Songs between cities: listening to courtesans in colonial north India

Abstract

In the aftermath of 1857, urban spaces and cultural practices were transformed and contested. Regional royal capitals became nodes in a new colonial geography, and the earlier regimes that had built them were recast as decadent and corrupt societies. Demolitions and new infrastructures aside, this transformation was also felt at the level of manners, sexual mores, language politics, and the performing arts. This article explores this transformation with a focus on women's language, female singers and dancers, and the men who continued to value their literary and musical skills. While dancing girls and courtesans were degraded by policy-makers and vernacular journalists alike, their Urdu compositions continued to be circulated, published, and discussed. Collections of women's biographies and lyrics gesture to the importance of embodied practices in cultivating emotional positions. This cultivation was valued in late Mughal elite society, and continued to resonate for emotional communities of connoisseurs, listeners, and readers, even as they navigated the expectations and sensibilities of colonial society.Over the nineteenth century, a variety of public women came under attack from both the colonial administration and Indian moralists and social reformers, who collapsed the distinctions between 'prostitutes', lower class singers, and elite courtesans. 1 There were several impulses behind the social marginalisation of female artists, which has come to be termed the 'anti-nautch (dance) movement'. 2 In the early nineteenth century, the British began to discourage relationships with Indian women, but also lost interest in indigenous entertainments and cultural practices, including the patronage of dancing girls. 3 Those sectors of the Indian middle class that fared well under the colonial economy also 1 S. Waheed, 'Women of "Ill Repute": Ethics and Urdu Literature in Colonial India', Modern Asian Studies 48:4 (2014), pp. 986-1023. 2 'Nautch', a corruption of the Hindustani nāc (dance), refers to the dancer and her/his ensemble of musicians.

Salacious Songs: Khemṭā Dance and Participatory Printed Media in Nineteenth-Century North India

“…On Rampur in this period, see Khan, 2022. 17 There are parallels here to the ongoing circulation of the Urdu compositions of courtesans in this period (Williams, 2017).…”

“…By the late nineteenth century, khemṭā dancers were performing at fairs across northern India, and khemṭā lyrics were being printed in different scripts and languages. Khemṭā's popularity seems to defy the general impression of the late nineteenth century as a period of rising conservatism, public morality campaigns, and a rejection of "decadent" literary and musical forms (Gupta, 2002;Kidwai, 2004;Walker, 2014: 89-98;Williams, 2017;Williams, 2023). This article considers the activities of varied lyricists, choreographers, dancers, and songbook editors, to reconsider how we conceptualize "popular" music.…”

The rāg that Burned down Delhi: Music and Memory between 1857 and 1947

“…Shahid Dehlvi comments, "With this courtesy and courtly expertise, the artists of pleasure of half a century ago were brought into existence now" (Dehlvi 1978: 257). Since the appreciation of the speech of performing women had a long history, Moti's mellifluous language collapsed the temporal distance between generations (Williams 2017).…”

“A Christy Minstrel, a Harlequin, or an Ancient Persian”?: Opera, Hindustani Classical Music, and the Origins of the Popular South Asian “Musical”

“…Increasingly, however, colonial administrators and reformists ceased to differentiate among noble courtesans, casual performers, and prostitutes. 20 During this transitory period, female singers experienced a shift in social standing from cultural power to the stigmatized periphery. The nautch that had been adopted by the Parsis to entertain their English guests therefore gave way by the mid-nineteenth century to the ball.…”