If you want to OD on high art, even to the point of nausea, Chennai might seem the place to be in December and early January. Some 2,000 concerts, via 53 competing sabhas, all squeezed into four weeks. On the surface, Chennai's fabled appetite for Carnatic and Bharatanatyam—given full body during its annual 'margazhi' (winter) festival—shows no signs of waning. The more the merrier.

For all its conservatism, Carnatic has been quick to adapt to modern props: CD and electronic tamburas, remote-controlled drones, lessons on the CD-ROM.

Stuff it all up in one go and digest it through the year.

Washed ashore in this high tide of music and dance, however, are also signs of death. Not from a sudden wreckage, but the slow sinking of a grand liner following the wrong compass, into turbid cultural waters. Signs of suffocating, of closure, of gross inbreeding and loss of vigour, and the dubious life support offered by the marketplace.

Some symptoms are stark. For so many concerts per square inch, the audience is spread really thin. Fact is, in a city that boasts 6,000-plus Bharatanatyam dancers past their arangetram (debut) stage, and where every other locality has a maami offering classes in dance and music, the estimated concert audience today is 15,000. But never mind if the auditorium is empty. As long as the sponsor's banner is displayed well, the show will go on. And since cheaper tickets won't bring in the crowds anyway, at Krishna Gana Sabha you pay Rs 200 to sit in the 21st row. Want to watch a dance from the third row? That'll be Rs 500.

Even 15,000 is a liberal guesstimate, says Pattabhi Raman, editor of Sruti, a Chennai journal devoted to dance and music. "And this audience is 99 per cent Brahmin," he admits cheerlessly. Tamil Brahmin to be precise, including its NRI contingent (see box). It's a gentility that revels equally in the rustle of Kanjeevaram silk, the jangle of Nityashree Mahadevan's bangles as she keeps the beat, the aroma of filter kaapi...

For the remaining 1 per cent, non-Brahmins share the space with the oddballs and dilettantes—white connoisseurs, the odd Sardarji or a Japanese musicologist. Sadly, this racial/ethnic profile—mirrored in all its lopsidedness by the body of established performers—does little justice to the specific history of these arts.

For, historically they were no Brahmin monopolies. Quite the opposite. Bharatanatyam's progenitor was Sadir, performed by the Devadasis till the '20s when the 'reformist' anti-nautch campaign—culminating in the Devadasi Act of 1947—ensured it was equated with 'prostitution'. In this climate of opinion—reigned over by a Victorian Raj and a prudish Congress-nationalism—Sadir was usurped and reinscribed as a 'respectable' art form. Overseeing this infusion of shuddhi was the Brahmin gaze of figures like Rukmini Devi Arundale.

Under the banyan shadow of the Theosophical Society, Sadir was de-eroticised, bowdlerised and spiritualised on the sprawling grounds of Rukmini Devi's Kalakshetra. The fallen Devadasi art was reimagined as a national dance (literally, bharata-natyam). Says Sadanand Menon, critic, "The Brahmins did not—and do not—have the bodies for this dance. Watching them perform, you wonder what happened to the spine!"

Raghunath Manet, a stray non-Brahmin exponent, cites an ironic consequence of this balking from sheer physicality: "Sabhas prefer female dancers, unless you dance with a companion. For them all male dancers are the same. They say, 'We've already given a slot to one male dancer...' Women get on with makeup, jewels, beautiful dresses. A man has only his body to show."

Thus was a cultural practice disembodied from its context—the temples and courts of Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Pandanallur—and yoked to the bodies of women who, in the legendary T. Balasaraswati's words, were fit "only to cook and serve their husbands in the kitchen". The body language too changed.Aspects of sringara that ruffled Brahmin aesthetics were jettisoned for bhakti. Old items on the repertoire (Kshetrayya's erotic padams, flirtatious javalis) and modes of physical expression were sanitised. Markers like fair skin became the norm.

Early Brahmin performers like Rukmini Devi did break caste taboos in taking to dance, but the long-term gains for a community under siege from the Dravidian movement were immense. "It gave a new face to them. Marketed as an icon of nationalism, the dance form acquired an ambassadorial stamp," argues Menon. "Every other middle-class Brahmin girl was schooled in Bharatanatyam. Like a community finding its identity by going to typing class."

Non-Brahmins like Balasaraswati and Mylapore Gowri Ammal did get patronage from the 1927-born Madras Music Academy and held their own till the '50s, yet it was the brahminical thrust of Rukmini Devi that defined the future. The teachers (nattuvanars) have hailed from traditional performing communities like the Devadasis and Isai-Vellalars—but they're dying and remain rooted in non-metro centres like Thiruvarur, Thanjavur or Pandanallur.

A survey today would yield a meagre non-Brahmin crop among practitioners, Alarmel Valli and Urmila Satyanarayan being notable. Bharatanatyam is now truly bhadralok. The social appropriation too is total. Recalls Manet, "My parents did not want my sisters to dance after their 14th year. Among Isai-Vellalars today, dance dims marriage prospects. But among Brahmins, it's an advantage—in fact, part of the dowry."

