2015_ ARTICLE_ "Gurbani Sangit: Autenticity and Influences. A study of the Sikh Musical Tradition in Relation to Medieval and Early Modern Indian Music" (original) (raw)
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THE MUSIC OF THE SIKH GURŪS’ TRADITION IN A WESTERN CONTEXT: Cross-cultural pedagogy and research
Sikh formations, 2011
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.
The sonic pilgrimage. Exploring kīrtan and sacred journeying in Sikh culture
Sikh formations, 2019
Through a comparative analysis of sound and pilgrimage in Bhakti, Sufi and Sikh cultures, this paper examines their musical repertoires and divergent views from the standpoint of sacred journeying. While the Gurū Granth Sāhib is critically inclusive of Bhakti and Sufi voices, the musical setting and the performance of the hymns incorporated into the Sikh scripture suggest a distinct function of the gurbanī kīrtan practice, associated with the process of inner transmutation from a self-willed being (manmukh) into a Guruoriented realized self (gurmukh). The gurbanī repertoire also includes various types of ancient songs-forms (like chhants, prabandhs, dhur-pads and partals) of historical and musicological importance. This article focuses on two of them which, developed during the Sikh Gurus era, reveal a unique construction that seems to translate into music the Sikh literary and philosophical stances on sacred journeying. Applying Turner's concepts of communitas and liminality, Sikh kīrtan is here interpreted as a shared experience for a potential transformation, a sonic form of 'introverted pilgrimage' leading to a state of blissful equanimity (sahaj). Established in the late 15th century by Gurū Nānak (1469-1539), the performance of Sikh kīrtan is based on the singing of liturgical 1 chants set to pre-defined melodic modes (rāgas). The musical dimension had such a significant role in the spiritual practice that the Sikh scripture 2 , collected in one volume (the Ādi Granth) in 1604 by Gurū Arjan 3 (1563-1606), was arranged according to rāgas. The final version of the Granth was compiled in the 1680s at the initiative of Gurū Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the last living Sikh Gurū. This volume, later known as the Gurū Granth Sāhib (henceforth GGS) and structured in thirty-one musical chapters 4 , is now accepted as the canonical text and living sovereign authority of the Sikhs. The GGS includes the bānī (divine 'utterance' 5) by six Sikh Gurūs, as well as poems attributed to fifteen Bhakti and Sufi mystics 6 , in the form of śabads 7 (lyrical hymns). Such a comprehensive liturgy reflects well the ethos of the Sikh community that flourished at the crossroads of the Hindu and Muslim milieus, yet maintained the integrity of Gurū Nānak's critically inclusive vision 8 , a stance also echoed in the corpus of
The music and poetics of devotion in the Jain and Sikh traditions
Sikh Formations, 2019
Background of Jain and Sikh studies project at Loyola Marymount University This special interreligious issue on 'The Music and Poetics of Devotion in the Jain and Sikh Traditions' is the product of papers adapted from those presented at the first Sikh-Jain conference held at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, 25-27 February 2016. It was made possible by a three-year endowment from generous individuals in the Jain and Sikh communities as well as the Uberoi Foundation who created a Clinical Professorship in Sikh and Jain Studies at LMU (2015-2018) focused on teaching, organizing conferences, and community outreach to bring the Sikh and Jain communities as well as University faculty and students into conversation. 