Wind of change in south Indian music: The flute revived, recaste, regendered

Between the 1890s and the 1940s, the flute in Tamil Nadu underwent social transformations. It shifted caste and repertoire from low (Isai vellalur dance ensemble) to high (Brahmin solo repertoire). It lost male exclusivity when two Isai vellalur became the first women flutists in India, after which others followed, including Brahmins.;This study stems from nine months of fieldwork in the musically central city of Madras (now Chennai), and from library research. The principal ethnographic methodology was participant observation: living among and interviewing informants, taking instruction in flute and voice from women central to the history under investigation, and noting concert behavior.;The history of the flute follows and illuminates twentieth-century intellectual, social, and political upheavals: Indian nationalism and independence; Dravidian separatism; and reforms for women, especially outlawing the devadasi profession and consequent Brahminization of devadasi music and dance. Prior to the 1930s, classical music was barred to non-devadasi women. Even now these women have heavy loads of ritual duties, especially in the domain of auspiciousness, based partly on the dichotomy: "Men are mind--women are body." To men belong auspicious designs "drawn" with music and words--creations of mind given mandala-like form in sound--thrust outward into the universe, bridging humans and gods. In the purview of women are auspicious designs in material form: adornment and nourishment for bodies--human as well as the "body" that is the house. Whereas men protect liminalities of time and outward space with designs in sound emitted to meet the goods, women protect liminalities of time and space at the level of body, house, and earth--encircling self in cloth (sari) and jewelry, and decorating ground and household thresholds daily, at the transitional time of dawn, with mandala-like designs called kolams, made from a stream of rice powder (food) emitted downward from fingers, which attract the goddess of wealth and good fortune to the household and keep away evil lurking at boundaries of spaces and times. Music and kolams serve similar functions, have analogous components, and call for creativity within set parameters. Women musicians foster auspiciousness in both ways.