Hybrid Instruments: Autobiographical Narratives of Hindu Musical Selfhood in the Smithsonian-Tagore Collection

Rajah Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore (1840–1914) was a Bengali landowner, musicologist, and curator whose writings and object collections globally disseminated a new form of Indian nationalist musicology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article analyzes how hybrid Indo-Western musical instruments in Tagore’s 1884 gift to the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.) operated as autobiographical extensions and proxies. Hybrid instruments and accompanying curatorial texts align with and challenge imperialist, evolutionary narratives in musicological discourse of the time. They embody Tagore’s agency and negotiations as a mediator of Indian musical culture to audiences and networks of exhibitions outside India.