ABSTRACT
Lucknow stands out as a historical center of feudal patronage of the arts, particularly music and poetry, both marked by a unique fusion of local Hindi and cosmopolitan Urdu cultural forms. Despite the immense destruction of the city by the British in reprisal after the Great Uprising of 1857, and despite their banishment from the royal court at the same time, 1 musicians and connoisseurs continued to cultivate the traditional practice of music, dance, and sung poetry in the salons of landed patrons and of the cultivated courtesan singers who flourished in Lucknow until the early 1960s. 2
