The purpose of this study was to examine pedagogical practices of an Indian music professor, or guru, who teaches an Indian music ensemble in a United States institution of higher learning. The role of the world music professor has been refined and redefined over the last decade. The guru-shishya paramparā system of teaching has reached a crossroad; new conditions challenge this approach. The focus of this study was to investigate, through the lens of the guru, tensions that exist between Indian pedagogy and Western pedagogy. The research design was a single-case ethnographic study that utilized participant observation in an Indian music ensemble class. I expanded Schippers’s (2009) Twelve Continuum Transmission Framework by adding aesthetics to the continuum of the framework. I used this framework as a tool to examine Indian music transmission, through a distinct pedagogical viewpoint of a guru leading a non-Western music ensemble. In this study I noted factors that influence world music transmission in Indian music education at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School. Information regarding attitudes and the reasons for certain pedagogical practices in Indian music education can provide insight to ensemble instructors and to administrators interested in building Indian music programs. This research has implications outside of Indian music education and for music department directors interested in expanding music programs.

Current practices in music education parallel the expansion of globalization and cross-cultural contact. However, the multicultural music education movement—referred to by some as "world music education"—has been primarily about the diversity of musical experiences and less about the circumstances and processes of the music itself. As a result, Western music educators often neglect inseparable learning pathways and unintentionally distort the meaning and value of diverse musics from around the world. While there is considerable research examining the teaching and learning of diverse music cultures, significant portions of that literature only represent the observed accounts of cultural outsiders. In this study, I examined the lived experiences of world music culture bearers who teach in Western university institutions in the Southwest region of the United States. I used narrative inquiry to learn more about their pedagogical experiences and documented their storied accounts of interactions with university students. I based the theoretical framework in this study on Clandinin and Connelly's narrative inquiry three-dimensional space model and Schippers' twelve continuum transmission framework. My primary findings revealed that teaching in a cross-cultural setting involves several musical and contextual choices. Moreover, the perceived authenticity of the research participants' transmission processes was often a byproduct of their teaching realities—the intersection of their music culture and Western institutional structures—and included numerous adaptations. As was the case with all three participants, their past experiences constituted their present teacher knowledge and became a significant part of how they perceived their futures.