Shivanand Boddapati

I am a joint PhD candidate in South Asia Studies and Ethnomusicology. I am interested in using archival and ethnographic methods to study how music gains political, economic, and commercial value in society. For my dissertation, I am working on the emergence and nature of political cultures of music in the regions of Telangana and Andhra. The music I study spans the period from the 1930s to the present, and I aim to locate the traditions of song and performance that are drawn on by this music. I use ethnographic methods to understand the active ways in which these processes have been revitalised in recent years due to the movement for a separate Telangana state.

I developed an interest in political music during my Master’s program where I researched how political music in these regions operated in relationship to the state, sometimes being proscribed, and later assimilated into mainstream institutions. During my Bachelor’s degree, I studied the implications of the social and political modernity ascribed to composers in Carnatic music. My skills in singing, translating, and archiving actively inform my academic work. I have trained as a Carnatic vocalist for many years, and this experience has made me sensitive to the role of institutions in the construction of music. I have had experience in translating from Telugu to English and was involved in co-translating the book Caste and Class by Bojja Tarakam in 2020. I have worked in a business archive for a year and am interested in documentation and exhibition practices.