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VIDEO DOI: https://doi.org/10.48448/9vzw-cz21

technical paper

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

November 18, 2021

Baltimore, United States

Singing the Supply Chain: Punjabi Tractor Songs, Truck Songs, and Media of Global Mobility

keywords:

ethnomusicology

mobility

value

The Punjabi popular music industry recently produced a spate of songs on the joys and difficulties of trucking in North America. While English-language news media in North America breathlessly details this seeming novelty as the number of Punjabi-Americans in the trucking industry swells, many Punjabi popular songs from prior decades mourn the sorrows of the domestic long-haul trucker, who is portrayed as an overlibidinal and untrustworthy beast of burden. In further contrast, other contemporary songs valorize the rootedness of local agriculturalists and their powerful tractors, portrayed in opposition to those who emigrate. Why have such conflicting portrayals of mobility achieved public prominence through Punjabi music? This paper details how spatialized differences in the valuation of goods and labor across cities, states, and nations drive people to move. I analyze how Punjabi popular songs are shaped by patterns of mobility, and how these songs value (or devalue) such mobilities. Logistics • the calculation and management of the motion of goods and people through space and time • structures supply chains, the lives of those who labor in supply chains, and public culture. Media underpinning contemporary logistical practices, which range from digital platforms to cell phones to trucks, shape Punjabi popular media industries. The prominence of logistics in Punjabi popular media, whether on truck or tractor, makes it an appropriate vantage point for investigating the cultural life of supply chains.

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