. Within its small format, this song video plays up a very rich picture of Newar civilization and is positioned in and illuminates important problem areas and debates such as ethnic politics and cultural heritage, and cultural vulnerability and sustainability. 

The Newars are prominent in the ethnic and indigenous (janajati/adivasi) movement in Nepal. With their heartland in the country's capital area, the Kathmandu Valley, their position is contradictory: they are part of the economic, political and cultural elite yet dominated in numerous ways. Still in the 1940s, people went to jail for publishing literary works in Newari, and the Newar struggle for recognition, identity, and cultural survival - often linked with leftist, political movements - has taken many forms since then. Cultural activism is prominent among these forms.

This contribution studies Newar cultural activism as an artistic, aesthetic practice. This practice includes songs, cultural programs, music, dance, theatre, but also media artifacts such as cassettes, cds, video-cds, and recordings and "visualizations" for broadcasting purposes. Not only song texts, but also such things as musical resources and non-verbal statements in dress and dance are meaningful here and important to analyze.

The contribution builds upon ethnographic research from the mid 1980s and into the present day. This period has seen a transformation in political terms from absolutism to democratic republicanism with Maoism as perhaps the most important base for political ideology. But equally important, economic transformations have come to challenge the very roots of the traditional agro-urban civilization of the Newar heartland. In this light, cultural activism is one way to negotiate a position for the Newars and their heritage between the economic forces of the market and the ideological offensive of Comrade Mao's followers.

IMER’s world. Social scientific universalism and /post/colonial hegemonies

IMER studies in Sweden have been vocal in unearthing data, proposing analytical frameworks and seeking out theoretical perspectives that counter racism and Swedish ethnocentrism. In this contribution, the discussion of post-colonial theory, universalism and hegemony will be grounded in an examination of IMER research and of how it relates to social science as an international field.

Contemporary social science works within Western hegemony. Heuristically, I think of three hegemonic layers here, each with its intrinsic forms of racism. First, the US hegemony of the post-colonial era. Second, the British hegemony that has lived on from the colonial era to be surprisingly strong today. And finally, a third hegemonic layer centering upon Western Europe.

So one central question motivating my contribution is, how does IMER position itself vis-à-vis these layers of world hegemony?

This means turning the searchlight 180 degrees, to fall upon ourselves as practitioners. The examination does not so much dwell upon what we say (describe, analyze, theorize) as upon what we do: which authors we cite, whom we invite as keynote speakers to our conferences, where we go for empirical research or for guest scholarships, the international networks we build and so on.

Social science operates on the premise of universalism. I don’t think here of the grand universalism – universal truths, science as supreme knowledge, and so on – that post-modernist and social constructionists have done so much to dismantle. But rather of the mundane universalism of everyday social scientific practice. We assume that social scientific theories, methods, textbooks, foundational canons and so on do not stop at linguistic, cultural or national borders. (We do not map out theoretically in which countries discourse analysis is an appropriate methodology, and where not.) And no geographical limitations are articulated when such terms as supply, demand, identity, gender, social capital, ethnicity, social structure or society are used to delineate research fields (”international migration and ethnic relations”), bring people together for conferences, give name to journals (”Ethnic and Racial Studies”), and serve as keywords for scientific articles.

So we will look at the way this universalism operates in social scientific practice and go on to ask, what role has social scientific universalism in maintaining the three layers of Western world hegemony?

The research presented in my contribution is based on the examination of IMER events, IMER publications, and the trajectories of scholars. This is mapped upon centers and peripheries of the three layered world hegemony as outlined above. For instance, from the citations in key IMER publications I map out the geographical areas where cited authors have their professional affiliation, and more specifically from which places empirical parallels are drawn, and where we find theory. If the subaltern speaks, do we listen?

In the concluding discussion, I use the results of this research to address the workshop’s defining question about post-colonial theory and racism.

Local cultural activism and the production of public meaning: a Kirtipur case study

Ingemar Grandin, Linköpings universitet, Sweden

This contribution studies Nepal’s democratic transition as it is articulated and interpreted in local cultural production. The town of Kirtipur is a good case of this. Cultural activism voicing both political and ethnic issues is a longstanding tradition here, and is tied in with other ways of creating public history. To give an example, the names of the four Kirtipur martyrs (shahid) of the Jana Andolan of 1990 are perpetuated not only in memorialising cultural programs but also in the very name of a successful local school.

Kirtipur cultural activists have navigated through the sometimes turbulent years of post-pancayat Nepal, actively relating to events such as the Jana Andolans and their aftermaths, the Gyanendra era with its curfews, and the advent of the Maovadis. Commenting, arguing, and reflecting upon such events but also upon more general social and cultural conditions, they have performed from makeshift local stages such as a water tank or a crossroads as well as on more formal stages in Kathmandu. As they go by, they forge links and make alliances with people (songwriters, dance directors, in theatre) and organisations (cultural, educational, political) who operate on a translocal or national level. But still the Kirtipur scene remains very much a locally situated practice.

