In this aptly named and strikingly candid ethnographic memoir, Linda Hess, a veteran scholar of Kabir, explores the expansive body of songs attributed to the fifteenth-century poet-saint, examining how they exist in bodies: specifically, how the figure of Kabir and his songs are remembered, performed, and shared through the bodily practices of singing, listening, and meditation in contemporary India. Using the performance of Kabir's poetry in the region of Malwa (Madhya Pradesh) as a case study, Hess lays out a methodology for studying oral performance and written traditions together, in turn arguing that textual criticism of premodern literature and the study of contemporary performance traditions not only can be pursued in tandem, but must be pursued together for a fuller understanding of how texts produce meaning, community, and action. Hess braids three strands of inquiry into a cohesive work. The first is a semi-ethnographic study of contemporary Kabir singers and their performance traditions, in particular the manner in which these singers combine practices of writing, memory, and oral performance. The second builds upon this ethnographic memoir by extrapolating from it a historical and theoretical exploration of literacy, orality, and media. The third also builds upon the ethnographic data but takes it in a different direction, developing it into a critique of the ways in which premodern poetic traditions shape and are shaped by contemporary political and religious movements against forms of social and religious control.

At the center of the satsang (gathering) of singers, devotees, activists, and scholars that makes up Bodies of Song sits Prahlad Singh Tipanya, a schoolteacher from a scheduled caste living in a small town in Malwa. Beginning his career as a local singer of Kabir's songs, Tipanya has become perhaps the most well-known exponent of the tradition and (partly through the work of Hess and filmmaker Shabnam Virmani) an internationally renowned folk singer. In the first chapter of the book, “You Must Meet Prahaladji!” Hess recounts Tipanya's life story and his personal reflections in order to explore themes raised in Kabir's poetry: what is the nature of the self? How does the individual's struggle against repressive structures take form? In pursuing personal salvation, is there a danger of losing one's connection to others? Hess returns to Tipanya and his companions in chapter 4, “In the Jeweler's Bazaar: Malwa's Kabir,” but also interviews other singers and activists from the Malwa region, asking how these individuals use the poetry of Kabir to articulate and understand their personal struggles with caste and the ritual and social norms enforced by religious orders.

In the second and fifth chapters, Hess steps back from her ethnographic observations to consider their implications for theories of orality and literacy and for notions of text and authorship. Chapter 2, “Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Observing Texts,” explores the back and forth between different types of performance and media: singing, writing, reading, sound recordings (cassettes and CDs), video, and digital text. Building upon these observations, chapter 5, “Oral Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring Theory,” interrogates historical, social, and cognitive theories of orality and literacy. Hess argues that essentialized distinctions between “oral” and “literate” cultures and subjectivities do not hold up when applied to traditions like that of Kabir's poetry, and emphasizes the emergent and multisensory nature of oral performance, contrasting it with the practice of reading from written texts. Hess thus raises several interesting questions that will be of interest to scholars of literature and religion; yet this is the one part of the book that could use further development, as the discussion does not address recent theoretical, historical, and ethnographic literature on orality and literacy. Hess complicates and enriches our notion of embodied performance, but does not do the same for the practice of “reading”: as scholars of book history have emphasized, reading written texts is also an embodied practice that involves forms of mediation, but Hess largely treats reading and written texts as foils for oral performance and memory.

In chapters 6, “A Scorching Fire, a Cool Pool”; 7, “Fighting Over Kabir's Dead Body”; and 8, “Political/Spiritual Kabir,” Hess critiques the manner in which Kabir's poetry gives shape to ideologies and practices of political and social resistance, and how these ideologies and practices in turn produce new meaning out of Kabir's poetry. Kabir presents a peculiar problem for contemporary activists and intellectuals: he vehemently criticizes caste, class, and religious discrimination, but also exhorts his listeners to shed worldly ties and turn inward in an unabashedly religious idiom. Hess pushes her Indian informants and her readers to reconsider the relationship between individual spiritual liberation and collective sociopolitical liberation: must they necessarily be kept apart, placed within two separate realms (the personal/private/religious and the collective/public/political), or does doing so actually cripple efforts at building a revolutionary politics?

Bodies of Song has a potential place in several types of syllabi: its more ethnographic chapters would be appropriate in undergraduate courses on South Asian religious and literary culture; chapters that deal with textual history, media change, and performance would work well in graduate courses in religious studies or even anthropology. The book and Shabnam Virmani's excellent “Kabir Project” documentary films were produced at the same time and in conversation; teaching them together would not only elucidate the content of the book but also illustrate its central argument. Bodies of Song is a “must read” for any scholar working on Kabir or on the contemporary performance of premodern religious and literary traditions.