Constructing Masculinities: An Analysis of Bhojpuri and Punjabi Popular Music’s Role in Identity Construction

Popular culture has been a crucial force in shaping and consolidating identities within diverse social contexts. In contemporary Bhojpuri and Punjabi popular music, there are conscious and deliberate attempts to construct and project distinct forms of masculinity, deeply intertwined with regional social hierarchies and historical experiences of caste, class, religion, and economic change. This paper examines how popular music in these two regions functions both as a site and a tool for the construction of masculine identities. By situating Bhojpuri and Punjabi music within their specific socio-political and cultural contexts, this study explores a critical dialectic: how prevailing masculine norms are both mirrored in and actively reshaped through musical expression. These traditions often reinforce existing gendered hierarchies, celebrating male dominance, physical prowess, and control over resources and female sexuality. Concurrently, they generate new performative languages- through aggressive vocal delivery, lyrical content centred on territoriality, and music videos showcasing hyper-masculine aesthetics- for asserting masculine power, regional pride, and a sense of belonging. While acknowledging the profound cultural and linguistic distinctions between the Bhojpuri and Punjabi contexts, the paper employs Caroline Walker Bynum’s framework of “dissimilar similitudes” to draw comparative insights. This methodology uses productive contrast to reveal deeper, underlying connections in the ways masculinity is imagined, negotiated, and performed across different regional milieus. Importantly, the paper also interrogates how subaltern and marginalized voices engage with the same idioms of masculinity. It examines how artists from oppressed communities use music as a form of resistance against social and political injustices, while also revealing the persistence of masculine tropes even within counter-hegemonic discourses. Through this comparative lens, the paper argues for the possibility of writing an intellectual history of Indian masculinities- one that situates the cultural politics of gender within the broader terrains of regional identity, social inequality, and popular aesthetics. By analyzing Bhojpuri and Punjabi music as evolving arenas of masculine expression, the study contributes to understanding how popular culture mediates the intersections of gender, power, and identity in contemporary South Asia.