John Caldwell, Ph.D. 2021

Advisor: Michael Figueroa

Dissertation Title: Songs from the Other Side: Listening to Pakistani Voices in India

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

In this dissertation I investigate how Indian listeners have listened to Pakistani songs and singing voices in the period between the 1970s and the present. Since Indian film music dominates the South Asian cultural landscape, I argue that the movement of Pakistani songs into India is both a form of resistance and a mode of cultural diplomacy. Although the two nations share a common history and an official language, cultural flows from Pakistani to India have been impeded by decades of political enmity and restrictions on trade and travel, such that Pakistani music has generally not been able to find a foothold in the Indian songscape. I chart the few historical moments of exception when Pakistani songs and voices have found particular vectors of transmission by which they have reached Indian listeners. These moments include: the vinyl invasion of the 1970s, when the Indian market for recorded ghazal was dominated by Pakistani artists; two separate periods in the 1980s and 2000s when Pakistani female and male vocalists respectively sang playback in Indian films; the first decade of the new millennium when international Sufi music festivals brought Pakistani singers to India; and the 2010s, when Pakistani artists participated extensively in Indian television music competition shows. In all of my case studies, Pakistani singers strove to resist political discourses by bringing messages of peace and friendship to their Indian listeners, and Indian listeners strove to hear those messages. In analyzing how Pakistani songs were heard in India, I argue that Pakistani singers deployed embodied vocality, and specifically the “grain of the voice,” not only to distinguish themselves from Indian competitors, but also to channel sonic meaning at the intersections of gender, religion, and nationality. Ultimately, I argue that Pakistani songs have sustained a persistent—if circumscribed—presence in India despite efforts to silence them, and more broadly, that the power of voices to break down political borders resonates at many interlocking levels of meaning.

Dr. Caldwell is currently a Teaching Associate Professor in Hindi-Urdu at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1996. He has co-directed UNC’s Summer in India Study Abroad Program since 1999. He completed his doctoral work while holding this teaching position at the university. He also directs the UNC Gamelan, serves as the Faculty advisor for the UNC Pakistani Students’ Association, and plays bassoon semi-professionally in several ensembles in the area.

Dr. Caldwell’s UNC Faculty page can be found here.