In this article, I present ethnographic interviews with three second-generation American teachers of South Asian classical music. Our conversations reveal a twofold understanding of guru-sisya parampara as a cultural institution. On the one hand, the title of guru is aspirational: it reflects a presumed mastery over one’s art form, as well as the authority to serve as a culture-bearer and mentor for the next generation of South Asian American musicians. On the other hand, this very authority places us in an uneasy position of power that we must take careful steps to mitigate. I  explore the steps taken by diasporic practitioners to make the Carnatic heritage accessible to subsequent generations, demonstrating how foundational concepts are taught using inductive rather than deductive, explicit rather than implicit, and student-driven rather than teacher-directed methods. These diasporic transformations reflect the need to overcome transnational boundaries and to mirror the pedagogical structures that may be more familiar and amenable to students educated within the American public school system. I also posit these innovations as feminist interventions, reflecting the goals of centering our sisyas’ agency in the learning process and destabilizing the power dynamics built into guru-sisya parampara as a cultural institution.

"Narayanan writes from a deeply personal perspective as a first-generation diaspora musician with training and experience in opera, jazz, and Carnatic music. Their musical practice transcends categories of fusion or hybridity, which suggest the bringing together of fully formed musical styles. Instead, Narayanan draws from their own experience and study of other Indian-American artists to theorize “hyphenation”—in which 'multiple influences are intertwined from the outset, leading to a creative process and a musical product that stage a dialogue between cultures and genres from the moment of their inception'—as a framework for understanding the work of diaspora musicians. Their chapter, 'Music of the Hyphen: Diaspora Music as Process and Product,' takes as a case study the debut album of Indian-American mridangist Rajna Swaminathan, created in collaboration with both jazz and Carnatic musicians. Narayanan’s analysis of the album demonstrates an approach that they unpack in pedagogical comments. They criticize the simplistic binary of assimilation versus appropriation while attending to the political nuances of cross-cultural borrowing. Throughout the chapter, they ask incisive questions—twenty-three in total—that instructors can in turn pose to their own students to guide meaningful encounters with hyphenated music."