East Indians as Familiars and Partial Others in New York

Halstead, Narmala

doi:10.1080/02757206.2012.649033

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 27 publications

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“…A growing number of scholars address the ways Caribbeans experience a tension between belonging and non-belonging to South Asian American diaspora culture in everyday life as "twice migrants" in the US context, in New York (Gosine 1990(Gosine , 2002Warikoo 2005;Tanikella 2009;Rahemtullah 2010;Halstead 2012), in London (Warikoo 2007), as well as to African American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora culture (Hintzen 2001) within transnational contexts (Richards-Greaves 2016). Within this scholarship, however, little is problematised regarding the contingencies of racial formation, and in particular Caribbean/American diasporic subjectivities, that emerge through new modes of social manoeuvrability and mobility afforded by the generative dimensions of music or sonic practices.…”

Section: Introduction1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Invoking the supernatural and the supranational: Tappu, trance and Tamil recordings in Indo-Guyanese ’Madras Religion’ and the politics of

George¹

2018

civilisations

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The sonic dimensions of Indo-Guyanese Madrasi music -both acoustic "live" performances at temples and the consumption and playback of recordings -mediate forms of power, authority, and verity on the basis of cultural ideals and historically contingent modes of listening. One's ability to access knowledge about the otherwise ambiguous and fraught origins of Madrasi ecstatic practices primarily occurs through people's embodiment of the sonic presence of the goddess Mariamman. Madrasi sonic practices have become ever more prestigious and valorised, particularly in the North American context. A crucial catalyst for this growing prestige has been the emergence of a discourse promulgated by Indo-Guyanese/ Americans which emphasises Madrasi sonic practices as having "ancient Tamil" origins. I argue throughout that Madrasi music, though marginalised, offers people a compelling sonic modality that produces feelings or "vibrations" of "power," "proof," and presence as political acts amid inter-and intragroup tensions. I suggest that people are drawn to the sonic dimensions of Madrasi music because they mediate and assert cultural authenticity, religious authority, and verity as they seek forms of belonging in the context of South Asian American diaspora culture. I analyse how the sonic-somatic embodiment of Madrasi music invokes tactile sensations of "Tamil" diasporic sounds.

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