Raman acknowledges the general view of Carnatic and Bharatanatyam as 'Brahmin pastimes'. Vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyam sees nothing wrong with the association. "But for Brahmins, where would Bharatanatyam be?" he asks. The fact of it, thus, rationalises itself.

Music offers a broad parallel. From the '30s to the '60s, elite non-Brahmin castes held sway. Violin meant Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu, Kumabakonam Rajamanickam Pillai, Mysore Chowdiah. Pazhani Subramania Pillai was the most sought-after mridangist of his time. T. Muktha and T. Brinda, of the Dhanammal paramparai, and M.S. Subbulakshmi (for whom recognition came after her baptism into brahminism) set the trend—in the '60s and '70s—for other Brahmin women. Today, non-Brahmin Carnatic musicians are scarce. A whole community that called itself Isai-Vellalars—cultivators of music—has been "disenfranchised", laments Canada-based musician-researcher Devesh Soneji.

Sponsors or caterers may crib about a greying, dwindling audience, but rasikas and performers don't really want classical art to expand its social base. "Nobody is stopping others from learning," counter Raman and Subrahmanyam. True. But recognition for 'others' is hard to come by. Music colleges were established post-'30s, yet only those who learnt the "traditional" way—through apprenticeship at gurus' homes—thrived.

P. Unnikrishnan, a top vocalist who also sings for cinema, makes light of his non-brahminness—"they might've mistaken me for one of them" (plus, he's had Brahmin gurus)—but feels the pressure to prove a point when performing before purists. Figures like K.J. Yesudas too go against the drift. If today he can sing a kriti on Christ, as he did at Narada Gana Sabha for X'mas, he's had to struggle to claim that space.

Says filmmaker Rajiv Menon, "In Hindustani, a Hariprasad Chaurasia, son of a pehalwan, could rise to the top. This possibility seems foreclosed in Carnatic." Few non-Hindus have made it in Carnatic, except in nadaswaram (like Chinna Moulana), anyway a non-Brahmin preserve. Over time, this majestic wind instrument has been blown away from kutcheri stages, save as inaugural mangala isai (auspicious music).

For all its conservatism, Carnatic has been quick to adapt to modern props.Concert music—a three-hour box-set of 15 items—which evolved in the Madras of the '30s is at many removes from 19th century performances. Today, most performers use electronic and CD tamburas, even remote controls for the drone. At the Academy, a stall peddling a two-pack CD-ROM (Rs 1,250) that promised to teach all one wanted to know about Carnatic at the click of a mouse—no guru—sold 10 pieces a day.

Most musicians have parallel careers as chartered accountants or bankers and zip past in Santros and Cielos, and undertake lucrative foreign tours. Only one strand has stayed: the exclusive-Brahmin-club feeling. "Finding one's identity in this island of classicism was understandable in the context of the Dravidian movement, but today these arts are being used to gleefully project a community internationally," says Menon.

Most gurus brook no talk on the genre's caste-specificity. "Only if Brahmins sing will it sound good"—is the refrain. This conservative bent finds echoes in etymology. The anglicised Carnatic comes from Karnatakam —'traditional'. Some 250 years ago, in the twilight of the Bhakti era, the genre's grammar and aesthetic were set by a community that controlled 'refined' languages like Telugu and Sanskrit. Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, 18th-19th century figures born on the banks of the Cauvery at Thiruvayyaru, gave modern Carnatic its repertoire of some 1,200 songs. Today, the trinity is deified; their compositions, museumised. Unlike Dikshitar and Sastri's eulogies, Thyagaraja's works are poetically rich but, content-wise, form the dregs of the Bhakti spirit. Says Sadanand Menon, "Bhakti was about humanism. The trinity was a backlash against its egalitarian core; it laid the ground for brahminical resurgence."

Most gurus mock at Hindustani as a product of "Islamic courtly influence". Only the music sung on the banks of Cauvery, with assumed roots in the Samaveda, has claims on chastity. Even when it travels to Kentucky, innovation is anathema. The odd attempt runs into the chides of SVK, The Hindu's veteran critic: "Stick to the time-tested kirtanas of Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and Sastri".

So stray creative impulses—Balamuralikrishna, Papanasam Sivan—merely mimic the trinity in form and content. Contemporaneity is something Bharatanatyam has at least grappled with through a Chandralekha, but Carnatic revels in anachronism. Among the new crop, Unni, Nityashree and Bombay Jayashree make the crossover from film to classical, and ensure crowds at concerts—and then flinch from novelty.

Which is why Carnatic, in its provincial bliss, has never captured national—forget global—imagination. Even in Bombay or Calcutta, it's ghettoed in migrant Tamil Brahmin pockets. This also affects its economy. "An Amjad Ali Khan commands up to Rs 50,000 for performances in Chennai, but top South musicians can be had dirt-cheap in their bastion. Semmangudi was paid Rs 2,000 by the Academy," regrets Raman.

What can stop the rut—the same singers, the same pieces, the same audience? Perhaps only a realisation that monopoly runs counter to the grain of art. For now, they're caught in a dark warp, waiting for light.