Anna Stirr
Biographic Data
| ID | 207449 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Stirr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Stirr |
| SIGNATURE | STIRR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5845-5652 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Love, Politics, and Life between Village and City in Nepali Lok Dohori
Nepali singer Badri Pangeni’s song “Do You Love Me or Not?” portrays a flirtation between a married, migrant man who has come to the city and a young, urban woman he’s met there, A duet in the commercial folk genre known as lok dohori (“folk duet”), this song explicitly and implicitly addresses ideas of what is “true” and “false” in rapidly changing gender dynamics, senses of belonging, and other issues involved in rural-urban and international m…
Singing and Survival
This history and ethnography of music on the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Isla de Pascua) highlights not just cultural survival, but cultural thriving, through the decimation of a population, centuries of imperialist exploitation, and their aftermath. Rapa Nui is known to outsiders primarily through the mystery of its stone statues or moai, and the myth of ecocide that wrongly blames its ancient population for destroying the environment and…
Heading Home
Through an ethnographic narrative, this chapter describes a trip to a rural village in Lamjung district and a dohori singing event that took place there. It introduces the post-conflict temporal context of the author’s research, and situates her as a researcher, a woman, and a student of dohori singing, at the intersection of the professional world of Kathmandu and the particular rural world she was visiting. It provides an account of one rural s…
Songs with Consequences
This chapter focuses on the pragmatics of dohori singing in rural songfests. With a comparative focus on different types of songfest across Nepal’s rural hill areas, it addresses how songfests frame performances in ways that allow for particular pragmatic effects. These are based on forms of ritualized material and musical exchange that idealize the production of equality, yet often still reproduce inequality. It tells the history of dohori as a …
Love, Solidarity, and Sociopolitical Change
Discussion of political topics in dohori lyrics was strictly forbidden in competitions and the state-run media up until 1990. This chapter looks at the slow movement toward including party politics and specific social issues in dohori performance and recordings. It examines relationships between party politics, identity politics, and the intimate politics of dohori singing. Three interrelated aspects include the inclusion of romantic love in song…
Ruralising the City
Throughout the history of movement between country and city in the Nepali-speaking areas of the Indian subcontinent, musical links between cities and the rural hills have integrated emotional associations with rural hill life into the fabric of city life. Songs in the thematic genre of viraha – longing and the pain of separation – articulate lyrical and musical tropes that have come to characterise the experience of moving between hill villages, …
Singing Across Divides
An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, this book examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori : improvised, dialogic performed poetry that is sung, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental m…
Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere
This article examines how the interaction between the oral/aural and written aspects of language and song has shaped a modern Nepali-language public sphere and its uneasy relationship with the politics of difference and inequality in intimate life. To do so, it traces the history of the musical and poetic genre of jhyāure in Nepal and northern India, in music and literature from the early nineteenth century through the present, with a focus on ho…
Violence, Torture, and Memory in Sri Lanka
Sounds of Secrets
Journal Article Sounds of Secrets: Field Notes on Ritual Music and Musical Instruments on the Islands of Vanuatu. By Raymond Ammann. Get access Sounds of Secrets: Field Notes on Ritual Music and Musical Instruments on the Islands of Vanuatu. By Raymond Ammann. 314 pp. KlangKulturStudien, 7. ( Lit Verlag, Zurich and Berlin, 2012, €31.90. ISBN 978-3-643-80130-2.) Anna Stirr Anna Stirr University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Search for other works by this au…
Nepali Ho
Book Review| January 01 2013 Nepali Ho: Contemporary and Traditional Music of Nepal Nepali Ho: Contemporary and Traditional Music of Nepal. 1974 AD, Kutumba, Anonymous Who, Subani Moktan, Mukti, URjazz, Mayo & Ashesh, Vajra. Produced by Alejandro Sanchez-Samper and Mariano Abello. Available at http://siganepal.bandcamp.com/album/nepali-ho-contemporary-and-traditional-music-of-nepal. One compact disc or download. Music videos available at http://w…
Changing the sound of nationalism in Nepal
This article looks at the deudā songs of Nepal's far-western region and their relationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation. Drawn from regional folk dances, deudā songs have become popular in the commercial music industry. The deudā industry is centered in the studios of the far west but has increasingly become part of the central music industry in Kathmandu. However, this has not happened without struggle, and many deudā artists feel th…
May I Elope
This article examines music, language, identity and honor in the world of Nepali folk and dohori song. With a history as an alternative marriage negotiation practice among ethnic groups in rural areas, dohori and dohori performers lie at the center of debates on women’s honor that draw on conflicting gender ideologies. I address a controversial song, “May I Elope,” and how singers’ location within the histories of caste, ethnicity, class, and the…
Singing Across Divides
An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, this book examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori : improvised, dialogic performed poetry that is sung, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental m…
May I Elope
