Cassettes in culture: Emotion, politics, and performance in rural Tamil Nadu

This ethnography of audio cassette use in a south Indian village targets an understudied area at the juncture of ethnomusicological folklore and media studies. Folklorists and village ethnographers focus on live performed traditions rather than cassette playback; and media theorists focus on production rather than consumption. In Issaikurichi, Tamilians listened to cassette music more than live music. They used cassettes in daily worship. At marriages cassettes were played as offerings to the gods. At temple festivals cassettes were broadcast to the entire village, occasionally inspiring trance. Like performed folk music, cassette sounds were entangled in village politics, gender discourse, and emotional discourse. I combine methods from media studies and ethnographic folklore, especially performance theory. Rather than consider cassette playback as de-performance --the removal of performance--I extend performance theory so cassette playback can be analyzed as performance. I attempt to bring the ethnographic intimacy of performance studies to music in mass media. The case of Issaikurichi speaks to ongoing concerns that mass media homogenize culture globally. In Issaikurichi, cassette songs took on specific meanings and functions as they became entangled in village traditions, discourses, and politics. Through clever incorporation of cassette and amplification technologies, some villagers found new ways to empower themselves and to participate in village politics and devotion. Although cassette sounds were produced in urban centers, their meanings and functions were not