The Sacred and the Profane: Economies of the (Il)licitглава из книги
Аннотация: The Sacred and the Profane Economies of the (Il)licitIt is 2009, and a grand celebration of the seventy-fifth birthday of P. Susheela is being held in Hyderabad.As part of the festivities, Susheela must be felicitated onstage by her colleagues and contemporaries in the film field.Near the beginning of the celebration, she has taken the stage, dressed in her customary white silk sari with the end draped over her right shoulder.The singer L. R. Eswari, her slightly younger contemporary, ascends the stage to greet her.Also in a white silk sari, but without the end draped over her right shoulder, and flashing prominent gold jewelry, Eswari addresses Susheela as a venerable older sister (akkā), riffing on the Telugu/Tamil word akkā and wishing her health for many years to come.Then, in the midst of her sentence, Eswari suddenly bursts into song, in English: a rousing, vibrato-laden rendition of "wish you many happy returns of the day, " her voice full of the husk of advancing age.As the orchestra behind them comes to life, she rocks to the beat, turning around to conduct the orchestra, and gesturing on the word you to Susheela, who stands stationary, with an occasional knowing smile at her colleague's antics.Eswari finishes and hands the mic to Susheela, who sings a Telugu film song in her trademark style, slow and smooth and, while perhaps a little lowered by age, still "sweet, " looking down at her notebook of lyrics.In just a few minutes, with just a few gestures and a few lines of song, two archetypes-diametrically opposed to each other in self-presentation and vocal sound-have been animated.These two iconic singers inhabit the same system, presenting two possibilities for female public performance, now so well-worn that Eswari and Susheela hardly need to perform anything for the audience to get who they are.In chapter 3, we saw how the archetype that Susheela embodied was elaborated in the 1950s and 1960s.But what did it mean to flaunt one's difference from respectable norms in this context?What did this act entail for singers, and how did L. R. Eswari come to master it? 1
Год издания: 2021
Авторы: Amanda Weidman
Издательство: University of California Press
Источник: University of California Press eBooks
Ключевые слова: Economic Theory and Institutions, American Constitutional Law and Politics, Political Economy and Marxism
Открытый доступ: hybrid
Страницы: 104–128