Bodies of Song

Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India

Linda Hess

First-ever study of Kabir oral traditions, based on more than ten years of fieldwork
Informed by extensive knowledge of written traditions
Combines ethnography, text study, theory, and connections between the oral-performative, the written, and other media

Bodies of Song

Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India

Linda Hess

Description

Kabir was a great iconoclastic-mystic poet of fifteenth-century North India; his poems were composed orally, written down by others in manuscripts and books, and transmitted through song. Scholars and translators usually attend to written collections, but these present only a partial picture of the Kabir who has remained vibrantly alive through the centuries mostly in oral forms. Entering the worlds of singers and listeners in rural Madhya Pradesh, Bodies of Song combines ethnographic and textual study in exploring how oral transmission and performance shape the content and interpretation of vernacular poetry in North India. The book investigates textual scholars' study of oral-performative traditions in a milieu where texts move simultaneously via oral, written, audio/video-recorded, and electronic pathways.

As texts and performances are always socially embedded, Linda Hess brings readers into the lives of those who sing, hear, celebrate, revere, and dispute about Kabir. Bodies of Song is rich in stories of individuals and families, villages and towns, religious and secular organizations, castes and communities. Dialogue between religious/spiritual Kabir and social/political Kabir is a continuous theme throughout the book: ambiguously located between Hindu and Muslim cultures, Kabir rejected religious identities, pretentions, and hypocrisies. But even while satirizing the religious, he composed stunning poetry of religious experience and psychological insight. A weaver by trade, Kabir also criticized caste and other inequalities and today serves as an icon for Dalits and all who strive to remove caste prejudice and oppression.

Bodies of Song

Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India

Linda Hess

Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Preface

1. "You Must Meet Prahladji!"
2. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-first Century: Observing Texts
3. "True Words of Kabir": Adventures in Authenticity
4. In the Jeweler's Bazaar: Malwa's Kabir
5. Oral Tradition in the Twenty-first Century: Exploring Theory
6. A Scorching Fire, A Cool Pool
7. Fighting over Kabir's Dead Body
8. Political/Spiritual Kabir

References
Index

Bodies of Song

Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India

Linda Hess

Author Information

Linda Hess is a Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies at Stanford University.

Bodies of Song

Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India

Linda Hess

Reviews and Awards

"Hess decodes (for the uninitiated) the experience, confidence, and wisdom of ordinary men and women of India. She shows us how people have been living out their inner and outer lives and how they have been enriching further the traditional "bodies of song" through performance. By this decoding, Hess has made a lasting contribution to our understanding of some of the most poignant aspects of Indian religiosity." -- Purushottam Agrawal, ITM University, The Journal of Religion

"[A] rich and complex book...Bodies of Song is a deeply personal testimony. Hess certainly succeeds in giving the reader a feeling of actually accompanying her on her travels, her interaction and conversations with local people, and her perception of their values, goals, and emotions. She makes us realize the 'embodiedness,' the physical and social experience inseparable from the performance of Kabir's songs...[A]n exceptionally good read-for Indologists, scholars of oral traditions and cultural communication, historians of religion, and, not least, the many who are involved in one way or another with the infinite complexity of India. All will, I am sure, find that spending time in Linda Hess's company is not also challenging, but also rewarding."--History of Religions

"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."--CHOICE

"This wide-ranging and impassioned study will remain a benchmark of Kabir studies for decades to come." --Religious Studies Review