ABSTRACT
Matthew Pritchard considers post-Saidian discussions of how to assess Asian ‘cultural agency.’ He argues that a key point of comparison across colonial and post-colonial music cultures across Asia in the 20th century has been those cultures’ attitude to Western science and ‘modernity.’ Hybridisation of Western performance habits and vigorous aesthetic debate assisted Indian musicians, such as Allauddin Khan and Rabindranath Tagore, in maintaining a degree of cultural autonomy often sacrificed elsewhere to demands for modernisation.
