Introduction

Indian music has two distinct musical systems: Hindustani and Karnatak, or North and South Indian music. Of the two, Hindustani music is regionally dominant, extending across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and, to an extent, even Afghanistan. This classical musical heritage has for centuries been a hereditary specialization among communities of musicians serving landed patrons, including princes and royalty. Children are born into an environment of musical immersion and taught to become professionals by their father or a family elder. ¹ In a process of transmission that has been entirely oral, they learn the musical system like a language and later teach it to their children ² —rarely also to a dedicated student from outside the community. Today hereditary musicians continue to prevail at the top of musical competence, but under conditions of reduced or fundamentally altered public patronage by the Indian state that has attracted a vast contingent of middle-class performers, many of whom have themselves become disciples of hereditary masters, recognizing the inimitable qualities of the oral hereditary milieu even as its existence is threatened with extinction. ³ At the same time, Hindustani musicians have had increasing access to patronage abroad, extending their reach across continents into the expanding sphere of world music.