Beside the ”live” cultural programs, the output of this practice includes media artifacts such as cassettes, cds, video-cds, and recordings and visualisations for broadcasting purposes. In both media artifacts and live programs, songs are the single most important component. New songs are continuously devised, but the Kirtipur cultural activists also draw upon an accumulated, large repertory from which items can be mobilised when the situation so calls for. 

Grounded in in both historical and local/national contexts, my analysis of this cultural practice and these cultural products aim for the stories they tell about, and the meanings they give to, the sociopolitical conditions, developments and events of the recent decades. My contribution builds upon familiarity with cultural activism, in Kirtipur and on a more national (i.e. Kathmandu) level, and the empirical material has been collected in 2010 as well as intermittently throughout the transition period (and back into the late days of the pancayat era). The data include song texts as copied in notebooks, printed or the like; songs as sung at programs or demonstrated at home (and recorded by me) but also as preserved on local recordings or brought out on commercially available cassettes, cds and videos; programs as observed live and as seen on local recordings. In my study of the local production of public meaning here, not only texts, but also musical resources such as melodies and instruments and the non-verbal statements in dress and dance will be ”decoded”. And finally, not only the artifacts but also the practice of cultural activism itself (as observed and as inferred from interview data) will be ”read” as a running commentary on Nepal’s democratic transition. The very decision to stage a program or write a song at a particular moment can be understood as a statement on how that transition is seen to proceed. 

This books presents the musical life of the Newar town of Kirtipur, Nepal. Newar musical traditions are prominent in the local musical life, and this heritage is presented in some detail in the book. Between the vivacious peaks of musical activity from the traditional ensembles, however, modern music from radios and cassette-players take over much of the town’s soundscape. So the role of the media in local musical life is the book’s second major theme. A third major theme is how the vibrant ethnic and political movements help shape the town’s musical activity.With their rich and complex civilization, the Newars have given the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal much of its unique culture and cultural heritage. Music and media in local life was first published in 1989, and is still today the only study of Newar musical life in a full book format. This is the second, updated edition of the book.

It is common to map culture onto socially bounded entities such as ethnic groups and nation-states. This conception spills over to migrants and diasporas – the Gurungs have Gurung culture, the Greeks have Greek culture, the Kurdish diaspora has Kurdish culture. This paper looks at exactly the opposite. We will analyze art music as a unified transnational practice that, however, is maintained by a group of people that is fragmented both socially and – except for the common allegiance to their musical art – culturally. They speak different languages, have different religions, belong to different nations. The analysis draws upon two different traditions of transnationalism in art music: Western ”classical music” and Southasian shastriya sangit. Both are constituted within multiple fields interconnected by flows of both people and cultural goods, making up translocal opportunity structures. And moreover, these two cases give historical depth to our understanding of transnational practice: they were, so to say, transnational long before the era of the nation-state.

Internationell migration och ökade etniska spänningar har skapat förutsättningar för utvecklingen av sociala, politiska och ekonomiska relationer som överskrider nationsgränser. Gränslösa gemenskaper uppstår där människor och platser knyts samman i ett globalt rum. De båda begreppen transnationalism och diaspora är centrala inom detta nydanande forskningsområde."Transnationella rum" ger nya insikter och perspektiv på identiteter och kulturella processer i en värld som länkats ihop av globaliseringen

In September 1993, Gopal Yonjan (an important personality in the field of Nepali music) released a book-plus-cassette set with songs for children. The cover of the book shows children in dresses typical of different Nepali regions, and these children hold up musical symbols from both East and West: the note-syllables of sa, re, ga, ma, and pa together with a treble clef and an eighth note. On top of this, the name of the book, Git Manjari, is inscribed into the five lines of Western staff notation. In the book – beside the lyrics and saragam notation of the songs – there are instructive comments. These comments are obviously there to educate the music teacher as much as the students. It is suggested how each song can be performed (group, solo singers, with dance, from stage, etc.), illustrations show where the various notes are on the keyboard, and there are comparisons into Western ways of putting music on paper (D major scale, tone-names, etc.). As to the lyrics, we meet in one of these songs a greedy cat, and in another song we are treated with one didactic proverb for each of the ten fingers of the two hands. All the songs – which are targeted at children between four and ten years old – are also found on the accompanying cassette.

