Journeys of Love
Kashmiris, Music, and the Poetics of Migration
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Journeys of Love
Kashmiris, Music, and the Poetics of Migration
An empathetic and eye-opening portrait of Muslim migrants in England that debunks many misperceptions about their music and poetry.
In Journeys of Love, ethnomusicologist Thomas Hodgson offers a sensitive corrective to harmful portrayals of immigrants—specifically, Pakistanis living in England—as a self-segregating group prohibited from making music, a stereotype that has often resulted in violent Islamophobia. He argues that, in practice, these migrants—many of whom come from the Mirpur area of Azad Kashmir—occupy rich musical worlds, full of poetic metaphors, that are central to surviving migration and its attendant losses.
Hodgson shows how Mirpuris in England, as well as those who remain in Pakistan, carry on traditions of reciting a collection of poetry by the nineteenth-century Sufi saint Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, translated by Hodgson here as Journeys of Love. With its themes of remaining true to one’s home, the oppressed being saved, having patience, and keeping faith in God, this work has become the story of movement and displacement in its narrative arc, as well as through the way it provides spiritual and ethical frameworks for settling in new lands. These hidden poetics of migration transform across generations as young Mirpuris develop new expressions of the connections across continents. These poetics reveal the connections between Kashmir’s rural village life and urban centers abroad, offering a sensitive and illuminating portrait of migration and multiculturalism in Britain and beyond.
In Journeys of Love, ethnomusicologist Thomas Hodgson offers a sensitive corrective to harmful portrayals of immigrants—specifically, Pakistanis living in England—as a self-segregating group prohibited from making music, a stereotype that has often resulted in violent Islamophobia. He argues that, in practice, these migrants—many of whom come from the Mirpur area of Azad Kashmir—occupy rich musical worlds, full of poetic metaphors, that are central to surviving migration and its attendant losses.
Hodgson shows how Mirpuris in England, as well as those who remain in Pakistan, carry on traditions of reciting a collection of poetry by the nineteenth-century Sufi saint Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, translated by Hodgson here as Journeys of Love. With its themes of remaining true to one’s home, the oppressed being saved, having patience, and keeping faith in God, this work has become the story of movement and displacement in its narrative arc, as well as through the way it provides spiritual and ethical frameworks for settling in new lands. These hidden poetics of migration transform across generations as young Mirpuris develop new expressions of the connections across continents. These poetics reveal the connections between Kashmir’s rural village life and urban centers abroad, offering a sensitive and illuminating portrait of migration and multiculturalism in Britain and beyond.
240 pages | 27 halftones, 5 line drawings, 1 table | 6 x 9 | © 2025
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Music: Ethnomusicology
Religion: South and East Asian Religions
Reviews
Table of Contents
Note on Language, Orthography, and Notational Conventions
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Wood of the Flute
Chapter 2: A Home Away from Home
Chapter 3: Public Poetics
Chapter 4: Multicultural Harmony?
Chapter 5: New Poetics
Conclusion: Or, Un-ending . . .
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Wood of the Flute
Chapter 2: A Home Away from Home
Chapter 3: Public Poetics
Chapter 4: Multicultural Harmony?
Chapter 5: New Poetics
Conclusion: Or, Un-ending . . .
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index