Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Brought to Life by the Voice: Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India

Brought to Life by the Voice: Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India

Weidman, Amanda

Paperback

Series: South Asia Across the Disciplines

AnthropologyIndian & South Asian HistoryWorld Music

ISBN10: 0520377060
ISBN13: 9780520377066
Publisher: Univ Of California Pr
Published: Jun 15 2021
Pages: 270
Weight: 0.75
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India.

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