Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781350346024)

This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to badhai performances throughout South Asia, examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Badhai's repertoires of songs, dances, prayers, and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised hijra, khwaja sira, and trans communities. They commemorate weddings, births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts, but also moves across borders, including those of nation, religion, genre, and identity.

This collaboratively authored book draws from anthropology, theatre and performance studies, music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, queer and transgender studies, and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine badhai's place-based dynamics, transcultural features, and communications across the hijrascape. This vital study explores the form's changing status and analyses these performances' layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, to extend ways of understanding hijra-khwajasira-trans performance.

Author: Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment, Jeff Roy
ISBN-10: 1350346020
ISBN-13: 9781350346024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 05/30/2024
Pages: 210
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.46lbs
Size: 7.81h x 5.06w x 0.44d