Journey of Mantra from India to the Czech Republic: Contribution to Ethnography of Music and Globalization
Abstract
The paper is based on my current PhD. research which aims to be a multi-sited ethnographical study of globalized world through focusing on the social life of Hindu mantras as a globalized phenomenon and a commodity. Chanting of mantras (Hindu sacred chants in Sanskrit) which had been a very narrow local cultural practice has become a globally known phenomenon.
Although in Hindu orthodox discourse, it is not allowed to change the mantras, during the globalizing process of their cultural transmission from India to the West and later to the post-communist Czech Republic, the mantras have gained new sound forms, new social and cultural contexts, new functions and new meanings. Contemporary Czech cultural productions of mantras are a thick example how the present inter-continental connectedness works in everyday life, music and in the relationship to the Sacred.
This paper will focus on the social life of Indian mantras in the esoteric shops, tea rooms and yoga halls, which have emerged in the Czech Republic only during a massive post-communist change. The paper will discuss how the transmission process happens, what music forms it takes, and what meanings are attached to them by their agents.