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City of Lyrics

By Tabor, Nathan L. M.

City of Lyrics Contemporary literature

City of Lyrics

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Description
For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mushāʿirahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse. Today the mushāʿirah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan L. M. Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mushāʿirah in eighteenth-century Delhi. Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ġhazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mushāʿirahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words as an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight.
Via poets' verse exchanges and their histories of Dehli’s literary scene, City of Lyrics reconstructs the social networks the mushāʿirahs produced. By understanding the roots of this uniquely Islamic literary practice, readers will gain insight into global popular culture today, which increasingly takes shape according to the tastes and values of the Muslim world yet is enjoyed by wide audiences of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Product details
Number of Pages:
354
Release Date:
2025-10-07
Publication Date:
2025-10-07
Publisher:
The University of North Carolina Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1469690217
ISBN13:
9781469690216
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
761 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
25 cm
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