[Commlist] CFP – Special Issue on Popular Culture, Fandom, and the Zubeen phenomenon

Call for Papers

*Special Issue:**Popular Culture, Fandom, and the Zubeen phenomenon: 
Rethinking Art and the Artist Beyond Ethnicities*

*Note*: The Routledge journal /*Asian Ethnicity*/**has expressed 
interest in publishing this special issue.  Asian Ethnicity is a 
Scopus-indexed (Q1) journal. Accordingly, abstracts and manuscripts will 
undergo a rigorous peer-review process before being considered for 
publication.

*Special Issue Editors: *Debarshi Prasad Nath and Swikrita Dowerah

Across the world, the deaths of cultural icons, from Michael Jackson and 
Fela Kuti to Freddie Mercury and Maradona, have shown how celebrity 
grief can generate powerful forms of collective affect, solidarity, and 
mobilisation. The unprecedented response to the death of Zubeen Garg on 
September 19, 2025, offers a striking recent instance of this global 
phenomenon. A prolific singer from Assam in Northeast India, Zubeen 
became the focal point of an immense transnational wave of mourning that 
blurred boundaries between fandom and political expression, online and 
offline publics, and local identity and global visibility. Media reports 
record the gathering at his cremation as the fourth-largest congregation 
in the world (Limca Book of Records), transforming the site into a space 
of pilgrimage and sustained political debate. As his body was flown in 
from Singapore, people across ethnic, linguistic, religious, and 
political divides gathered on the streets of Guwahati, marking an 
extraordinary moment of solidarity in a region otherwise fractured by 
tensions over ethnicity, indigeneity, and uneven development.

Against this backdrop, Zubeen Garg’s life and afterlife offer a 
compelling case for examining fandom, affect, and the figure of the 
“people’s star” in the collective imagination of diverse communities. 
His music, embraced across the Northeast, foregrounded the region’s 
tribal and plural foundations and articulated a non-exclusionary 
nationalism—neither anti-Hindi nor anti outsider. Since Anamika (1992), 
his work has combined vernacular aesthetics with pan-Indian and global 
forms, exemplifying the fluid and translocal nature of contemporary 
Asian ethnic identities.

Extending beyond music into Assamese cinema and public life, Zubeen’s 
cultural interventions illuminate how ethnicity in Northeast India is 
produced not only through political movements and institutions, but also 
through popular culture, affect, and everyday fandom. His death invites 
urgent questions that resonate far beyond Assam or South Asia: How do 
popular artists in the Global South become key mediators of ethnic 
identity, collective aspiration, and political critique? In what ways do 
celebrity fandoms function as affective ethnic publics, generating 
solidarities that cut across linguistic, tribal, religious, and regional 
divides in contexts marked by historical fragmentation? How are ethnic 
belonging and cultural citizenship rearticulated through popular music 
and performance in moments of collective grief and mobilisation? And how 
might Zubeen Garg’s humanist, socialist, and defiantly plural ethos help 
us rethink the role of artists in shaping inclusive, non-exclusionary 
ethnic imaginaries within contemporary public life?

By situating Zubeen Garg within broader debates on ethnicity, popular 
culture, and media in Asia, this special issue invites contributions 
that rethink Northeast India as a dynamic site of ethnic production, 
where artists and fandoms shape collective identity, political 
consciousness, and claims to belonging. More broadly, by engaging 
debates on celebrity culture, affective publics, fan activism, 
ethnicity, and the politics of popular music, this call for papers seeks 
to reassess the global stakes of cultural icons and the forms of 
community, justice, and belonging their lives and deaths continue to 
animate.

We invite contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the 
following indicative themes:

1.Assamese ethnicity and Zubeen Garg

2.Zubeen Garg and Cultural Citizenship in Northeast India

3.Ethnic solidarity and the role of the artist

4.Digital Ethnicity and Platformed Fandom

5.Ethnicity, Ecology, and Place-based Identity

6.Music, Memory, and Ethnic Inheritance

7.Dynamics of Zubeen’s fandom

8.Zubeen Garg and the revival of Assamese cinema

9.Influence of pan Indian traditions and Western influence in Zubeen’s songs

10.Zubeen as a social/political commentator

11.Zubeen’s vision of Assam and Northeast India

12.Zubeen as an environmental advocate

13.Zubeen and the roles and responsibilities of the artist

14.Zubeen – the performer

15.Zubeen and Assamese nationalism

16.Zubeen: Towards a reconstruction of a comprehensive philosophy

17.Zubeen in the times of social media

Please send an extended abstract to both co-editors, *Dr Debarshi Prasad 
Nath* *((dpnath1975 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(dpnath1975 /at/ gmail.com)>)* and *Dr 
Swikrita Dowerah ((swikrita /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(swikrita /at/ gmail.com)>),* *by 
February 20, 2026, *with the subject line: *“Submission for Special 
Issue: Zubeen.”*

*Notification of acceptance:* Decision about acceptance will be sent by 
the first week of March. Only authors of accepted abstracts will be 
invited to submit full papers.

*Note: * No publication fees will be charged for accepted papers in this 
special issue



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