Rhythms of resistance: Towards an anti-caste acoustemology

This article examines contemporary anti-caste rap in India through the music of The Casteless Collective, Swadesi, Arivu and 100RBH. While existing scholarship has established anti-caste music as an important site of political expression and Dalit assertion, comparatively less attention has been given to the sonic practices through which anti-caste politics are articulated. Employing qualitative textual and sonic analysis, the article examines how instrumentation, rhythm, vocal performance, genre fusion, sampling and technological mediation contribute to anti-caste political expression. Drawing on Steven Feld’s concept of acoustemology and Thomas Porcello’s notion of techoustemology, it develops the concept of anti-caste acoustemology as an analytical framework for examining how anti-caste musicians produce political knowledge through sound. The analysis demonstrates that historically marginalized musical traditions are reclaimed through contemporary performance, while sampling and genre fusion reposition inherited sonic practices within ongoing struggles against caste discrimination and larger systems of social inequality. By foregrounding sound as a mode of political knowledge, the article contributes to scholarship on caste, protest music and sound studies by demonstrating that anti-caste resistance is communicated not only through lyrics but also through the sonic practices of performance, listening and musical production.