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Sikh Sacred Music: Identity, Aesthetics, and Historical Change
Abstract
In 1781, the well-known British Orientalist Charles Wilkins, who together with William Jones cofounded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, visited Harmandir Sahib gurdwara in Patna, the birthplace of the last of the ten Sikh Gurus, Guru Gobind Singh. Among his observations published in the society’s Asiatick Researches (1788), there is the following description of a public reading of the Sikh sacred scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib:
An old man, with a reverend silver beard, kneeled down before the desk with his face towards the altar; and on one side of him sat a man with a small drum, and two or three with cymbals. The book was now opened, and the old man began to chant to the tune of the drum and cymbals; and, at the conclusion of every verse, most of the congregation joined chorus in a response, with countenances exhibiting great marks of joy. Their tones were by no means harsh; the time was quick; and I learnt that the subject was a Hymn in praise of the unity, the omnipresence, and the omnipotence, of the Deity.1
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Born and educated in Ireland, Max Arthur Macauliffe (1841–1913) joined the Indian Civil Service in 1862. In 1882 he was promoted to the post of deputy commissioner of the Punjab. But it was after he retired from the civil service in 1893 that he gained public attention. Macauliffe developed a close affinity with Sikhism while in the Punjab, eventually converting to the religion. His translation into English of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhism, is recognised as the most accurate to date. Following this project, he set to work on this six-volume set, covering the history and philosophy of Sikhism, first published in 1909 and still regarded as the definitive work on the subject. Volume 4 narrates the lives of Hargobind, Har Rai, Harkrishan and Tegh Bahadur, the sixth to ninth Sikh gurus, with translations of Tegh Bahadur's compositions in the Sikh holy book.
At present numbering twenty million adherents and spread the world over, the Sikhs represent a monotheistic tradition founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab, a region that served as a cultural bridge between the Middle East and South Asia. The Sikhs are fortunate to have in their possession a large number of early sacred manuscripts, including sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century protoscriptural texts. This unique context makes it possible for scholars to trace the history of Sikh canon formation with a degree of accuracy unimaginable in other major religious traditions. On the basis of a close examination of the extant manuscripts and other early Sikh sources in private custody of families in the Punjab, the author presents a detailed reconstruction of the making of the Adi Granth (“original book”) – the primary Sikh scripture, which comprises about 3,000 hymns. In the process, he traces its origin, expansion, canonization, and place within the institutional development of the Sikh community. His findings on many key issues differ from the traditional Sikh position, as well as from the hypotheses of other twentieth‐century scholars; they also raise some entirely fresh questions. The revised and expanded picture of the history of the text and institution of Sikh scripture will be of interest not only to scholars of Sikhism and Sikh religionists, but to scholars of comparative canon formation.
This book examines three closely related questions in the process of canon formation in the Sikh tradition: how the text of the Adi Granth came into being, the meaning of gurbani, and how the Adi Granth became the Guru Granth Sahib. The censure of scholarly research on the Adi Granth was closely related to the complex political situation of Punjab and brought the whole issue of academic freedom into sharper focus. This book addresses some of these issues from an academic perspective. The Adi Granth, the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, means 'first religious book' (from the word 'adi' which means 'first' and 'granth' which means 'religious book'). Sikhs normally refer to the Adi Granth as the Guru Granth Sahib to indicate a confession of faith in the scripture as Guru. The contents of the Adi Granth are commonly known as bani (utterance) or gurbani (the utterance of the Guru). The transcendental origin (or ontological status) of the hymns of the Adi Granth is termed dhur ki bani (utterance from the beginning). This particular understanding of revelation is based upon the doctrine of the sabad, or divine word, defined by Guru Nanak and the succeeding Gurus. This book also explores the revelation of the bani and its verbal expression, devotional music in the Sikh tradition, the role of the scripture in Sikh ceremonies, and the hymns of Guru Nanak and Guru Arjan.
This book presents a scholarly treatment of the life and work of Guru Arjan (1563-1606), the fifth Guru of the Sikhs. First, it discusses the theoretical framework of a religious biography, and follows a multidisciplinary paradigm to reconstruct Guru Arjan's life based upon history, tradition, memory, and mythic representation. In constructing the historical setting of Guru Arjan's times, the book focuses on major influences in the formation of his thought before he became a Guru, and discusses his role as the leader of the growing Sikh Panth. It also explores the major institutional developments as well as the formation of the Sikh canon during his reign, his teachings, and the social and political context of his life that contributed to his rise to cultural pre-eminence as one of the world's great religious leaders. Moreover, it examines the various causes that led to Guru Arjan's execution at the hands of the Mughals, and how his martyrdom influenced the crystallisation of the Sikh Panth.
