ConclusionIn this exploratory study I have scrutinized the unique articulation of Hindustani music culture in contemporary America. I examined how various elements of the music culture, ie. the musicians, the audiences, the patrons, the contexts of musical events, and the technology of production and reproduction of the music, serve to generate both continuity and change within the music culture. Among the musicians, I found their relationships with their teachers and with the traditional schools of Hindustani music to be diverse. Some of the musicians interviewed were attempting to play in a particularized gharana style or to maintain a waning tradition, such as dhrupad. These musicians were acting as agents of continuity within the music tradition. Other musicians had fused, or were in the process of combining many styles from several different teachers, thereby carving their own individual musical identity. Yet another category of musician, through inadequate training or perhaps through choice, was stretching the rules beyond traditional limits. All of these musicians function as agents of change within the musical and social domain of Hindustani music culture. Elements affecting continuity and change also manifest in the working environments of these musicians. Patrons may hire players who may not have been considered hireable in India. These patrons demand very little in terms of proficiency within the classical genre. They allow American Hindustani musicians to shed their student-musician status much earlier than they would be able to in India, resulting in a greater number of ill-prepared musicians in the workplace. My interviewees have also noted how each individual environment, including such aspects as the technology of sound reinforcement and audience expectations, affects their realization of, the music. The American social domain of Hindustani music has presented many new areas for the continuity and change of the Hindustani traditions of India from which it takes root. The America-India road of interaction is not wildly divergent. There is still ongoing communication between the musicians in India and those in America. Musicians and recordings travel back and forth between the two countries, providing a means for the two domains to intersect and interact. This relationship, which provides for continuity between the two domains, is one which I would like to see explored as an offshoot of this study. However, because of the distinctive backgrounds and trainings of the American musicians, the cultural backgrounds of the American audiences and patrons, the physical reality of the musical environments themselves, and the manifold relationships which exist among them, changes have occurred in the transplanted music culture in America. These elements dynamically engage in the process of continuity and change within the American cultural domain. Like the music itself, the Hindustani music culture in America recreates itself at every lesson, practice, and performance--ever the same and ever changing.
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