Recent scholarship has revealed that the representation of Karnatic music as a “classical” art form in South Indian society was a complicated process bound to the agendas of larger early twentieth-century nationalist projects in India. This thesis explores the notions of classicalness as they are enacted in Karnatic music society through the oral transmission process from guru to shishya, or disciple. Still considered one of the most important emblems of the “classical,” the gurukula (lit. “guru-family”) system has been transformed to accommodate more contemporary lifestyles and reinscribed within many other social and musical processes in South Indian classical music society. This thesis examines the everyday interactions between members of Karnatic music society, particularly the clapping of t?la during a Karnatic music concert and the musical exchanges between percussionists onstage during the tani ?vartanam (Karnatic percussion solo), as public performances reminiscent of the relationship between guru and shishya.

This thesis aimed to investigate the unique relationship that exists between music and culture. More specifically, the purpose of the research was to determine to what extent culture is reflected in music teaching and learning. Understanding the effect that culture has on music knowledge transmission processes will assist in developing a framework for current music education practices to address the cultural diversity that is present in contemporary teaching and learning environments. An exploration of how music teachers teach, and how the cultural and social surrounds influence these practices in various contexts provided important information in developing such a framework. As such, a participant observation case study of ten music teachers who taught either the South Indian music tradition known as Karnatic music in Tamil Nadu, India, or Queensland, Australia, or who taught predominantly Western music in the Queensland instrumental music context, was carried out. Through a comparative study of these teachers it was observed that there were more similarities than differences in the methods of teaching used by the teachers. Both aural/oral and written modes of communication were used in each context albeit at varying levels. It was also discovered that the surrounding cultural rules and rituals, that were practised, significantly influenced the meaning attributed to the music teaching process for each of the teachers. In the main, for teachers of Karnatic music a strong spiritual attachment to both the gods and goddesses associated with the Hindu religion and the teachers' own teacher/guru was evident. Conversely, in the Queensland instrumental music teaching context, powerful economic forces affected the approach that these teachers implemented. It is argued that with an awareness of these findings, music teaching and learning practices may more effectively meet the needs of students (a concern consistently raised in the literature) in the contemporary music education context.

This research looks at contemporary understandings of performance arts in India, specifically Karnatic Music and Bharatnatyam as ‘religious’ arts. Historically, music and dance were performed and patronized in royal courts and temples. In the early 20th century, increased nationalist activities led to various forms of self-scrutiny about what represented ‘true’ Indian culture. By appropriating colonial discourses based on the religious/secular dichotomy, Karnatic Music was carefully constructed to represent a ‘pure’ Indian, specifically ‘Hindu’ culture that was superior to the ‘materialistic’ Western culture. Importantly, the category called divine was re-constructed and distinguished from the erotic: the divine was represented as a category that was sacred whilst the erotic represented ‘sexual impropriety.’ In so doing, performance arts in the public sphere became explicitly gendered. Feminity and masculinity were re-defined: the female body was re-imagined as ‘sexual impropriety’ when in the public sphere, but when disembodied in the private sphere could be deified as a guardian of spirituality. Traditional performing communities were marginalized while the newly defined music and dance was appropriated by the Brahmin community, who assumed the role of guardians of the newly constructed Indian-Hindu identity, resulting in caste-based ‘ownership’ of performance arts. Mechanical reproduction of Karnatic Music has created a disconnect in contemporary Indian society, in which Karnatic Music is disembodied from its contexts in order to be commodified as an individual’s artistic expression of creativity. This move marks a shift from substantive economics (music was performed and experienced within a specific context, be it royal patronage or Indian nationalist movements) to formal economics (music as a performer’s creative property). I question the understanding of Karnatic Music as ‘religious’ music that is distinguished from the ‘secular’ and seek to understand the colonial patriarchal mystification of the female body in the private sphere by deconstructing the definition of the ‘divine.’ In doing so, I also question the contemporary understanding of Karnatic Music as an item of property that disembodies the music from its historical context.