Spaces Betwixt and Between: Musical Borderlands and the Manganiyar Musicians of Rajasthan

Scholars and musicians alike have described the music of the Manganiyar musician community almost entirely in terms of Hindustani classical music. As a result of the Manganiyar community’s straddling of the India-Pakistan border, their lives inhabit a borderland in political space, religious belief, and cultural practice. Their music, while utilizing elements of Hindustani raga, also draws considerably on Sindhi surs, a body of musical/poetic texts more closely associated with Pakistani music. The Manganiyar meld these musical systems into their own practices in order to assert their borderland identities, and ultimately complicate broader dichotomies and binaries in South Asian contemporary music.