Managing culture: The role of music in state-led cultural reproduction in post-colonial Pakistan

Abstract If music’s place remains ideologically contested in the national cultural formation of post-colonial Pakistan, what are the terms, if any, by which the state engages with this art form? Answering this question, along with others, this article advances the term ‘logic of managing culture’ to explore the Pakistani state’s relationship with music. Through contesting India-centric scholarship on music and cultural politics in the South Asian context and relying on an eclectic array of empirical evidence, I argue that the post-colonial state’s engagement with music is marked by a set of priorities that entails a logic of managing music rather than reproducing it. This orchestration plays out at two major levels: the international, involving strategically projecting selected elements of Pakistan’s musical-cultural identity internationally, and the national, relying on language (Urdu) and religion (Islam) for national integration, while bypassing the role of music. I suggest that this amounts to a logic of cultural management, wherein the state, through a set of cultural institutions, ‘conducts’ music and its practitioners while presupposing the ideologically contested place of this art form in the national cultural formation of Pakistan.