Review of ‘Jim Sykes (2018). The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka

Abstract

The author’s efforts to draw a cartography of music practices in Sri Lanka and proposing terms such as musical gift, musical giving, and sonic generosity using the views and practices of Sri Lankan drumming, ritual singing, and dancing is impressive and should be widely appreciated. In her review, Gamburd (2019) provides an impressive summary about the entire book together with some remarks on the author’s political bias and missing content in his fieldwork experience, particularly with informants and his teacher. However, I do not fully agree on Gamburd as Sykes has shared some remarkable fieldwork experiences. He really tried to highlight these experiences as a necessity in order to gain insights into his topic. A large amount of scientific literature, newspaper articles, and other sound and audiovisual sources are referred to describe various elements of the music practices, their ethnic, religious, political, economic and social conditions and relations starting from the Era of Ravana up to the year 2018.