Abstract
Noted social historian Lakshmi Subramanian digs deeply into India’s rich cultural history addressing music pedagogy and performance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy is a result of her intense dedication. In it, Subramanian traces the history of institutionalization and the resulting shifts in the pedagogical legacy of the classical South Indian Karnatic music tradition.
The methodologies and scope of the book are strongly grounded in larger South Asian regional studies. The nuanced attention Subramanian devotes to tracing the institutionalization of the Karnatic music tradition serves as a theoretical and practical model for music teachers who seek to integrate wholistic perspectives of history, pedagogy, and sociology into the teaching of world music cultures, from curriculum-planning to teaching and performing. Additionally, the regional focus on Karnatic music helps equip music teachers to address the lived experiences of music-making communities from South India who continue to migrate to the U.S. and other places in increasing numbers. The peculiarly regional focus on South Indian music is increasingly relevant to a global music education understanding.
Subramanian traces in detail the movement of Karnatic classical music from the courtyards of Tanjore in the nineteenth century to the contemporary concert halls of Madras (now Chennai). Subramanian accomplishes this daunting task by utilizing a set of themes: imagination, institutionalization, post-colonial social realities, and questions of identity. In short, the author explores the core research question: “how [has] the influence of nationalism and the nation form worked into the creation of an auditory habit?” (2). In doing so, the author utilizes an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the fields of social theory, political and economic theory, anthropology, history, music education, and geography.
To frame an exploration of timelines in the development of Karnatic music, Subramanian focuses the study on South Indian Tamil-language areas and highlights central figures who were important in this tradition. Organized chronologically, Subramanian traces the path of Karnatic music to Chennai and outlines major developments along the way, including the movement of a new generation of professional elites to Madras (Chennai) in the mid-1800s, the reinscribing colonial ideas of educational and political “inheritance” (46), the influence of South Indian print culture in furthering nationalist narratives in Karnatic music organizations, the Madras Music Academy’s political role as custodian of music practice and learning, and the transformative impact of several social reform movements centering around gender, language, and musical policies since the 1940s.
The author notes how Karnatic performance and teaching increasingly moved from court spaces to city or cultural centers and institutions. During this shift, an English-educated, mostly brahmin (or high caste-class) population constituted the new listening public as rasikas, educated enthusiasts. Subramanian elucidates how this newly urbanized and distinctly high caste-class listening audience, influenced by colonial structures, desired to classicize their music traditions in a way that gave this music an elevated textual history and theoretical paradigm. Results of this shift in Karnatic music practice and teaching were tangible. From the nineteenth century, many compositions, including kritis and other song forms, became increasingly canonized. Subramanian engages with scholars of South Asian music, outlining how concert formats were shortened and standardized. 1 In many urban centers, teaching methods were adapted away from traditional guru-shishya-parampara master-disciple systems, where students participate in immersive one-on-one instruction with their teachers, into larger classroom-based settings. These institutional transformations have continued into contemporary practice. The author highlights how the classicization of Karnatic music performance and teaching is inseparably linked to colonial influence and continues in this music today, most performers and teachers enjoying social, economic, and cultural privileges associated with the high caste-class lineages to which they belong.
Subramanian positions her writing within broader histories of musicological study in colonial spaces where presuppositions, generalizations, and in many cases, inaccuracies were preserved in journals, letters, and even published musicological writings. Using letters, notes, and images, she traces the complexity of the standardization and canonization in Karnatic music and illuminates how movement of this music to cultivation in institutions represents colonial influence in a need to legitimize. For example, she addresses relevant issues of accessibility, explains the double-edged sword of “modernizing” and highlights the danger of marginalizing parts of the Karnatic repertoire in which some performers and pedagogues specialize (18). Here, Subramanian’s warnings could be applied to the standardization of any musical practice in a classroom setting, a trend which many ethnomusicologists and music educators have previously addressed. For example, consider the rising, yet challenging, standardization of “hip hop pedagogy” in US music classrooms. Subramanian supplies ample and detailed cultural context for Karnatic music performance and pedagogy. She successfully provides clear reminders that Karnatic music may not be separated from its moral function and the moral aims of its practitioners (19). Despite its rootedness as a socio-political study, Subramanian might supplement the key themes of the book with a centralized case study of influential Karnatic educators and their impact on the movements and policies explained therein.
Discussions of privilege and access to music are essential in the context of Karnatic teaching and learning but equally essential wherever classical music is taught in a global context. Music educators in the U.S. who wish to learn about, demonstrate, or teach Karnatic music have the responsibility to become as informed as possible about the social, historical, and political context of this music. To this end, Lakshmi Subramanian’s book provides a compact and thorough background into relevant contexts of Karnatic music, offering any interested music educators a valuable “starting point” towards developing culturally situated and appropriate methodology. This book will be useful for students and teachers of South Indian music, ethnomusicology, South Asian studies, and any general reader interested in the directions and institutionalization of art music traditions. Historians of music pedagogy will also be pleased to note that Subramanian’s book includes a compact timeline of the development of Karnatic music from court practice during the reign of Serfoji II to contemporary teaching and learning taking place at the Madras Music Academy in Chennai. Given these considerations, this book is a valuable reference for educators preparing to teach “world music” survey courses and related activities, host guest artists and musicians, or designing immersive curricula for students of regional South Asian music.