We tend to take for granted the labels we put to different forms of music. This study considers the origins and implications of the way in which we categorize music. Whereas earlier ways of classifying music were based on its different functions, for the past two hundred years we have been obsessed with creativity and musical origins, and classify music along these lines. Matthew Gelbart argues that folk music and art music became meaningful concepts only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and only in relation to each other. He examines how cultural nationalism served as the earliest impetus in classifying music by origins, and how the notions of folk music and art music followed - in conjunction with changing conceptions of nature, and changing ideas about human creativity. Through tracing the history of these musical categories, the book confronts our assumptions about different kinds of music.
The title says it all. The hard copy book has 4 CDs that are quite unmissable. The text can be found on gen.lib.rus.ec and the complete book with the CDs is really quite cheap nowadays.
This paper attempts to answer a fundamental question – what is kīrtan? Much emphasis has been laid on the singing of gurbani in rāgas (classical Indian melody systems), the use of tālas (rhythmic patterns unique to Indian classical music) and the use of musical instruments related to the Sikh gurūs. Uniquely, all these three aspects are mentioned without elaboration in gurbani itself. Only the rāga and tāla names are mentioned, but no written specifications are given about their forms and modes of performance. Furthermore, though certain instruments are mentioned in gurbani, such as the rabāb, pakhawaj, kinnari vina and khartal, it contains no descriptions of their making, tuning, stringing and/or playing techniques. The implications of this mismatch are explored in this article, where it is argued that the oral tradition and its particular pedagogy and training is still extant and provides many of the answers that are highly sought after in the recent turn to ‘traditional’ methods, styles and instruments. The author argues that four major elements (rāga, tāla, shabad and avadhanu or surat) are essential factors in the performance of kīrtan. Due to the various social and political upheavals that Punjab has undergone in the last 150 years, much of the tangible and intangible wealth has been lost. The loss of many pedagogical streams has led to an apparent hermeneutic chaos. The author argues that the research carried out in this field in the last three decades lacks academic integrity and has yet to be responded to academically, and assesses the relevance of kīrtan in the current social order and the institutions currently offering education in this field. The transformations that have occurred in kīrtan due to the methodological changes in the teaching of gurbani are considered, and suggestions are made for future research. The author argues that the proud oral history of gurbani kīrtan and kīrtaniye has not received serious and sound academic attention. He offers his reflections while suggesting ways to intervene in order to facilitate the recovery of this near-extinct oral tradition.
Teaching a religious musical tradition within a Western (secular) context, such as the University, involves important aspects of intercultural pedagogy and research in cross-cultural perspective. The Sikh Gurūs’ tradition is here analyzed through an anthropological and semiotic approach that locates Gurmat Sangīt within the academic field of international musicology. Considered for a long time to be a devotional genre of music, the great contribution of the Sikh Gurūs’ tradition to Indian music is yet to be discovered. Academic discussion should involve old and new generations of musicians, as well as Indian and Western scholars trained in the tradition, to highlight historical and practical aspects of performance. This article suggests some issues that could be developed involving students from Western universities in academic research, and suitable dissertation topics. Among these, the vocal techniques in relation to the musical genres, and to the yoga of sound, is one of the most interesting aspects of research and analysis on Gurmat Sangīt.
This article examines the modes of revival within the contemporary renaissance of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music) in an effort to differentiate historically operative practices from modern products being sold as tradition. Modern reformist tendencies have attempted to institutionalize a normative Sikh musical identity into one homogeneous ‘Gurmat Sangeet’ genre through codifying Sikh raga forms and promoting a particular Sikh musical orthopraxy and history. The process of institutionalization privileges written sources as authoritative, erasing the memory of operative practices passed down orally since the time of the Sikh Gurus through the Gurbani Kirtan parampara (tradition). In questioning how Sikh musical knowledge has been propagated and authenticated since modernity, I propose a reassessment of what values and musical modes are indelible to the fabric of Gurbani Kirtan, what aspects are modern derivatives, and what aspects are negotiable. I believe such an approach will not limit Sikh musical expression to a past identity subsumed by orthodox rigidity. Instead it will move toward a phenomenological epistemology that recognizes how orality and embodied experience are intrinsic to the Gurbani Kirtan parampara that remembers, practices, and teaches a particular methodology to embody the Bani as Guru for newly creative Sikh subjectivities.
This article explores the moral language around Sikh sacred music (kīrtan) that emerged as a result of the imperial encounter in the wake of the Singh Sabha movement. In addition, it investigates the possibilities for the study of Sikh kīrtan as ‘world music’. On the whole, it aims to find answers to questions such as: What is cultural and what is universal in the study of the practice of Sikh sacred music, and what is part of the Sikh identity politics of ‘difference’?; To what extent do identity politics and ancient Sanskrit music theories hinder the study of kīrtan as world music, and how is this related to the Sikh resistance to the translation of the Sikh sacred scripture? Above all, it finds orthodox Sikh ideas about authenticity and aesthetics in kīrtan problematic in the light of historical change, recording and new media technologies as well as diasporan influence.
