This paper investigates a performance of the Mahādevjī kā byāvalā , a kathā or story, by Kishori Nāth, a Rājasthani musician. The story is familiar: performers engage audiences through several strategies. I outline two of these: tone and heteroglossia. Performers are never evaluated primarily for musical ability, and most present the kathā using only a few melodies. Kishori Nāth's performance was atypical, using 110 distinct melodies. Analysis of this performance from several perspectives—musical variety, affect, episodic structure, and the interaction of melody and heteroglossia—demonstrates that a complex meshing of these leads to a powerful event to which musical skill contributes greatly.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.