Registrations are open: join us on February 27th at 1 pm UTC

We are pleased to announce the 20th session of our Political Economy Teach-in Series, titled “Gender, Music and Social Change – Unravelling the Interconnections and Implications” on Feb 27th at 13h UTC. This session will be taught by Sumangala Damodaran.

Sumangala Damodaran is an economist and a scholar of popular music studies. She has archived the musical compositions of Indiaʼs anti-colonial and working-class music from a tradition known as the Indian Peopleʼs Theatre Association, which resulted in the book The Radical Impulse (2017) and an album titled Songs of Protest. Apart from her academic involvements, she is also a singer and composer. She has worked on precolonial AfroAsian connections using music as a lens, in collaboration with scholars and musicians from South Africa, Ethiopia, Zanzibar and China, producing several musical productions and two books.

The session will explore the relationship between music and society and uncover gender in and through various kinds of music. The emphasis will be on music and musicians from the Global South, particularly in cultures where music is passed down orally and aurally rather than in written form. Through a perusal of issues that have animated the production of various kinds of music and also using examples of where they have arisen from social movements and mobilisation of different sorts, the session will illustrate how music can serve as a lens for understanding society and societal change.

All our sessions are recorded and you can access the previous ones on our website. The videos are in the original version, though we will be working to provide translated transcripts in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese to reach a wider audience.

Don’t forget to register and share with your networks and on social media. Follow us @SouthFeministas and @SouthFeministFutures.