{"product_id":"radio-for-the-millions-9780231206600","title":"Radio for the Millions","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRadio for the Millions\u003c\/i\u003e examines Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how it created transnational communities of listeners. Isabel Huacuja Alonso argues that despite British, Indian, and Pakistani politicians’ efforts to usurp the medium for state purposes, radio largely escaped their grasp.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRadio for the Millions\u003c\/i\u003e is a fantastic work of radio history and South Asian historiography. It is meticulously researched, making use of an extensive range of archival collections across India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as oral-historical interviews with radio broadcasters. Focusing on radio as a medium and following radio waves across the national borders of South Asia, this book is an excellent contribution to the project of decolonizing sound studies and the project of denationalizing South Asian history. -- Amanda Weidman, author of \u003ci\u003eBrought to Life by the Voice: Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis pathbreaking study shows how an attentiveness to the political and cultural potency of radio sounds reframes our understandings of histories in South Asia. Huacuja Alonso illuminates the relationship between aurality and orality, inviting us to lend an ear to voices and sounds on the radio waves that transcend and complicate borders, states, identities, and cultures in South Asia. -- Kama Maclean, University of Heidelberg\u003cbr\u003eThis ambitious and wide-ranging book takes seriously radio as a medium and music as a central form of sensorial engagement that defied borders and communal affiliations. Spanning India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka from the colonial to the postcolonial periods, it explains how a subcontinental popular culture endured in spite of multiple partitions. -- Durba Ghosh, Cornell University\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRadio for the Millions \u003c\/i\u003echallenges neat historiographies often developed from and\/or by state archives. Huacuja Alonso reminds us that the “oral” and “aural” are indeed messy and complicated yet necessary registers for understanding national, political turmoils. Hindi-Urdu broadcast radio has long been a site of both (state) nation-building and (community) place-making by listeners. \u003ci\u003eRadio for the Millions\u003c\/i\u003e is an exemplary study of why listening is such an integral component of history. -- Dolores Inés Casillas, author of \u003ci\u003eSounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIsabel Alonso provides a captivating history of radio that sits at the intersection of sound studies, cultural history, and the politics of nationalism in modern South Asia. In this virtuosic tale, we read about the policymakers, artists, singers, political figures, and poets who inhabited a broader transnational space in South Asia. . . This book will benefit an expansive community of readers, including academic communities in the disciplines of history and ethnomusicology and specifically readers interested in the cultural history of sound and music -- Pouya Nekouei * Not Even Past *\u003cbr\u003eSkillfully and imaginatively highlights the place of [radio] in the broader historiographies of nation-building, language, and the public sphere. -- Faiz Ullah * The Book Review (India) *\u003cbr\u003eAn original and truly fascinating work. * H-Soz-Kult *\u003cbr\u003eA fascinating story of the history of radio in South Asia. -- Mehru Jaffer * The Citizen *\u003cbr\u003eThe book makes an important contribution, especially in unearthing and resurrecting liminal voices, which make up what I would call a kind of archaeology of Southasian media. * Himal Southasian *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Figures\u003cbr\u003eNote on Transliteration\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: Tuning In to a Radio History\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I: Radio News And World War II\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. News on the AIR\u003cbr\u003e2. Netaji’s “Quisling Radio”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II: Music And Postindependence Radio\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. The “Sound Standards” of a New India\u003cbr\u003e4. Radio Ceylon, King of the Airwaves\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart III: Dramatic Radio and the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e5. Radio Pakistan’s Seventeen Days of Drama\u003cbr\u003e6. The AIR Urdu Service’s Letters of Longing\u003cbr\u003eConclusion: Call to Me. Where Are You?\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400370430295,"sku":"9780231206600","price":93.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231206600.jpg?v=1730470523","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/radio-for-the-millions-9780231206600","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}