If by diaspora , we don't mean Sri Lanka or Singapore, rather one of those Western countries, say predominantly U.S.A, I have few issues to raise.
How is the Sruti (listening!) happening with these kids? Their own language and phonetics is highly constraining and boxes them into a controlled nasal. To be loud and shout is against etiquette!
When we played cricket in my childhood, the temple nearby would be playing Smt. MSS or Sirkazhi Govindarajan. With Smt. MSS it was not simply bhajans and chants
- but not any extensive repertoire either. It would be the familiar Sri Annamacharya kirtans as well as the mainstream Kanjadalayadakshi with it's rolling landing syllables. And Saroja Dala nEtri as well. Don't remember any Sri tyAgaraja kritis being played. Before Sri Jesudas tarangini cassettes , Smt. MSS recordings were the ones that were accessible in Cassette form - here I mean those were the ones Moms were willing to pick up.
The morning Trichi AIR relays listened to by Grandpas - Dr BMK, Soolamangalam sisters, Madurai Mani Iyer are less frequent comparatively - those are vacation days/holidays as it used to be 11 AM or so. In a city that produced a lot of musicians, an ancient city of Madurai - there was no AIR even!!
The 4 hour nadasvaram is a thing of the remote past! What rAga Alapana - boring!!
. A person living close to ancient temples like Sri Meenakshi temple stopped having such experiences. The best we could muster was a Mallari and Jagajjani with Sri Kunnakudi during ulaga tamizh mAnAdu (World tamizh conference at Madurai) of MGR times.
And most if not all people who posted in this forum (the knowledgeables that we fret haven't returned!) have a Sruti that is beyond measure, much greater than those outside of Chennai in smaller cities, who had no access to a tape recorder.
These kids need to pick an icon of their choice in current times and hook on to them. It could be a mainstream carnatic person or any artiste of cine fame or pop classical genre familiars like Rajesh Vaidya. I suppose they could find an icon that comes close to their nasality.
Now the situation in India:
Recently in a large team meeting we went though hobbies of each one and there was this Anglo-american who mentioned about World music as his passion. He was rattling out names like Zakir Hussain, Chaurasia and Shivkumar Sharma! An Indian from Thanjavur ( can you imagine?) , a person who is generally knowledgeable about our culture, could only respond with his big name : A.R Rahman.
Even Mandolin Srinivas did not make his list.
I bet you the situation is the same with kids ( of upper class/caste/economic - whatever strata!) that land up in a premier institute like IIT from the North or even deep south ( even as early as 1980s). None of them would know any names. It seems there is no familiar or popular person in Carnatic Music. Not even MSS or not even BMK. That is in larger India. I shudder when I hear all the big officials, governors, PM names being mentioned in the congratulatory list of messages received for Smt. MSS kalanidhi event.
https://youtu.be/KVS_2EK1NFM?t=351
There was this national Quiz by Siddarth Basu in Doordarshan in 1986/87. A clip of Sri Semmangudi was played and asked to be identified. We were all thrilled as Maduraiites that one of the contestants came close enough to wrongly guess Sri TNS as the artiste.
- I guess that was the best they could muster from the standard quiz prep (GaDam taTTutal! - a very popular term for memorization)
. For the World music lovers, that POT is a metallic sound to be thrilled about - as they devour the exotica from native culture with their national geographic perspective. Whereas it has turned into a pejorative for us! How surreal can it get?
Siddharth Basu was such a quiz icon, the IIT brought him to have a quiz for the campus Kendriya Vidyalaya kids on Physics. Of course when Sid Basu says correct he wouldn't know really
. They had two professors to assist him
P:S : I am the only reporter of CM scene from 80s 90s and 2000s may be other than
@rajeshnat . People in this forum are still stuck in 60s and before. That tells a story by itself isn't it? Is CM dead beyond those times or what?