21st Century Fellowship awarded to Upatyaka Dutta
December 18, 2024
Ethnomusicology Doctoral Student Upatyaka Dutta has been awarded the Society for Ethnomusicology's prestigious 21st Century Fellowship, the aim of which is to further excellence in ethnomusicological research in dissertation fieldwork. Upatyaka shares the objectives of this research as follows:
The Adivasi tea tribes of Assam, India, descendants of people who migrated from central and eastern Indian states to serve as indentured labourers in British-run tea plantations during the 19th and 20th centuries, continue to live and work on these plantations decades after India’s independence. Inspired by Tsing’s concept of world-making (2017), and motivated by sound studies’ exploration of relationships between sound and sociocultural life, this research attempts to foreground Adivasi perceptions of the plantation as a cultural and ecological form, by exploring their world-making practices with human and non-human agents, such as plants, machines, and land, across work and non- work contexts—tea fields, processing factories, community and domestic spaces—through listening, sounding, and music. I ask, what role does sound and music play in the encounters of Adivasis with human and non-human agents on the tea plantations of Assam? How do these sonic encounters map the ongoing everyday world-making of Adivasis in the face of hegemonic structures of violence on plantations in post-colonial Assam?
Congratulations on this wonderful news, Upatyaka!
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