Eclipsed by the moon: Mahlaqa Bai and her teacher 'The Incomparable' in Nizami Hyderabad

TY - GEN

T1 - Eclipsed by the moon

T2 - Mahlaqa Bai and her teacher 'The Incomparable' in Nizami Hyderabad

AU - Schofield, Katherine Ruth

PY - 2018/8

Y1 - 2018/8

N2 - Mahlaqa Bai “Chanda”, “The Moon”, sang and danced her way into the historical firmament when in 1799 she presented a book of her songs to the Resident of Hyderabad, John Malcolm, in the middle of a nautch. Renowned as the first Indian courtesan to write a divan of Urdu poetry, she was equally famous for her affairs with powerful men at the Nizam of Hyderabad’s court. Obscured by Mahlaqa Bai’s luminescence today, however, is the man behind the Moon, her master-teacher Khushhal Khan “Anup”, “The Incomparable.” As celebrated and as central to Hyderabad’s courtly culture as she was in their time, Khushhal Khan left behind an enormous corpus of songs, several musical treatises, and an illustrated ragamala that tell us a great deal about musical life and lives in Nizami Hyderabad c.1800. In this podcast - originally the opener to a live conversation with historian of Hyderabad William Dalrymple at the British Library - music historian Katherine Schofield discusses the lives and works of these two remarkable characters as they emerge from the writings Anup left to posterity.

AB - Mahlaqa Bai “Chanda”, “The Moon”, sang and danced her way into the historical firmament when in 1799 she presented a book of her songs to the Resident of Hyderabad, John Malcolm, in the middle of a nautch. Renowned as the first Indian courtesan to write a divan of Urdu poetry, she was equally famous for her affairs with powerful men at the Nizam of Hyderabad’s court. Obscured by Mahlaqa Bai’s luminescence today, however, is the man behind the Moon, her master-teacher Khushhal Khan “Anup”, “The Incomparable.” As celebrated and as central to Hyderabad’s courtly culture as she was in their time, Khushhal Khan left behind an enormous corpus of songs, several musical treatises, and an illustrated ragamala that tell us a great deal about musical life and lives in Nizami Hyderabad c.1800. In this podcast - originally the opener to a live conversation with historian of Hyderabad William Dalrymple at the British Library - music historian Katherine Schofield discusses the lives and works of these two remarkable characters as they emerge from the writings Anup left to posterity.

KW - music

KW - India

KW - Indian history

KW - South Asia

KW - Hyderabad

KW - Nizams

UR - http://youtu.be/QW8ZwPq_4ws

UR - https://soundcloud.com/user-513302522/eclipsed-by-the-moon-mahlaqa-bai-and-her-teacher-the-incomparable-in-nizami-hyderabad

M3 - Other contribution

ER -