Of course, it was not his songs for children that elevated the late Gopal Yonjan (1943-1997) to be seen as one of Nepal’s (and Darjeeling’s) absolute top musical artists. He is remembered as a composer, as a songwriter, as a part of the legendary Mitjyu constellation with Narayan Gopal, as a flutist, and maybe as a studio-owner and college teacher (of music, at the Padmakanya Campus). Among his works, one might mention songs such as Birsera pheri malai nahera (sung by Narayan Gopal, lyrics Nagendra Thapa), Makhamali colo cahidaina (the radio hit sung by Mira Rana), or Kalakala salasala (the hit from the film Kanchi where Aruna Lama sang Chetan Karki’s lyrics).

In the context of Gopal Yonjan’s oeuvre, the songs for children in Git Manjari appear marginal.

In a similar way children have been assessed as marginal in Nepali studies (Gellner 2004). One of the most striking developments during Nepal’s last half century is certainly the explosive growth in schools (see, for instance, Liechty 2003: 57–8, 212–14, 264). The implications of this explosion for youth culture are thoroughly investigated in for instance Mark Liechty’s (2003) study of the rising middle class, and in the studies on various new forms of Nepali music by Paul Greene (2001, 2002/03; Greene & Henderson 2000; Greene & Rajkarnikar 2000). Children’s songs, on the other hand, remain unmentioned here as well as in the research at large – as the overviews of Nepal’s musical scenes in the leading music encyclopedias (Moisala 2000; Wegner et. al. 2005) testify.

Indeed, marginality seems to be characteristic of children’s songs, whatever the context in which we consider them. They are – as the Gopal Yonjan case illustrates – on the fringe of the modern musical developments in Nepal, where the central genres have been those of modern songs and (folklorized) folk songs. And in the educational context, children’s songs appear as similarly marginal. Compared to the compulsory, comprehensive teaching – with centrally approved textbooks – in Nepali and social studies, singing was an activity on the periphery of school practice and music was not even an explicit part of the curriculum (Ragsdale 1989: 118; see further below).

Yet this marginality may well be deceptive. As I hope will be clear in course of this article, studying children’s songs, as cultural artifacts and as artistic and educational practices, lands one on important, contested and central ground.

Wired for Sound is the first anthology to address the role of sound engineering technologies in the shaping of contemporary global music. Wired sound is at the basis of digital audio editing, multi-track recording, and other studio practices that have powerfully impacted the world's music. Distinctions between musicians and engineers increasingly blur, making it possible for people around the globe to imagine new sounds and construct new musical aesthetics. This collection of 11 essays employs primarily ethnographical, but also historical and psychological, approaches to examine a range of new, technology-intensive musics and musical practices such as: fusions of Indian film-song rhythms, heavy metal, and gamelan in Jakarta; urban Nepali pop which juxtaposes heavy metal, Tibetan Buddhist ritual chant, rap, and Himalayan folksongs; collaborations between Australian aboriginals and sound engineers; the production of "heaviness" in heavy metal music; and the production of the "Austin sound." This anthology is must reading for anyone interested in the global character of contemporary music technology

Program 1 av 2 som presenterar Ravi Shankar (med anledning av att han fått Polarpriset detta år) och förankrar hans musikaliska nyskapande i en indisk musikhistorisk tradition av nydanare. 

Andra programmet av två som presenterar Polarpristagaren Ravi Shankar i relation till nordindisk konstmusik. 

This is a study of a contemporary Nepalese artistic genre. But it is also an analysis of political rhetorics and of one of the means by which the political parties were able to build up mass support during the time they were legally banned. During the three decades of partyless Pancayat Democracy, the parties were confined to working underground, undercover in the guise of student unions, and – as they did from its very inception (Rose 1965: 360, 365) – within the pancayat system itself. How, then, to capture, convince and convert the masses? Progressive songs – pragati!"l g"t – were part of the “cultural front” specifically aimed to reach beyond the dedicated party workers and to “the people”. This cultural work – conceived as the first step in the enlightenment of the people – included street dramas; the street poetry revolution (Hutt 1991:142); and the musical performances and cultural programs (with a mix of dramas, dances, and songs) of which progressive songs were the most important component.

Populärvetenskaplig presentation av artikeln One song, five continents and a thousand years of musical migration (Grandin 1995).

In 1986, the senior Nepali composer Amber Gurung invited some musical friends to his home to record a few of his songs. There were Tarabirsingh Tuladhar, the sitarist; Prakash Gurung played the tabla, and Madanji the guitar. From Amber Gurung’s own family of gifted musicians, Kishor Gurung played the keyboard while Amber Gurung himself sang and played the harmonium. I was there to do the tape recordings. Among the songs we recorded at that time was Aankhaale malaai (which later was re-recorded in the Saanga studio and issued on the cassette Kaile lahar, kaile tarang). This is a typical Nepalese modern song. But the song itself, the arrangement, and the instruments with which it was performed altogether show traces of musical processes, flows and movements that encompass five continents. And to unravel all this will take us through more than a thousand years of musical migration.

 Nätversionen av art med tillägg av NEs redaktion