Building hype: the musicking body in university bhangra

Abstract

This thesis explores questions of identity and the body in performance in collegiate competitive bhangra, a South Asian diasporic popular dance form, through the analytical frameworks of hype and the musicking body. I explore the relatively recent shift of bhangra from a club scene to a college-level, competitive context in order to understand the ways in which this contemporary bhangra still offers participants a meaningful expression of South Asian identity, when the context in which the music is produced and consumed seems to have changed dramatically from the original context in which the genre emerged as a popular cultural form in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. I analyze the way in which hype, an intangible element of contemporary bhangra that is essential for successful performance, is built up and maintained through the embodied practices of the co-producers of bhangra.