Songs of Desire and Defiance locates Bhawaiya songs vis-a- vis other similar genres in addressing female subjectivity and defiance. It extends existing scholarship further by looking at various themes of nation, religion, female sexuality through the lens of folk music and its glocal and transnational networks. The book provides a fascinating ethnography of the circulation, virality, and digitality of the various singers and their songs.

Nayanika Mookherjee, Professor of Political Anthropology, Durham University, UK

Through lyrical analysis and rich ethnographic storytelling, Khandoker reveals that the embodiment of female desire, rebellion and anger in North Bengali folk songs generates subversive emotional experiences that challenge orthodox and hetero-patriarchal social norms. Khandoker confronts folk music's external discourses around the policing of sexuality and the construction of Bengali nationalist authenticity by evocatively detailing the songs' internal discourses of emotionality, female subjectivity, and defiance.

Stefan Fiol, author of Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, and Social Mobility; Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Cincinnati, USA

Nasrin Khandoker provides a richly textured, sensitive, and personally invested account. More than a case study, Khandoker's work contributes significantly to the study of performance, text, and desire at the intersection of Hindu and Muslim South Asia. Scholars and students in the fields of gender and sexuality, folklore, anthropology, performance studies, and ethnomusicology will find much in this study compelling.

Richard K. Wolf, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University, USA

Using a mélange of archival ethnography, field research, and reflexive writing, Khandoker takes us on a musical journey through inward and outward transcendence. In scrutinizing hitherto uninvestigated layers of the region's identity politics, this is a book that passionately dives into the lyrical, emotive, and negotiable dimensions of a cherished but entangled Bengali song tradition.

Bertie Kibreah, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of South Florida, USA