Sumangala Damodaran’s talk will address the ways in which music and musicians have played an important role in articulating social concerns and have been part of social movements from the last decade of colonialism until the present. Beginning from the anti-colonial movement, through the early post-independence period until the most recent period, she will provide examples of music that has responded to key questions of the times, where music in politics and music as politics has shaped a radical imaginary.