Hindustani Music and Princely Patronage: A Systemic Historical Study of Today’s India

Presenter:

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Abstract

Hindustani music is now well-established as a resplendent part of India’s national culture. However, on examining its geography today, it is almost entirely concentrated in a few large cities or centers: Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Varanasi. Going back even a few decades, let alone back to independence or before, Hindustani music flourished in smaller towns in north India which are now unheard of as places for regular or major concerts. In this paper, I explore what has led to the intense concentration of Hindustani music in a few centers and regions, and its near-disappearance in others. Rather than seeing an abrupt end to princely and aristocratic patronage, I trace a more gradual or piecemeal decline, with Indians of royal or landowning background still significant in the music world. I explore Hindustani music as not just an elite art, but as extending into public and even popular culture in the twentieth century in terms of melas and festivals and so-called ‘light-classical’ genres, and I look at how this has changed in more recent decades. I look at the radical differences of Hindustani music’s presence in the regions of Bihar, UP and Maharashtra in the context of the social, political and economic histories of royalty, landowners, middle classes and key communities of musicians. Taking an systemic approach, I trace a history of upward and downward mobility and of transformation of Hindustani music, its performers and audiences, looking at princely and aristocratic patronage beyond nostalgia, legacy or the past.