Communities of Sound

Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal

Carola E. Lorea (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

360 Seiten

2026
Wesleyan University Press (Verlag)
9780819502247 (ISBN)

Infos

Sounding untouchability across postcolonial borders_x000D_
_x000D_
Communities of Sound brings together insights from religion, anthropology, sound, and migration studies to explore the sonic traces of untouchability and forced migration across the Bay of Bengal. Based on an immersive, multi-sited ethnography with Matua devotees—a low-caste, Bengali-speaking Dalit religious community fragmented by Partition, war, and postcolonial displacement—the book explores how sound sustains identity across fractured geographies. Using richly detailed descriptions, the book follows traveling archives of song, story, and ritual performance through West Bengal, Bangladesh, and the Andaman Islands. These sonic practices—congregational singing, drumming, and itinerant storytelling—forge belonging beyond nation-states, connecting the Matua's fifty million members across borders and seas. In a world dominated by visual culture, Communities of Sound centers listening as a mode of knowledge and care, revealing how sound shapes our sense of self and cosmos. More than scriptures or doctrine, it is sound—entangled with authority and power—that binds this transregional Dalit movement and animates its collective action. The book is generously illustrated and references an online companion with video and audio examples.

Inhalt

Note on translation and transliteration
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
Maps
Islandness: A Bay of Bengal Perspective
Sounds of Communities
Communities of Sound
Why Interdisciplinarity?  Desecularizing Displacement
Why Interdisciplinarity? Sounding Migration, Sensing Caste
On Positionality, Islamophobia and Spiritual Kinship

PART I

ADHIBAS: A Welcoming reception
Chapter 1—Matua Identity in Time, Space, and Practice
Chandala, Haribbola, Matua
Namashudra Movement and Matua Religion, 1812–1947
Post-partition Displacement, Dispersal, and Rehabilitation
Displacement and the Matua Network
Three Regions, One Archipelago
Andamans: Matuas on Literal Islands
Matuas in Southern Bangladesh
Matuas in West Bengal
Chapter 2—Islands of Faith: The Making of Religion in the Context of Displacement
Audible Scriptures and Intersections of Text and Sound
Matua (Hi-)story-telling and the Dalit Renaissance
Are Matuas Hindu?
Islamophobic Politics and an Offering of Beef
Reassembling the Broken Pieces: A Coconut Necklace and A Wooden Staff
Matapitatattva: the Doctrine of the Mother and the Father
Avataras of Justice: Subverting Familiar Genealogies of Incarnations
Australian Baptist Missionary Converts to Matua Faith: Stories of Vicinity and Distinction from Christianity
A Pious Crocodile: Othering Vaishnavism, Legitimizing Islands of Faith
Stories and Community

PART II

MAHOTSAB: A Sonic Feast
Chapter 3—Sonic Practices: Poetics and Politics of Displaced Religious Sounds
Histories and Ethnographies of Kirtan
Matua Style of Kirtan        
Conductors of Feeling: Kirtaniyas of the Matua community
Making Community: A Sensory Framework
Danka
Matam
Acoustic Virility, Liberation Feminized: The Gender of Kirtan
Chapter 4—Instantiations of Communities of Sound
Sonic Soteriology, Ensounded Samādhi
Sonic Shield
Sonic Flag
Sonic Vaccine
Loud and Hot: Aesthetics of Sacred Sound
Hugging and Mutual Touch: Displays of Touchability
Chapter 5—Sonic Epistemologies
Sounds like Othering
Sound, Folklore, or Unnecessary Noise
Islands of Sound: Tradition and Change
Islands of Sound: Congregation and Separation
Thinking with Communities of Sound

Part III

MIN MAHOTSAB: A Farewell
Chapter 6—Embodied Territory: Tidalectics of Mud and Water
Rolling in the Mud
Displacement, Emplacement and Embodied Religion
Affective Re-territorialization—Moving with Soil and Water
Mother and Land—The Gender of Substances
Caste and the Politics of Religious Place-making
Amphibious Narratives—De-Naturalising Body and Space
Aquatic Goddesses and Migrant Rituals of Return
Transnational Religious Tidalectics
Place—Avataras and Sonic Returns
Sounding the Body-land
Sonic Avataras
Tasting the Body-place
Rethinking Religious Place-Making From Islandness
Epilogue
Bibliography
Notes

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.4.2026
• Zusatzinfo: 61 b&w photos, 4 maps
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 156 x 235 mm
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Musiktheorie / Musiklehre
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Hinduismus
• ISBN-13: 9780819502247 / 9780819502247
• Zustand: Neuware