Urbanizing folklore, Folkloricizing the urban: cultural communication between the urban poor and popular music in Dhaka

Abstract

This article explores how a particular kind of popular music of Dhaka city called ‘urban folk’ and the cultural identity of the rural migrants have been producing each other in an ongoing process of cultural communication. Following a discussion on the historical background of urban migration and its depiction in the prevailing pop music culture, this article uses the concepts of ‘cultural hybridity’ by Homi K. Bhabha and ‘political society’ by Partha Chatterjee to argue how the fluid structure of this hybrid form of music and its unconventional mobility between the folk and the pop have been in close association with the urban poor’s formation of political society in contemporary Dhaka.