1 The Jain and Sikh Studies project developed in the Department of Theological Studies at LMU due to a recognition of the need for more interreligious cooperation and support to enhance scholarship on these 'minority' traditions. This interreligious project arose from a friendship between two stalwarts from the Jain and Sikh Communities, Dr. Sulekh Jain a mechanical engineer, professor, author, and Ahimsa advocate and Dr. Harvinder Singh Sahota, the father of the perfusion balloon in angioplasty, generous supporter of Sikh Studies and Sikh awareness advocate. It was their vision to bring to light the historical cooperation, care and confluence of arguably the most ancient and most recent Indian religious traditions, Jainism dedicated to letting others live (ahimsa), and Sikhism dedicated to helping others to live (seva). Theme and rationale for the conference The theme for our first conference 'The Music and Poetics of Devotion' arose from my own background, scholarship and interest in the topic. In 2000 I began practicing the Sikh drumming tradition, the Amritsārī-Kapurthala bāj on the jorī-pakhāwaj, becoming its first female exponent. This led to my dissertation research at the University of Michigan on 'The Renaissance of Sikh Devotional Music: Memory, Identity, Orthopraxy' (2014). Through my research I gained an appreciation for the centrality of sonic expression and experience within religious practice. Emotive language and musical modes are effective tools to teach and transmit tradition over time, while promoting communal cohesion, meditative entrainment, and mystical engagement. This is the
The Hermeneutics of Sikh Music (Rag) & Word (Shabad)
From 21 to 23 May 2010, an international conference under the title 'Hermeneutics of Sikh Music (rāg) and Word (shabad)' was held at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York. The conference brought together 17 scholars and music practitioners from across disciplinary boundaries, from India, The Netherlands, Italy, England, Canada and the US. Some papers from the conference have been collated and edited to appear in this issue of Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory -some of the remaining papers will form a second issue to come out in due course.
Interlocking dimensions in Hindustani music: texts of caitī, kajrī, and jhūlā
Interlocking dimensions of Hindustani music: texts of caitī, kajrī, and jhūlā, 2022
The PhD dissertation investigates the so-defined ‘intermediate sphere’ of Hindustani music as characterised by a variety of heterogeneous forms and focuses on texts as a privileged ground for observation. The research is based on an interdisciplinary approach drawing from multiple domains within the main Indological field, including literary studies, ethnomusicology, and linguistics. I integrated this outlook with extended participant observation, being myself a student of Hindustani music within the traditional guru-śiṣya-paramparā (master-disciple knowledge transmission) system with proponents of the Banāras gharānā (music school). The dissertation outlines the ‘intermediate’ and ‘semi-classical’ music genres of Hindustani music as a result of constant interaction between complex dimensions: vernacular and Sanskritic tradition, bhakti and courtly literature, art and folk music. Furthermore, special attention has been devoted to the implications of applying the terminology and concepts drawn from Western categories of thoughts to the Indian milieu, informed by multi-layered interlocking contexts. Three among intermediate, ṭhumrī-related forms–namely caitī, kajrī, and jhūlā–have been studied in their origins, idiosyncrasies, and within their performative settings. Song texts featuring different idioms–such as Hindi, Bhojpuri, Braj bhāṣā, Awadhi, and Sādhukkarī bhāṣā—have been translated and analysed from structural, linguistic, and stylistic points of view. Imagery, motifs, intra-textual and contextual references have been examined as enactments of interweaving aspects embracing, among others, literary, social, ritual, and religious meanings. Elements related to bhakti and courtly models have been considered in the influences they exerted on formal features, contents, and performative contexts. The dissertation is completed with reference tools—such as a table of the main characters and key motifs of the genres analysed, a chart of synonymic expressions found in the texts, and a glossary of technical terms. This work aims at shedding light on music forms rather neglected by scholarly attention by suggesting new interpretative and critical perspectives. Musical expressions reveal some fundamental cultural and social dynamics and are paradigmatic of the fluidity of certain categories and conceptualisations in the Indic context.
