topics: |  india | music-classical | history | prostitution | gender

The last two chapters deal with courtesans in the Indian musical tradition,
including some like Begum Akhtar and Siddheshwari Devi who transcended the
stigma and entered the mainstream, and also others who were left adrift,
even by their own progeny, like "the once splendit Mushtara Bai lived
in squalor in a dark Old Delhi attic".  

Chapter 17 by Regula Burckhardt Qureshi traces the tawa'if tradition, part
of the Persianate culture created in N India by the Muslim ruling class.
The tradition aligned itself to the new British rulers in the 18th c. and
to the emerging mercantile class from the middle of the 19th c.  Now the
focus of progressive forces that tend to rehabilitate the courtesans, as
well as other more conservative streams that would keep them apart. 

One interesting aspect is that the female courtesans and their children, do
not have a strong kinship tradition, as opposed to the males, mostly
accompanists, who enjoy the privileges of an endogamous family structure. 

ch17: Courtesan Musicians in 20th c. India

Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints: Situating Courtesans in 20th
	c. India
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, p.312-331

courtesan culture, a "loose matrilineality"  within
the partilineally controlled Indian society.  313

The culture of women musicians who consorted w and danced and sang for
royalty, elite patrons, and British officers of the EICo, are recorded in
numerous court paintings from 18th c.  In the Persian literature, early
tawa'if are often assigned a regional origin from Kashmir or other NW
locations associated w fair-skinned beauty in classical Farsi poetry - and
also in what is claimed to be the earliest Indian novel, written in Farsi by
Hasan Shah. [1790, Nashtar, tr. The Dancing Girl/Nautch girl, Hyder 1992,
autobiographical novel about a dancing troupe in the E.I.Co
officer's establishment and the officer's munshi, set in Kanpur.   ]

Tawa'if lit means "tribe, community", while also implying people who move
about, wander, and settle.  Etymologically, linguistically, and historically,
tawa'ifs were clearly a part of the Persianate cultural env created in N
India by the Muslim ruling class. 

a noble patron in Baroda appointed Abdul Karim Khan as a teacher for a
courtesan's daughter, but the teacher soon ran away with the girl. 317

Begum Akhtar's father is thought to have been the poet Natiq, whose verses
she was often asked to set to music and perform in LKO in the 1930s. 317

From the 19th to mid-20th, courts and salons at the patron's establishment
gave way to the kotha or urban salon, fuelled by the growth of the
mercantile class.  Mostly controlled, and sometimes even owned by the
courtesans themselves.  

In 1984, Rita Ganguly brought courtesans from across the country to a 
celebrate and acknowledge their art, most could no longer sing after decades
of silence.  "The once splendit Mushtara Bai" lived in squalor in an Old
Delhi attic.  Mostly,  I did not see an extended household w youngsters
providing for their mothers.  Very few of these old courtesans had daughters
who sand and could support their mothers.  Others had sons who had prospered
in business, but kept little contact with their mothers.  325

This situation contrasts sharply w that of the courtesan's male
accompanists, whose hereditary community continues to be overtly repr by a
far-flung network of practising musicians, including youngsters. 

FN 5: Siddheshwari Devi taught at the National Arts Academy (Bharatiya Kala
Kendra), Savita Devi at Delhi University.  Both were exceptional appointments
for courtesan singers, speaking to their artistic eminence. 

author bio

	
from http://www.music.ualberta.ca/rqureshi.cfm and
thecanadianencyclopedia.com

Regula Qureshi, (b Burckhardt). Ethnomusicologist, cellist, b Basel 13 Jul
1939, naturalized Canadian 1968.  Professor of Music and Director of the
FolkwaysAlive! project as well as founder and director of the Canadian Centre
for Ethnomusicology.

PH D anthropology, ethnomusicology (Alberta) 1981.  studied cello 1958-60 at
the Curtis Institute and music history and ethnomusicology at the University
of Alberta after 1963.

A cellist and sarangi player, she is interested in the poetics and politics
of music and has published widely on South Asian and Islamic performance
practices, including Sufi Music in India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and
Meaning in Qawwaliand the co-edited Muslim Society in North America and
Muslim Families in North America.

Her research in oral tradition and political economy includes the edited
volume Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, and Master Musicians of
India: Hindustani Sarangi Players Speak. Her interest in women musicians
extends from the co-edited Voices of Women: Essays in Honor of Violet Archer,
to her current book project Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints:
Situating Courtesans in 20th Century India.

Prof Ethnomusicology (emeritus), U. Alberta, regula.qureshi@ualberta.ca