Abstract
Scholarship on record production has habitually neglected non-Western music practices and their products. In particular, those countries, in which most technological devices are invented and patented, still exert hegemony on the music market and on discourse about music; consequently, alternative sound aesthetics are often marginalised. More recently ethnomusicology has lent some attention to marginal sites of production, especially in relation to digital technology; however, in order to fill this gap in scholarship, it is necessary to fully acknowledge the role of user agency, especially in those contexts in which a device is reinvented through imaginative and unforeseen practices. For this purpose, I will focus on the particular use of the Clavioline by the Indian composer Kalyanji in the film ‘Nagin’ (1954). Looking at how the potentiality of the instrument is redefined according to local aesthetics, I will argue that regional record production practices are more noteworthy than conventional theories about them seem to imply. More precisely, I will analyse the microeconomic context in which Kalyanji operated, suggesting a cultural explanation of his aesthetic choices from the point of view of the participants (desi) and within the specific mode of production of the Hindi film.