Citation: Schofield, Katherine Butler, "'Words without songs': the social history of Hindustani song collections in India's Muslim courts, c.1770–1830," in Rachel Harris and Martin Stokes, eds., Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World (Routledge, 2018)............. In his important book on Ottoman song collections, Words without songs, Owen Wright noted that “it is fair to say that such works have failed to receive the attention which the evident popularity of the genre would seem to justify. Reasons for neglect would not be hard to seek: the güfte mecmuası belongs functionally to the realm of music, but the early examples, for which there is little or no access to the accompanying melodies, could now be thought of as primarily literary in relevance as well as content, while for the musicologist the crucial absence of any notation has presumably meant that they have generally been deemed insufficiently informative to warrant detailed investigation.” This could equally be said to be true of research on pre-colonial song collections in North India. In South Asian studies, the song collection as a literary genre has received considerable attention in certain areas of scholarship, most notably in religious studies where collections of sung poetry form the major corpus for the study of bhakti and Sikh traditions. To a more limited extent, written collections of the prestigious courtly genre dhrupad have been mined for their literary implications, and more recently new social history has been drawn out of the contents of printed miscellanies of Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali songs from the nineteenth century. What has not so far been considered is the musicological and social significance of a significant corpus of collections of lighter courtly songs, predominantly khayal, tappa, ghazal and tarana, that emerged in unprecedented number in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and circulated right across and beyond North India from Bharuch to Calcutta and from Kathmandu to Hyderabad. While many such collections were produced for Muslim elite patrons in courts such as Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad, a significant number were written for or purchased by European collectors resident in these locations, including women. In this chapter I look not so much at the song texts contained within these manuscripts, but at the different logics behind the making of such collections c.1780-1830. In doing so, I both elaborate what song collections can tell us musically even in the absence of notation, and make some preliminary observations about the changing state of patronage in the Indian musical field at a critical moment of transition for Muslim courts towards British political dominance.
Sacred Music and Hindu Religious Experience: From Ancient Roots to the Modern Classical Tradition
Religions, 2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10020085\. While music plays a significant role in many of the world’s religions, it is in the Hindu religion that one finds one of the closest bonds between music and religious experience extending for millennia. The recitation of the syllable OM and the chanting of Sanskrit Mantras and hymns from the Vedas formed the core of ancient fire sacrifices. The Upanishads articulated OM as Śabda-Brahman, the Sound-Absolute that became the object of meditation in Yoga. First described by Bharata in the Nātya-Śāstra as a sacred art with reference to Rasa (emotional states), ancient music or Sangīta was a vehicle of liberation (Mokṣa) founded in the worship of deities such as Brahmā, Vishnu, Śiva, and Goddess Sarasvatī. Medieval Tantra and music texts introduced the concept of Nāda-Brahman as the source of sacred music that was understood in terms of Rāgas, melodic formulas, and Tālas, rhythms, forming the basis of Indian music today. Nearly all genres of Indian music, whether the classical Dhrupad and Khayal, or the devotional Bhajan and Kīrtan, share a common theoretical and practical understanding, and are bound together in a mystical spirituality based on the experience of sacred sound. Drawing upon ancient and medieval texts and Bhakti traditions, this article describes how music enables Hindu religious experience in fundamental ways. By citing several examples from the modern Hindustani classical vocal tradition of Khayal, including text and audio/video weblinks, it is revealed how the classical songs contain the wisdom of Hinduism and provide a deeper appreciation of the many musical styles that currently permeate the Hindu and Yoga landscapes of the West.
Panjab University Research Journal Arts (PURJA) , 2019
The Hindustani tradition of music is a result of assimilation of Perso-Arabic music genres with indigenous Indian music genres over a period of five centuries. Since the advent of Delhi Sultanate, there was a gradual cultural synthesis in arts and culture between Hindu and Muslim communities. This process of assimilation led to the creation of Parsi-u Hindavi tradition. It indicates that there was an evolution of composite culture during medieval India. There are certain genres of art forms in which the syncretic culture of Hindus and Muslims can be observed such as architecture, painting, literature, Hindustani music, etc. In the repertoire of Hindustani music, khayal is a brilliant example of syncretic culture. In this paper, the evolution of Hindustani music is discussed from historical perspective. This study will reveal different ways in which motifs of syncretic culture can be seen present in Hindustani tradition of music.