This article examines music, language, identity and honor in the world of Nepali folk and dohori song. With a history as an alternative marriage negotiation practice among ethnic groups in rural areas, dohori and dohori performers lie at the center of debates on women’s honor that draw on conflicting gender ideologies. I address a controversial song, “May I Elope,” and how singers’ location within the histories of caste, ethnicity, class, and the…
Violence, Torture, and Memory in Sri Lanka
May I Elope
This article examines music, language, identity and honor in the world of Nepali folk and dohori song. With a history as an alternative marriage negotiation practice among ethnic groups in rural areas, dohori and dohori performers lie at the center of debates on women’s honor that draw on conflicting gender ideologies. I address a controversial song, “May I Elope,” and how singers’ location within the histories of caste, ethnicity, class, and the…
Changing the sound of nationalism in Nepal
This article looks at the deudā songs of Nepal's far-western region and their relationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation. Drawn from regional folk dances, deudā songs have become popular in the commercial music industry. The deudā industry is centered in the studios of the far west but has increasingly become part of the central music industry in Kathmandu. However, this has not happened without struggle, and many deudā artists feel th…
Sounds of Secrets
Journal Article Sounds of Secrets: Field Notes on Ritual Music and Musical Instruments on the Islands of Vanuatu. By Raymond Ammann. Get access Sounds of Secrets: Field Notes on Ritual Music and Musical Instruments on the Islands of Vanuatu. By Raymond Ammann. 314 pp. KlangKulturStudien, 7. ( Lit Verlag, Zurich and Berlin, 2012, €31.90. ISBN 978-3-643-80130-2.) Anna Stirr Anna Stirr University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Search for other works by this au…
Nepali Ho
Book Review| January 01 2013 Nepali Ho: Contemporary and Traditional Music of Nepal Nepali Ho: Contemporary and Traditional Music of Nepal. 1974 AD, Kutumba, Anonymous Who, Subani Moktan, Mukti, URjazz, Mayo & Ashesh, Vajra. Produced by Alejandro Sanchez-Samper and Mariano Abello. Available at http://siganepal.bandcamp.com/album/nepali-ho-contemporary-and-traditional-music-of-nepal. One compact disc or download. Music videos available at http://w…
Violence, Torture, and Memory in Sri Lanka
Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere
This article examines how the interaction between the oral/aural and written aspects of language and song has shaped a modern Nepali-language public sphere and its uneasy relationship with the politics of difference and inequality in intimate life. To do so, it traces the history of the musical and poetic genre of jhyāure in Nepal and northern India, in music and literature from the early nineteenth century through the present, with a focus on ho…
Heading Home
Through an ethnographic narrative, this chapter describes a trip to a rural village in Lamjung district and a dohori singing event that took place there. It introduces the post-conflict temporal context of the author’s research, and situates her as a researcher, a woman, and a student of dohori singing, at the intersection of the professional world of Kathmandu and the particular rural world she was visiting. It provides an account of one rural s…
Songs with Consequences
This chapter focuses on the pragmatics of dohori singing in rural songfests. With a comparative focus on different types of songfest across Nepal’s rural hill areas, it addresses how songfests frame performances in ways that allow for particular pragmatic effects. These are based on forms of ritualized material and musical exchange that idealize the production of equality, yet often still reproduce inequality. It tells the history of dohori as a …
Love, Solidarity, and Sociopolitical Change
Discussion of political topics in dohori lyrics was strictly forbidden in competitions and the state-run media up until 1990. This chapter looks at the slow movement toward including party politics and specific social issues in dohori performance and recordings. It examines relationships between party politics, identity politics, and the intimate politics of dohori singing. Three interrelated aspects include the inclusion of romantic love in song…
Ruralising the City
Throughout the history of movement between country and city in the Nepali-speaking areas of the Indian subcontinent, musical links between cities and the rural hills have integrated emotional associations with rural hill life into the fabric of city life. Songs in the thematic genre of viraha – longing and the pain of separation – articulate lyrical and musical tropes that have come to characterise the experience of moving between hill villages, …
Singing Across Divides
An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, this book examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori : improvised, dialogic performed poetry that is sung, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental m…
Singing and Survival
This history and ethnography of music on the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Isla de Pascua) highlights not just cultural survival, but cultural thriving, through the decimation of a population, centuries of imperialist exploitation, and their aftermath. Rapa Nui is known to outsiders primarily through the mystery of its stone statues or moai, and the myth of ecocide that wrongly blames its ancient population for destroying the environment and…
Love, Politics, and Life between Village and City in Nepali Lok Dohori
Nepali singer Badri Pangeni’s song “Do You Love Me or Not?” portrays a flirtation between a married, migrant man who has come to the city and a young, urban woman he’s met there, A duet in the commercial folk genre known as lok dohori (“folk duet”), this song explicitly and implicitly addresses ideas of what is “true” and “false” in rapidly changing gender dynamics, senses of belonging, and other issues involved in rural-urban and international m…
Art (12 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Literature (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · History (7 works) · Musical (7 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Nepali (5 works)