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Brought to life by the voice : playback singing and cultural politics in South India / Amanda J. Weidman.

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Weidman, Amanda J., 1970- author.
Series:
South Asia Across the Disciplines Series
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Motion picture music--India, South--History and criticism.
Motion picture music.
Musical films--Social aspects--India, South.
Musical films.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (xv, 243 pages) : illustrations
Edition:
1st ed.
Other Title:
Brought to Life by the Voice
Place of Publication:
Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]
Summary:
"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"-- Provided by publisher.
Contents:
Introduction : theorizing playback
Trading voices : the gendered beginnings of playback
'A leader for all song' : making a dravidian voice
Ambiguities of animation : on being 'just the voice'
The sacred and the profane : economies of the (il)licit
The raw and the husky : on timbral qualia and ethnolinguistic belonging
Anxieties of embodiment : liveness and deadness in the new dispensation
Anti-playback.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record.
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
OCLC:
1204266599

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