I've seen some answers to this question and feel that some points have not been addressed.
While I agree that Telugus have lost the drift of Carnatic music to a great extent and are unaware and not proud of their culture, there are some more points too.
- Carnatic music flourished in Kaveri basin which is quite far away from the main land of Telugus. It's not a border area like Vellore (Tamilnadu/Andhra) or Bellary (Karnataka/Andhra). In the 18th century communication systems were not so developed and fast to completely beat this.Still due to the Guru shishya parampara music travelled here as well. So a lot of people who were learning music were tamilians because of the sheer vicinity factor. We can compare this to Engineering/Medical colleges during post independence era. People in cities and towns with these colleges were a bigger proportion of the students compared to outsiders because they had awareness, immediate access and ecosystem in place. (This is why so many of my father's cousins were doctors because they were born in Guntur in Andhra where there was a medical college.)
- While most of Thanjavur basin and I assume Tamilnadu also (If I'm wrong please correct me. I'll have to brush up on this one) was in Maratha rule during this time, Telugu speaking areas were under different political rule. The whole of Telangana was under Nizam where you couldn't even learn Telugu in schools till 1948. Rayalaseema and Circars were ceded to the British. There was no political stability or homogeneity. When British started their rule over the entire of Tamilnadu the connectivity due to railways and the Madras factor made the circuits shorter and easier for Tamilnadu as a whole to integrate culturally and continue with learning and thus institutionalising Carnatic music.
- Even though we can observe that Malayalam speaking and kannada speaking parts were also under different authorities [Kerala - Travancore, Cochin and Malabar (Madras presidency)] , [Karnataka - Mysore, Bangalore (Madras presidency), Hyderabad Karnataka (Nizam), Bombay presidency), somehow Carnatic music is stronger in those states compared to Telugu states. I think for Kerala and Mysore the Royal patronage of music helped in institutionalising music. (I'm not talking about Dharwad/Hubbali etc because these regions are more famous for Hindustani school of music). Telugu speaking regions had no such beneficial/benevolent royal rule. This can be seen even in development, education and industry in addition to music.
- Tamilnadu has a strong temple culture. As our religion/culture was mainly focused on temples being center of all arts, this must have helped a lot.
- The Madras factor. Madras became the new center of Carnatic music due to 3 main reasons. It was the capital of Madras presidency, so there was the All India Radio which played a major role in furthering the arts. It was the centre of southern film industry which enhanced the popularity and appeal of music. In 1927, on the sidelines of All India Congress session, an all india music conference was organised, which became the basis for the Madras Music Season aka the Margazhi season. The capital was closer to and well connected to Tamil regions and it was made part of Tamilnadu on split of Madras presidency. So the current state of Tamilnadu inherited all of its existing ecosystem. You can understand this better if you look at Hyderabad. Telangana inherited all of the advantages of Hyderabad from day one be it IT industry or population mix or revenue surplus which was an added advantage.
- And last but not the least, the current (and probably forever) numero uno position of Tamilnadu in Carnatic music is because of the umpteen number of rasikas, organizers, musicians and academicians of Tamilnadu who did yeoman service to establish the culture there. I don't think the government of Tamilnadu can take any credit for this. We in Telugu land didn't have such people and our government is ….. it's a government after all. Whatever might be the reason, if a stalwart like Mangalampalli Balamurali Krishna migrated from Vijayawada to Madras, how would / could anyone build anything close to the Madras culture?
I wrote all of this as an extension of all the soul searching that I've done in the past few years, and these are my observations and conclusions. I might be wrong to some extent but i feel I've arrived at the framework of it.
Lastly Telugu land is still producing Carnatic superstars (though not as numerous as our Tamil cousins). We had Balamurali Krishna, Sripada Pinakapani and Nedunuri Krishnamurthy in the past. We have Malladi Brothers, Dr. Panthula Rama and many more (unknown to the ignorant myself). So all is not lost yet.