Imaging Sound
An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
The rulers of the Mughal Empire of India, who reigned from 1526 to 1858, spared no expense as patrons of the arts, particularly painting and music. They left as their legacy an extraordinarily rich body of commissioned artistic projects including illustrated manuscripts and miniature paintings that represent musical instruments, portraits of musicians, and the compositions of ensembles. These images form the basis of Bonnie C. Wade's study of how musicians of Hindustan encountered and Indianized music from the Persian cultural sphere. Imaging Sound is a contribution to many fields in its unique combination of sources and methods: it is the study of musical change; of image-making in the past and the methodological use of images as "texts" in the present; of the role of patronage in the Mughal Empire; and of the development of South Asian culture.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
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Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Steady pace
Best when you want to settle into a longer reading experience.
A good fit if…
Readers looking for a substantial, immersive commitment with room for a world or argument to unfold.
This book's DNA
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A quick reading snapshot
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- ISBN-13
- 978-0-2268-6841-7
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9701500M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
Best when you want to settle into a longer reading experience.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
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