Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality

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Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality is about sacred and secular choirs in Goa and Shillong across churches, seminaries, schools, auditoriums, classrooms, reality TV shows, and festivals. Voice and genre emerge as social objects annotated by tradition, nostalgia, and innovation. Piety literally and metaphorically shapes the Christian lifeworld, predominantly those belonging to the Presbyterian and Catholic denominations. Indigeneity structures the political and cultural motifs in the making of the Christian musical traditions. Located at the intersection of Sociology, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology, the choral voices emplace affect and the visual-aural dispatch. Thus, sonic spectrum holds space for indigenous and global musicality. This ethnographic work will be useful for scholars researching music and sound studies, religious studies, cultural anthropology, and sociology of India.

Reviews

Choral Voices is fantastic! In destabilizing notions of culture, colonization, and sound, Sebanti Chatterjee weaves a compelling story of belonging and faith. Through aural participation and multi-sited ethnography readers are transported to the overlooked arenas of identity and indigeneity in contemporary India, with crucial insights for worlds beyond. * Duncan McDuie-Ra, Professor of Urban Sociology, The University of Newcastle, Australia *
Choral Voices is an important addition to the growing body of work that challenges fondly held notions of 'East' and 'West.' * Naresh Fernandes, author of Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age *
This excellent study brings together an understanding of music, sound, voice, indigeneity, sacrality, and the ways in which these are knitted together in the choral music of Shillong and Goa. The book is also a moving personal account of crossing given religious, linguistic, regional, and cultural identities through the practice of music. * Vidya Rao, singer, writer, and editor, Orient BlackSwan publishers *
Sebanti Chatterjee constructs a beautifully detailed and captivating ethnographic account of Christian choral singing within contrasting locales in India. Highlighting colonial influence as well as indigenous agency, Chatterjee's account demonstrates the intertwining roles of faith and musical genre in creating a people's sacred imagination. Her book is an important addition to anthropological and ethnomusicological studies of Christian communities. * Monique Ingalls, Associate Professor of Music, Baylor University, USA, and author of Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community (2018) *
Sebanti Chatterjees work is a significant contribution to the emerging field of voice studies in South Asia. Backed by a rich ethnography, it parses choral voices in multiple sites to revisit questions of repertoire, indigeneity and faith practice and in the process indexes a complex set of social relations and meaning making. * Lakshmi Subramanian, Visiting professor of History, BITS Pilani Goa, India *

Author Bio

Sebanti Chaterjee is a sound anthropologist and a senior academic fellow at National Law School India University, Bengaluru. She is a recipient of India Foundation of Arts Research Grant, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SRA FY 2016), the Indian Council of Social Science Research fellowship, and former editorial member of Serenade Magazine.