Copyright by Jeffrey Michael Grimes 2008 - The University of Texas ...

U.P.-wallas (natives of Uttar Pradesh). The point is that, for the purposes of this study,
regions are defined as much by stylistic affinities between musicians, familial and Guru-
disciple connections, and shared aesthetic tendencies, than solely by membership in an
ethnic group, or, as Slobin would have it, which audience supports the music, although I
include this factor as well. A second point to be made regarding my Southern
Maharashtra/Northern Karnataka example, is that, by any criteria, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to define clear-cut boundaries between regions. In the Indian case, not only
are there many overlapping border areas where two languages are spoken side-by-side,
but, as Cohn points out, there are cases where, as with Hindi and Urdu in UP and Urdu
and Telegu in Hyderabad, “two well established and associated cultural traditions” stand
“intertwined and side by side”(1967:106). The point, then, is that, although I have taken
the dominance of Maharashtrians and Bengalis in modern Hindustani music as a starting
point, I am in no way limiting my discussion to musicians that belong to those two
groups. The picture is considerably more complicated than that.
As I have said before, my primary interest in this dissertation is in the aesthetic
tendencies and preferences of Maharashtrians and Bengalis as regionally-based ethnic
and linguistic groups (which are both well-defined and universally recognized in India)
and how these factors have influenced classical musical style as the tradition shifted to
these two regions due to broader economic, political, and historic changes. However, as
we shall see, some of the key figures in determining which styles/stylistic approaches
have become most prevalent and popular in each respective region have been outsiders to
those regions. Outsiders in this sense, I should note, would exclude those who are not
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