An indispensable translation of Jan Sahib's poetic ethnography of nineteenth-century performers-Pasha M. Khan, chair in Urdu Language and Culture, McGill University This is a truly extraordinary work, an important contribution to the cultural history of the subcontinent-Muneeza Shamsie, writer and literary critic The translation is experimental, challenging traditional expectations in its approach to rhyme and meter-Carla Petievich, South Asia Institute, The University of Texas at Austin The Incomparable Festival (Musaddas Tahniyat-e-Jashn-e-Benazir) by Mir Yar Ali (whose pen name was Jan Sahib) is a little known but sumptuous masterpiece of Indo-Islamic literary culture, presented here for the first time in English translation. The long poem, written in rhyming sestet stanzas, is about the royal festival popularly called jashn-e-benazir(the incomparable festival), inaugurated in 1866 by the Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan (r. 1865-87) with the aim of promoting art, culture and trade in his kingdom at Rampur in northern India. The task of commemorating the sights and wonders of the festival was given to the hugely popular writer of rekhti verse, the tart and playful sub-genre of the ghazal, reflecting popular women's speech, of which Jan Sahib is one of the last practitioners. Structured as an ode to the nawab, the poem is a world-album depicting various classes on the cusp of social upheaval. They include the elite, distinguished artists and commoners, brought together at the festivities, blurring the distinction between poetry, history and biography, and between poetic convention and social description. The book is a veritable archive of the legendary khayal singers, percussionists, and instrumentalists, courtesans, boy-dancers, poets, storytellers (dastango) and reciters of elegies (marsiyago). But, above all, the poem gives voice to the 'lowest' denizens of the marketplace by bringing to light their culinary tastes, artisanal products, religious rituals and beliefs, and savoury idioms, thereby focusing on identities of caste and gender in early modern society. This Penguin Classics edition will be of interest not just to the Urdu and Hindi literary historian, but to specialists and readers interested in the histories of music, dance, and the performative arts, as well as scholars of gender and sexuality in South Asia. Lovers of Urdu poetry will find in it a forgotten masterpiece.

Frontcover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Plate Section 1 -- Plate Section 2 -- Plate Section 3 -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- List of Cathedral Organists -- 1 Origins -- 2 A Fortuitous and Friendly Proposal -- 3 A Numerous Appearance of Gentry -- 4 'The Musick of my Admiration Handel' -- 5 The Gentlemen and the Players -- 6 Avoiding Shipwreck -- 7 Prima voce -- 8 Favourites and Flops -- 9 Sacred and Profane -- 10 Froissart -- 11 The Unreasonable Man -- 12 The Dream -- 13 Beyond these Voices -- 14 An Essentially English Institution -- 15 The Elgar Festivals -- 16 Dona nobis pacem -- 17 Recovery -- 18 Association -- 19 A New Epoch -- 20 Jubilee -- 21 Theme with Variations -- 22 Houses of the Mind -- 23 'A Gold-Plated Orchestra' -- 24 A New Millennium -- 25 Reorganisation -- 26 An Invitation to the Palace -- Appendix: Three Choirs Festival Timeline -- Select Bibliography -- Index

If, as David Guss argues, culture is a contested terrain with constantly changing contours, then festivals are its battlegrounds, where people come to fight and dispute in large acts of public display. Festive behavior, long seen by anthropologists and folklorists as the "uniform expression of a collective consciousness, is contentious and often subversive," and The Festive State is an eye-opening guide to its workings. Guss investigates "the ideology of tradition," combining four case studies in a radical multisite ethnography to demonstrate how in each instance concepts of race, ethnicity, history, gender, and nationhood are challenged and redefined. In a narrative as colorful as the events themselves, Guss presents the Afro-Venezuelan celebration of San Juan, the "neo-Indian" Day of the Monkey, the mestizo ritual of Tamunangue, and the cultural policies and products of a British multinational tobacco corporation. All these illustrate the remarkable fluidity of festive behavior as well as its importance in articulating different cultural interests.

Minority Pasts explores the diversity of the histories and identities of Muslims in Rampur-the last Muslim-ruled princely state in colonial United Provinces and a city that is pejoratively labelled as the centre of "Muslim votebank" politics in contemporary Uttar Pradesh. The book highlights the importance of locality and emotions in shaping Muslim identities, politics, and belonging in Rampur. The book shows that we need to move beyond such homogeneous categories of nation and region, in order to comprehend local dynamics that allow a better and closer understanding of the historical re-negotiations of politics and identities by Muslims in South Asia.

Events and festivals have an increasingly vital role in our leisure lifestyles. We recognize them as part of our lives. For some, they are a very significant part of our lives. The network of festivals and events that either adorn the world now, or are planned for the future, can both serve to motivate new visits as well as enhance the lives of the people who live in – or near – the host area. They are also dynamos of cultural development, of sport knowledge and excellence and sophisticated consumption. Such dynamic outputs require dynamic inputs. This book looks at different event and festival cases and forwards separate and current managerial implications and responses to these, with reference to the UK, America and Australia. Both up-to-date and forward thinking, the managerial themes addressed are: Creative Management, Festival and Event audience development, Culture and Community, Event and Festival evaluation. Festival and event types include sport events, art festivals, community events, live music and culinary extravaganza. This book was previously published as a special issue of Managing Leisure: An International Journal.

In this widely acclaimed biography, Bertram Wolffe challenges the traditional view of Henry VI as an unworldly, innocent, and saintly monarch and offers instead a finely drawn but critical portrait of an ineffectual ruler. Drawing on widespread contemporary evidence, Wolffe describes the failures of Henry’s long reign from 1422 to 1471, which included the collapse of justice, the loss of the French territories, and the final disintegration of his government. He argues that the posthumous cult of Henry was promoted by Henry VII as a way of excusing his uncle’s political failures while enhancing the image of the dynasty. This edition includes a new foreword by John Watts that discusses the book and its place in the evolving literature. Reviews of the earlier edition: “A brilliant biography that brings us as near as we are ever likely to come to this elusive personality.”—Sunday Times (London) “A powerful, compulsively readable portrait.”—Observer “Much learning, skillfully deployed as here, evokes pleasure as well as admiration.”—R.L. Storey, Times Literary Supplement