THE TAMIL ARTISTS AND THE ARTS OF MUSIC, DANCE AND DRAMA

This book analyses the history of music, dance and drama in Tamil country and how it responded to the changing needs of the times from medieval to modern. The survey reflects the stature and significance of performing arts and the meaningful dialogue developed besides the important accomplishments through European contacts. The author brings out a fresh critical approach on the life style of the musicians, dancers and actors besides the patrons in colonial context. The growing contributions by missionaries in sacred music and the role of the English East India Company to military music had been assessed. It explores the dance forms and drama genres, reformulation of the arts and expansion as a social device. It offers an extensive and very comprehensive account with the new facets of performance history.

S. Jeyaseela Stephen is Directeur, Institut pour études Indo-Européennes. He was Professor of Maritime History (2001-13) at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has authored numerous books on the maritime history of early modern India including The Coromandel Coast and its Hinterland: Economy, Society and Political System, 1500-1600 (1997); Expanding Portuguese Empire and the Tamil Economy, Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries (2009); Oceanscapes: Tamil Textiles in the Early Modern World (2014); A Meeting of the Minds: European and Tamil Encounters in Modern Sciences, 1507-1857 (2016); Tranquebar in Global History, 1620-1801: The Coromandel Coast and Europe in a World Network System (2020); and From European Dwelling Settlements to Global Cities: Ports of the Tamil Coast and the Colonial Modernity (2021). His books have been translated into Chinese, Danish, German and Tamil. He is the recipient of the BEST BOOK PRIZE OF THE YEAR 1999 from the Government of Tamil Nadu.