- The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Music, Convert, and Subject in the North Sumatran Mission Field
- Mission Music as a Mode of Intercultural Transmission, Charisma, and Memory in Northern Australia
- Coexistence of Causal and Cultural Expressions of Musical Values among the Sabaot of Kenya
- Indigenous Innovations on Music and Christianity at Ratana Pa
- Music as Shared Space in Mennonite Development Work in Chad
- Are Western Christian <i>Bhajans</i> “Reverse” Mission Music?
- Drums in the Experience of Black Catholicism in Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Chant as the Articulation of Christian Aramean Spirithood
- The Politics of Pronunciation among German-Speaking Mennonites in Northern Mexico
- Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community
- Music and Religiosity among African American Fundamentalist Christians
- Songs of <i>Oru Olai</i> and the Praxis of Alternative Dalit Christian Modernities in India
- The Renaissance of the Corsican Confraternities and Their Musical Negotiations
- Local Music Making and the Liturgical Renovation in Minas Gerais
- The Survival Story of Syriac Chants among the St. Thomas Christians in South India
- Russian Church Music, Conundrums of Style, and the Politics of Preservation in the Emigre Diaspora of New York
- Parading Protestantisms and the Flute Bands of Postconflict Northern Ireland
- Everyday Musical Ethnicity and Roma (Gypsies) in Hungarian Pentecostalism
- Transnational Connections, Musical Meaning, and the 1990s “British Invasion” of North American Evangelical Worship Music
- Negotiations of Faith and Space in Memphis Music
- Tropes of Continuity and Disjuncture in the Globalization of Gospel Music
- Mainline Protestantism and Contemporary versus Traditional Worship Music
- Negotiating the Tensions of U.S. Worship Music in the Marketplace
- Contingency and the Symbolic Experience of Christian Extreme Metal
- Palestinian Christmas Songs for Peace and Justice in Sacred Place and Politicized Space
- The Diffusion of Gregorian Chant in Southern Italy and the Masses for St. Michael: To Barbara Haggh and to the Memory of Michel Huglo
- Performing Pannkotis Identity in Haiti
- Christianity and Korean Traditional Music
- Congregational Singing, Orthodox Christianity, and the Making of Ecumenicity
- Afterward: Sound, Soteriology, Return, and Revival in the Global History of Christian Musics
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter addresses an alternative Dalit Christian modernity transmitted and practiced through song and drumming in Tamil Nadu, India. Using two examples of the praxis of sharing, I analyze expressions of agency by the caste and gender oppressed that shows an awareness of discourses of liberation in both the bible and the modern world outside the caste-inflected village. Daily practice of economic sustainability through community finds its musical analogy in folk music’s potential for re-creation, unity, accessibility, and common ownership by the oppressed. I theorize this as an indigenous religio-political cosmopolitanism, expressed by Dalits as a discourse of supra-localism and spirituality that reverses the discourse of caste impurity and pollution. These cases show the historical and contemporary nature of Christian transnational flow in the form of theology, politics, and utopian community, its dialogical process of indigenization, and the process of cross-cultural musical exchange to (re)make Christianity meaningful through local musical reconstruction.
Keywords: Christianity, music, India, Tamil Nadu, Dalit, Tamil folk music, liturgy, liberation theology, cosmopolitanism, indigenization
Zoe Sherinian is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Music, Convert, and Subject in the North Sumatran Mission Field
- Mission Music as a Mode of Intercultural Transmission, Charisma, and Memory in Northern Australia
- Coexistence of Causal and Cultural Expressions of Musical Values among the Sabaot of Kenya
- Indigenous Innovations on Music and Christianity at Ratana Pa
- Music as Shared Space in Mennonite Development Work in Chad
- Are Western Christian <i>Bhajans</i> “Reverse” Mission Music?
- Drums in the Experience of Black Catholicism in Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Chant as the Articulation of Christian Aramean Spirithood
- The Politics of Pronunciation among German-Speaking Mennonites in Northern Mexico
- Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community
- Music and Religiosity among African American Fundamentalist Christians
- Songs of <i>Oru Olai</i> and the Praxis of Alternative Dalit Christian Modernities in India
- The Renaissance of the Corsican Confraternities and Their Musical Negotiations
- Local Music Making and the Liturgical Renovation in Minas Gerais
- The Survival Story of Syriac Chants among the St. Thomas Christians in South India
- Russian Church Music, Conundrums of Style, and the Politics of Preservation in the Emigre Diaspora of New York
- Parading Protestantisms and the Flute Bands of Postconflict Northern Ireland
- Everyday Musical Ethnicity and Roma (Gypsies) in Hungarian Pentecostalism
- Transnational Connections, Musical Meaning, and the 1990s “British Invasion” of North American Evangelical Worship Music
- Negotiations of Faith and Space in Memphis Music
- Tropes of Continuity and Disjuncture in the Globalization of Gospel Music
- Mainline Protestantism and Contemporary versus Traditional Worship Music
- Negotiating the Tensions of U.S. Worship Music in the Marketplace
- Contingency and the Symbolic Experience of Christian Extreme Metal
- Palestinian Christmas Songs for Peace and Justice in Sacred Place and Politicized Space
- The Diffusion of Gregorian Chant in Southern Italy and the Masses for St. Michael: To Barbara Haggh and to the Memory of Michel Huglo
- Performing Pannkotis Identity in Haiti
- Christianity and Korean Traditional Music
- Congregational Singing, Orthodox Christianity, and the Making of Ecumenicity
- Afterward: Sound, Soteriology, Return, and Revival in the Global History of Christian Musics
- Index
