“Using a multiperspectival methodology, Williams crafts a narrative ripe with complexity, ambiguity, and unexpected connection. This pathbreaking book will reshape how historians of South Asia consider issues of music and gender, the impact of nawabi culture beyond courts, emotion and aesthetics, modernity, and the spread of Hindustani music.”
—Anna Christine Schultz, University of Chicago
“Weaving together material from untapped texts in a range of South Asian vernaculars, William’s work provides an unparalleled study of north Indian art music’s transregional flows, its complex social histories, and the textures and politics of its performance.”
—Davesh Soneji, University of Pennsylvania
“This is simply the best book on Hindustani music I know. Magisterial, erudite, and superb are inadequate terms for the profound scholarship, deep knowledge, and vast terrain Williams incorporates, made all the more accessible by his outstanding writing.”
—Daniel Neuman, University of California, Los Angeles