Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach

How does the sacred/secular opposition explain itself in the context of musical production? This volume pushes the analysis of this opposition out of Europe and European thought, which prefigures western understandings of what is sacred and secular, what is classical and popular. Rather, Virinder S. Kalra explores examples of African and South Asian musics in various domains and develops a new cartography of music, in which the sacred and the secular overlap.
Drawing on examples which include rap music, Qwaali and Kirtan, Sacred and Secular Musics offers new empirical material, as well as new insights into conceptualising religion and music, and the ways in which music performs sacredness and secularity in different geographical and historical spaces.
Through its deconstruction of the sacred/secular opposition, Sacred and Secular Musics explores the relationship of religion and music to wider questions of religion and politics. Its postcolonial approach brings Africa and South Asia into the Western sacred/secular opposition, and provides a set of analytical tools – a language and range of theories – to allow further exploration of non-western religious music.