Siren Song Understanding Pakistan Through Its Women Singers

Fawzia Afzal-Khan's book is an important and timely feminist intervention in the study of classical music and a cogent challenge to the prevailing antisecular orthodoxy in the academy. In this complex and sensitive study...of the careers of artistes like Malka Pukhraj, Roshanara Begum, Reshma, and of the newer music and musical space offered by Coke Studio, Afzal-Khan shows us the multiple ways in which women performers negotiated and continue to negotiate their way through the numerous challenges thrown their way in the wake of the partitioning of the subcontinent and the multiple demands placed on them.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan, University Distinguished Scholar and Professor of English,

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a trained vocalist in the Indo-Pakistani classical tradition, a University Distinguished Scholar and Professor of English, and former Director of the Program in Women's and Gender Studies at Montclair State University. She is a Fulbright Fellow and awardee of the National Endowment for the Humanities for a development grant in Building Bridges Through Film, and author of five previous books including her memoir, Lahore With Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani-Style (Syracuse University Press; rep. Insanity Ink Publications, 2010), and the edited anthology, Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Olive Branch Press, 2004).

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Methodological Framing and Background Information
1. THE RESPECTABLE COURTESAN
Reading Malka Pukhraj's Postcolonial Performative Memoir, Song Sung True: Introducing the Respectable Courtesan
2. ROSHAN ARA BEGUM
Performing Classical Music, Gender, and Muslim Nationalism in Pakistan
3. FEMINIST MEDIATIONS
The Sacred and the Secular in Three Pakistani Female Singers' Oeuvre
4. RESHMA AND FOLK MUSIC
Inventing a Tradition
5. BORDER TRANSGRESSORS
From Popular War Songs to Disco-Pop, 1960-1980s
6. UNSETTLING THE NATION
Coke Studio and the New Divas of Sufi-Pop in Contemporary Pakistan
EPILOGUE
In Media Res
APPENDICES: INTERVIEWS
1. Suraiya Multanikar
2. Tahira Syed
3. Tina Sani
4. Hadiqa Kiani
5. Aliya Rasheed
SINGING PAST SILENCE: A PERSONAL CODA
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR