The Department of Music in collaboration with the Committee on South Asian Studies and the University of Chicago Arts Council is pleased to present
Audible Intimacies: A Symposium on Song in South Indian Cinema
South Asian Sound Interventions Series
February 16, 2012
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Classics 110
About the Symposium
Song and dance scenes perform several functions in South Indian film. They advance narratives, amplify characters and relationships, evoke wider cultural frames of reference, and create moments and spaces of intimacy on and beyond the screen. Despite the tremendous historical and contemporary relevance of film music in the daily lives of listeners, work on South Asian expressive cultures has only recently begun to explore the public and private intimacies film songs engender. With the intention of facilitating new research synergies in South Asian film studies, this symposium brings together a diverse group of scholars who share a common interest in considering the agents and affects of intimacies in songs that span the devotional, the nostalgic, the ordinary, the utopian, and the transgressive in South Indian cinema. Continue for schedule
Symposium Schedule
9:00 a.m. Welcome address
Philip Bohlman (Music)
9:15 – 10:15 a.m. – Pallavi
Chair: Melvin Butler (Music)
“Sound Masala: Spicing up Intimate Spheres with song”
Kaley Mason (Music)
“Dam it’s gonna blow: Tamil Film Music and the Origins of Tamil Hip-Hop”
Sascha Ebeling (South Asian Languages and Civilizations)
10:15 a.m. – Coffee Break
10:30 a.m. – A Conversation with Jassie Gift (music director) and Vijay Jacob (arranger)
Moderated by Travis Jackson (Music) and Nisha Kommattam (South asian Languages and civilizations)
11:30 – 12:30 p.m. – anupallavi
Chair: Nisha Kommattam
“Item Numbers, Performativity, and the ontology of the image in South Indian film”
Constantine Nakassis (Anthropology)
“Mythical Courtesans, Modern Wives: Dance and womanhood in South Indian Film”
Rumya Putcha (Music)
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. – Lunch
1:30 p.m. – Keynote address
Introduction by Robert Kendrick (music)
“Issues in Kerala Drumming, Film, Popular Music and Intimacy”
Rolf Groesbeck (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)