FROM : Songs as a Subject of Sociological Enquiry: Reflections from Bhupen Hazarika’s Compositions

Reviewer comments-1

This is a promising paper dealing with a crucial issue of contemporary sociology of music. It takes a general framework of sociological studies of music and looks at specific empirical case of the Bhupen Hazarika’s song and how it relates with social, cultural, and political issues. The main problem of the writing — and this problem prevents from more detailed and critical analysis — is that it lacks a research question. At the beginning the author aims to address the problem from a sociological standpoint without identifying the problem itself. The Introduction section fails to outline a setup for the problem and limits itself towards general arguments with no specific contribution. Overall, the paper needs to be restructured and the Author should provide an explicit idea of what the paper is about, if it is theoretical / empirical / etc. Doing this the Author will give his / her audience an idea of what to expect.

Reviewer Comments-2

The paper as its title indicates is a reflection from Hazarika’s compositions. Yet we encounter these reflections only by the end of the paper and these reflections are quite poor. If the paper aims to be a study of these compositions, then it should provide two things: a theoretical / conceptual outline of the approach, and a specific study of these compositions. Now there is only a vague discussion of theoretical problems of sociological studies of music.

Overall, the paper needs to be rewritten before it can be considered once again. Three key recommendations are:

• Begin with Introduction with outlining of the structure and key idea to give a sense of what readers are expected to learn from the paper
• Restructure the conceptual and theoretical part by indicating the main problem (from the Introduction) and giving various approaches that address the problem. Compare these approaches and provide your own / decide which one you are going to adhere (NB: extend your bibliography)
• Provide an introduction the writings of Hazarika: give more contextual information, biography, and general idea of what the writings were. Provide the analysis that grounds on the chosen conceptual approach and methodology showing how it helps to discover something that was not visible before
• Discuss what you get — provide a summary and get back to the introduction by revisiting the problem. Show the prospects of your research by indicating the next steps. Make a statement about a general contribution towards sociology of songs / music.