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Author Weidman, Amanda J., 1970- author.

Title Brought to life by the voice : playback singing and cultural politics in South India / Amanda Weidman
Published Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021]
©2021

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction : theorizing playback -- Trading voices : the gendered beginnings of playback -- 'A leader for all song' : making a dravidian voice -- Ambiguities of animation : on being 'just the voice' -- The sacred and the profane : economies of the (il)licit -- The raw and the husky : on timbral qualia and ethnolinguistic belonging -- Anxieties of embodiment : liveness and deadness in the new dispensation -- Anti-playback
Summary "To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Motion picture music -- India, South -- History and criticism
Musical films -- India, South -- History and criticism
Musical films -- Social aspects -- India, South
Singing in motion pictures.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural
Motion picture music
Musical films
Singing in motion pictures
South India
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2020045524
ISBN 0520976398
9780520976399