City of Lyrics

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For centuries, Urdu-speaking poets and their audiences have gathered for mush? rahs, literary competitions for spoken-word verse. Today the mush? rah is a global phenomenon, as audiences in the millions convene in person and online for hours of poetic performance. Tracing these modern gatherings back to their origins, Nathan L. M. Tabor introduces readers to the popular emergence of the mush? rah in eighteenth-century Delhi. Scores of poets composed two-line lyric poems, called ghazals, that they muttered, sang, shouted, and spat out in contentious salon spaces across India’s largest metropolis. Delhi’s mush? rahs circulated lyrics, satires, and songs for both common and elite poets, who traded and assessed words like an urban commodity that defined hierarchy, taste, and notions of delight. Via poets' verse exchanges and the histories they wrote about Dehli’s literary scene, City of Lyrics reconstructs the social networks the mush? rahs produced. By understanding the roots of this uniquely Islamic literary practice, readers will also gain insight into global popular culture today, which increasingly takes shape according to tastes and values from the Muslim world yet is enjoyed by wide audiences comprised of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
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