Professional Dohori and Economies of Honor

What is it about?

Professional dohori now encompasses the competition circuit, the recording industry, dohori restaurant performance, and tours through Nepal and Nepali communities abroad. Yet different systems of exchange that have governed musical production throughout history still affect how musicians make a living and are perceived in terms of status and honor in Nepali society.

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Why is it important?

This chapter examines the impact of material changes on dohori artists as the genre became professionalised, and how gaining and maintaining honor sometimes conflicts with new ways of making a living as an artist under changing systems of economic and interpersonal values. This allows us to examine what appropriate and honorable artistic personhood means in terms of expression of in songs, and their relations to the intersectional aspects of social personhood that determine honor and prestige.

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