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The Roots and Routes of Mourning: Performing Craft and Community in Migrant Cultures in India

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Abstract

In migrant labor cultures in India, musical and performance genres play a vital role in the construction of identity and community. Specifically, such performances are embedded in the act of mourning—of nature, love, and other deep family and community bonds. In this sense, mourning provides the affects of the roots and routes of migrancy in culture and community. Specifically, in Bhojpuri popular and performance cultures, mourning gains a local color in the form of biraha. In this essay, I want to argue the relationship between mourning or biraha and affects from the perspectives of performance, politics, and the community in a variety of traditional, modern, and techno-folk contexts. I attempt to answer the question, why is biraha essential to understanding local and literary communities and their performance in traditional and non-traditional (virtual) contexts?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Abhijeet Paul

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  1. Abhijeet Paul
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Correspondence to Abhijeet Paul .

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  1. Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India

    Ananta Kumar Giri

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Paul, A. (2021). The Roots and Routes of Mourning: Performing Craft and Community in Migrant Cultures in India. In: Giri, A.K. (eds) Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7118-3_19

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