New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xx, 288 pp. (Map, illustrations, B&W photos.) US$35.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-19-063198-7.
In a world where social inequality, political instability, and changing economic realities vie for our attention, why should scholars notice singers’ poetic and musical choices in improvised song duets? Ethnomusicologist Anna Stirr expertly provides some answers to this question in her new ethnography on dohori singing practices in Nepal.
The simplest definition of dohori that Stirr provides is “dialogic, conversational sung poetry” (3). These improvised duets are primarily associated with Nepal’s transgressive, rural courtship practices, but dohori is also sung live in competitions and restaurants as well as recorded and sold as popular music. Stirr tells stories of how dohori is connected to state power and ideas of nation, how Nepali people from all social strata negotiate categories of social difference through song, and how these song practices form integral connections across geographic space. Stirr contends that people shape political, economic, and social affairs in Nepal through these dohori song exchanges.
Dohori is foremost a musical practice, so Stirr pays attention to the intricacies of different musical styles within dohori. Because dohori is a sung practice, Stirr also examines how singers use poetic conventions in different singing situations. Her thick descriptions vividly introduce the reader to dohori’s musical elements as well as the performance etiquette of rural songfests and professional dohori contexts. Conceptualizing dohori as a field (after Bourdieu) allows Stirr’s work to encompass both rural songfest practices and the professional dohori realm. Her framing and focus make this monograph on music accessible to readers who may not have extensive musical backgrounds. Most key Nepali terms are listed in the index, but a glossary of frequently used Nepali terms unfamiliar to most readers may have been helpful as a quicker reference.
Stirr prevents readers from getting lost in dohori’s details by focusing on what people do through song. She weaves musical, poetic, and contextual elements together to present dohori as a microcosm of exchange “among strangers and familiars” (4). As people engage in song exchanges, they make some inequalities visible and others invisible. Dohori singing practices thus challenge “fictions of harmoniously coexisting social differences” (14), as well as allow “new social formations to emerge” (246). Nowhere is this more evident than in binding dohori contests, where singers from different castes and ethnicities can potentially win each other in marriage through song. Stirr provides examples beyond romantic love, where people sing about topics from sibling rivalry to politics, uncovering societal wrongs in song and suggesting alternative arrangements. Stirr conceptualizes these exchanges as intimate politics, which she defines as “attempts to oppose the existing order of things through small gestures that may nevertheless have far-reaching effects” (5). Stirr distinguishes perceptions from practices, especially concerning binding dohori contests, but shows that when people sing dohori, their performance can impact other parts of life.
So much of the scholarship on Nepal focuses on differences stemming from caste, ethnicity, gender, and religion. Stirr examines how all those differences manifest in dohori performance, but she also pays attention to regionalism in Nepal. Regionalism emerges in dohori singing styles, word choice, and even pronunciation, all of which professional dohori musicians use to make their work appealing to a broad audience. While Stirr’s comments on regionalism are a small part of her work, she nevertheless highlights a difference in Nepal that is not as frequently written about.
The largest divide that Stirr addresses is the perceived rural and urban dichotomy. Stirr uses the concept of ruralization to disaggregate the rural from the past and to demonstrate how people’s increased mobility ruralizes both urban and rural places. For example, Stirr demonstrates how the values of egalitarianism and exchange espoused in rural songfest traditions challenge the systems of patronage, capitalist exchange, and high-caste honour on which professional dohori relies. Likewise, professional dohori presents the aesthetics of village life as cosmopolitan and modern. In this way, rural values structure people’s urban lives. Stirr does not ignore how professional dohori emerged in urban spaces, but ruralization allows her to make all things rural “the center of analytical focus, turning the dominant paradigm of global urbanization on its head” (18). Using ruralization as a frame, Stirr’s work is a counterargument to studies centred on urbanization and globalization.
People may remake and cross differences through song, but Stirr contends that although “the coexistence of multiple perspectives [in dohori]…brings aesthetic enjoyment and affective pleasure… it does not resolve [these conflicting perspectives]” (186). The example I found most intriguing was how dohori holds multiple systems of exchange in paradox. This paradox is most evident in how professional dohori singers navigate conflicting systems of honour. Singers are aware that listeners will impute what they sing to their (the singers’) personal morality, thus the personas they inhabit in song often draw on high-caste codes of honour. Yet even in professional dohori, lyrics tinged with sexual innuendo are valued, hence singers walk a line between appreciated innuendo and obscenity. Through their choices in improvisation, singers can present themselves as artists known for their turn of phrase while remaining honourable persons. Singers accrue honour through these gestures by giving pleasure to their listeners, but they always run the risk of audiences or judges misunderstanding their choices. Stirr’s own experiences as a dohori restaurant singer and the relationships she cultivated with dohori artists as a researcher and performer allow her to portray these singers with empathy.
Through engaging ethnographic writing and theoretical sophistication, Anna Stirr’s book on dohori song practices in Nepal shows us that folk music says much about how people remake social inequalities, engage with political ideologies and realities, and manage desire and honour—and take pleasure in doing so. Readers from across the social sciences will find her work an insightful and engaging interpretation of South Asian and Himalayan affairs.
Victoria M. Dalzell
Independent Scholar, Riverside, USA