Anomaly and Afterlife: Ten Ragas for a Disco Beat
Rekret, P. 2026. Anomaly and Afterlife: Ten Ragas for a Disco Beat . Race and Media conference. University of Leeds 22 - 23 Apr 2026
Rekret, P. 2026. Anomaly and Afterlife: Ten Ragas for a Disco Beat . Race and Media conference. University of Leeds 22 - 23 Apr 2026
| Title | Anomaly and Afterlife: Ten Ragas for a Disco Beat |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rekret, P. |
| Type | Conference paper |
| Abstract | Recorded in Bombay in 1982, Ten Ragas for a Disco Beat brings together the cyclical forms of Hindustani raga with the newly available textures of electronic disco instrumentation. Using machines then associated with commercial studio efficiency rather than experimentation, Charanjit Singh produced a suite of instrumental pieces that sat uneasily between devotional exercise, pedagogical record, and dance music. The album passed largely unnoticed on release, only to resurface decades later as an anomaly, retrospectively framed as an unlikely precursor to acid house and electronic dance culture. This paper traces that delayed appearance as a symptom of the conditions under which cultural difference is now rendered visible and valuable. Following the reissue of Ten Ragas through contemporary circuits of archival recovery, it attends to the work done by narratives of accident, temporal dislocation, and technological misalignment. Stripped back sonics, sparse contextualisation, and the suggestion of an elsewhere in both time and place become ways of staging alterity while keeping it legible and consumable. Read against wider shifts in the management of cultural difference, where preservation and safeguarding increasingly replace distance as the grounds of the exotic, the album’s afterlife reveals how gestures of autonomy and experimentation are folded into regimes of care that promise escape from the present even as they secure its terms. |
| Year | 2026 |
| Conference | Race and Media conference |