Exactly two years ago it was my good fortune to lay before this Society my discovery of the system on which the hymns of the Rig-Veda were arranged,—a discovery of the highest interest to the student of the Vedas, not only by throwing unexpected light on ancient philosophical theology; but by giving back to the world the Liturgy of the ancient Brahmans,—all knowledge of the true character of which had been lost, even in India itself, for about 3000 years. Again I appear before you in the character of Veda-Vyasa, in order to lay before you the system on which the hymns of the Adi Granth are arranged.
This article situates the rabābī tradition of kīrtan within the backdrop of politicized religious boundaries, which find it increasingly difficult to locate the Muslim presence within Sikh history and sacred music. The musical recitation of Sikh sacred hymns through shabad kīrtan has its origins in the appointment by Gurū Nanak of his companion Bhai Mardana in the fifteenth century. This story of origins, while being an integral part of how shabad kīrtan is reflected upon, has not been adequately explored for its significance in terms of social relations, not least for what are now seen as oppositional locations of Sikh and Muslim. The article explores how a social history of the rabābī tradition within context raises a number of questions about how we conceptualize shabad kīrtan within wider currents of identity, religious boundary-making, professional association and spiritual music.
For the first time in Sikh historiography, this article deals with the definition, institutionalization, canonization and commodification of modern Sikh music (kirtan) since the so-called Singh Sabha reformation. On the whole, it takes Sikh music as a suitable lens through which to examine societal and intellectual change, assuming that it is closely embedded in society and formative to its construction, negotiation and transformation in terms of (moral) consensus and conflict. Specifically, it discusses the influence of Western Orientalism (Max Arthur Macauliffe) and musicology, staff notation, Princely patronage (Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala), Christian missionaries and the introduction of new instruments (the harmonium, brass bands) to the making of modern Sikh music. Moreover, it investigates its relationship with what I have elsewhere labelled the Singh Sabha ‘moral language’ in terms of identity politics, for example in connection to popular culture (Punjabi bhangra), the notion of ‘authenticity’ and the British civilizing mission.
Observations on the Seeks and Their College
- Charles Wilkins
Sri Guru Granth Sahib and Hymns of the Human Spirit
- Gurnam Singh
- Sikh Musicology
The Adi Granth or the Holy Scripture of the Sikhs
- Ernest Trumpp
- E Trumpp
Bibi Jasbir Kaur Khalsa: Tribute to the Doyenne of Gurmat Sangeet
- Singh
Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition
- Raja
Nature and Place of Music in Sikh Religion and Its Affinity with Hindustani Classical Music, PhD Dissertation
- Ajit Singh
- AS Paintal
The Construction, Reconstruction, and Deconstruction of Shruti,” in Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries
- Suvarnalata Rao
- Wim Van Der Meer
Sikhs at Large: Religion, Culture, and Politics in Global perspective
- Dusenbery
Moral Languages from Colonial Punjab: The Singh Sabha, Arya Samaj and Ahmadiyahs
- Bob Van Der Linden
Sikhism and Music,” in Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religions
- Singh
Punjab States, Maharajas and Gurudwaras: Patiala and the Sikh Community
- Barbara N Ramusack
- BN Ramusack
Discovering the Sikhs: Autobiography of a Historian
- Hew Mcleod
- H McLeod
Dhadi Darbar: Religion, Violence, and the History of Sikh History
- Michael Nijhawan
The Secret Power of Music
- David Tame
- D Tame
The Rise of Amritsar and the Alterations of the Sikh Religion” (1881)
- M A Macauliffe
- MA Macauliffe
Gurbani Sangit Prachin Rit Ratnavali, 2 vols
- Avtar Singh
- Gurcharan Singh
- A Singh
A Tradition in Transition
- Deepak Raja
- Hindustani Music
- D Raja
What Is Kirtan? Observations, Interventions and Personal Reflections
- Bhai Baldeep
- Singh
- BB Singh
The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition
- Harjot Oberoi
- H Oberoi
The Contributions of Ragis and Rababis to the Sikh Devotional Music
- Ajit Singh
- AS Paintal
As reprinted in Western Image of the Sikh Religion
- M A Macauliffe
- MA Macauliffe
The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas, set of 4 CDs with book
- Joep Bor
- J Bor
Enlightening the Listener: Contemporary North Indian Classical Vocal Music Performance, including CD
- Prabha Atre
- P Atre
The Arrangement of the Hymns of the Adi Granth, Holy Bible of the Sikhs
- Frederic Pincott
- F Pincott