Mohindar Brar Sambhi Lecture Series on Indian Music

Lecture by Meilu Ho,“Reclaiming the Liturgical Core in North Indian Classical Music.” 

Abstract: Scholars of Hindustani classical vocal music have long suspected the Hindu temple to be a major source of the tradition. Few, however, know enough about temple music to establish this idea. The products of the Mughal court and Muslim-Sufi music making are recognized as the two primary streams that have contributed to the development of the classical tradition from the sixteenth century onwards. What the Hindu temple may have contributed has remained relatively unknown and largely conjectured. This discussion challenges the received wisdom on history by locating pre-modern Vaisnava Hindu liturgical practices as constitutive of the formative—yet little acknowledged—core of the tradition. I will argue that temple music has retained stylistic features of an earlier period and show that a repertoire of liturgical songs has moved into the classical arena. While the court no longer exists today, the temple does. Its music functions as a repository, providing a critical and audible link between past and present.

Meilu Ho (Ph.D. 2006, UCLA) is Assistant Professor of Musicology at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she teaches courses on Asia, Islam, and culture. Her research has focused on pre-modern Hindu traditions and making connections between the liturgical and classical worlds. Her publications have appeared in Worlds of Music, Asian Music, and edited volumes, and an article is forthcoming in Ethnomusicology. She has presented talks in Asia, Europe, and the United States. She is currently preparing a book manuscript entitled Reclaiming the Core: The Liturgical as Classical in North Indian Music.

1pm – Room 1344, Schoenberg Music Building

Open to the public and free of charge
Parking in Lot 2 — $11 (Hilgard and Westholme)
Information: (310) 825-5947

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The Mohindar Brar Sambhi Lecture Series on Indian Music presents a variety of lectures focusing on research and other issues important in the fields of ethnomusicology and Indian music.