Balakrishnan Raghavan

This project explores the expressive traditions of two marginalized caste communities in India: the transfeminine Jogappa musician-dancers and female musicians singing fifteenth-century mystic Kabir’s poems. Using a community-centered collaborative approach that includes multi-site ethnographic fieldwork and digital ethnography, the study examines how these musicians navigate the heteropatriarchal politics of local and national conventions, hierarchies, exclusions, and repressions. By connecting these communities that are either understudied or researched separately, this project builds on interdisciplinary scholarship on music, caste, South Asia, performance, and queer studies. This project considers how these expressive practices constitute and reflect dynamic subjectivities, contestations, and regional positionalities, rather than ‘authentic’ demonstrations of tradition.