Journeys of Love: Kashmiris, Music, and the Poetics of Migration (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

An empathetic and eye-opening portrait of Muslim migrants in England that debunks many misperceptions about their music and poetry. In Journeys of Love, ethnomusicologist Thomas Hodgson offers a sensitive corrective to harmful portrayals of immigrants-specifically, Pakistanis living in England-as a self-segregating group prohibited from making music, a stereotype that has often resulted in violent Islamophobia.He argues that, in practice, these migrants-many of whom come from the Mirpur area of Azad Kashmir-occupy rich musical worlds, full of poetic metaphors, that are central to surviving migration and its attendant losses. Hodgson shows how Mirpuris in England, as well as those who remain in Pakistan, carry on traditions of reciting a collection of poetry by the nineteenth-century Sufi saint Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, translated by Hodgson here as Journeys of Love.With its themes of remaining true to one’s home, the oppressed being saved, having patience, and keeping faith in God, this wo