Badhai

This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to <i>badhai</i> performances throughout South Asia examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh India and Pakistan. <i>Badhai</i>'s repertoires of songs dances prayers and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised <i>hijra</i> <i>khwaja sira</i> and trans communities. They commemorate weddings births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts but also moves across borders including those of nation religion genre and identity.<br/><br/>This collaboratively authored book draws from anthropology theatre and performance studies music and sound studies ethnomusicology queer and transgender studies and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine<i> badhai</i>'s place-based dynamics transcultural features and communications across the <i>hijrascape</i>. This vital study explores the form's changing status and analyses these performances' layered scalar and sensorial practices to extend ways of understanding <i>hijra-khwaja</i><i>sira-trans</i> performance.