NEW DELHI—A crowd of 30 people gathers on the floor in a residence in New Delhi waiting for a private concert to start. Scholar, craftsman and accomplished musician, Bhai Baldeep Singh, sits on a makeshift platform facing the crowd, while four accompanying musicians tune their traditional instruments. Behind the door to their left is a sun-kissed corner room that houses a personal shrine for the Guru Granith Sahib, the Sikh holy text.
Singh is about to perform hymns composed by the founder of the Sikh community and their first spiritual leader, Guru Nanak. “I will begin with some rare compositions,” he says. “We are so grateful that this music still exists.” Two women pluck long stringed instruments to provide a tonal base, while an elder musician improvises on a sarangi, a short stringed instrument. A percussionist seated on the right-hand side plays on the sides of his long barrel-shaped hand drum and sets the song’s pace with strong, slow thumps. Singh starts by singing the first phrase of the Sikh holy text, “There is only one God.”
For centuries, music has been an essential part of religious practice in Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam in South Asia. As trends continue to evolve, musicians within each community are balancing between preserving traditions while fusing them with modern and Western touches.
“There’s no other place where music has been placed on such a high pedestal. Here, the most important mode of meditation is inseparable from the art of musical expression,” says Singh. As he performs ancient Sikh hymns composed in the 15th century, Singh stops to explain the root of devotional singing, or kirtan, in Sikhism. He says Guru Nanak used to meditate with a Muslim musician who played a lute-like instrument called the rabab. The words he recited became the heart of the Sikh holy text. They were first sung and written later, Singh says. Since then, devotional singing has been the main form of Sikh congregational worship.
Bhai Baldeep Singh sings ancient Sikh hymns. Video by Sam Steinberger
In hopes of keeping Sikh music and culture alive, Singh has been preserving and documenting the religion’s sacred musical practices. He crafts rare Indian instruments, performs pieces composed by the founding Sikh Gurus, and passes down his knowledge to his students at his conservatory in Punjab. Singh also insists on performing with traditional string instruments because of their historical significance in Gurbani Sangeet or Sikh music. He says that over the years, many Sikh temples, both in India and abroad, have replaced the traditional instrument with others that are easier to produce and distribute. But since the 1990s, he and other enthusiasts have been trying to revive the instrument’s presence in congregational worship.
While Singh works to preserve traditional Sikh music in New Delhi, Pandit Tarun Krishna Das keeps sacred Hindu sounds alive in his hometown of Vrindavan in northwest India. Krishna Das is an expert of dhrupad, the oldest lived vocal genre in north Indian classical music. Dhrupad is about “feeling peace and meditation,” he says. In the 16th century, Swami Haridas, a pioneering poet and classical musician, gave birth to dhrupad in Vrindavan, says Krishna Das. Legend has it that Haridas popularized the genre and taught it to many great Indian musicians.
Vrindavan is a holy town for Hindus. Lord Krishna is said to have spent many years of youth here. Every night, Krishna Das sings in one of its many temples, but rarely sings dhrupad. He says the genre is really difficult to learn and the taste of the general public has changed under the influence of Indian pop music. Now, he only sings dhrupad on special request at temples or in concerts. In the 18th century, dhrupad was overtaken by another style called khyal. Khyal is easier to learn, allows for shorter songs and is more palatable for listeners than the emotional yet abrasive dhrupad genre, says Krishna Das. Though Dhrupas is not as popular, he predicts that dhrupad will soon be resurrected. He offers singing lessons in the traditional genre and hopes to conserve its influence in Vrindavan.
Pandit Tarun Krishna Das demonstrates a melodic improvisation in dhrupad. Video by Nadim Roberts.
While Krishna Das holds on to dhrupad, others embrace the continuous transformation of Indian devotional music. “It’s very much a living music,” says Francis Silkstone, an English composer who regularly stays at an ashram in Vrindavan. Silkstone has been studying Indian music since he first visited India in 1978. He’s currently working with renowned khyal singers from New Delhi, Pandits Rajan and Sajan Mishra. The group is exploring the spiritual practice of devotional love in Hinduism and Christianity.
Silkstone says the merging of Indian and Western music is one of many developments devotional music has undergone over the years. Yet he says it doesn’t take away from its sacredness. “It’s always had this ambivalence between secular music and devotional music,” he says, “but the devotional aspect is a huge part of it.”
Another proponent of the marriage between Eastern and Western musical traditions is musicologist and tabla or Indian hand-drum player, Samir Chatterjee. Chatterjee and his wife teach at an organization they founded to promote and preserve Indian music and culture. It was originally based in Calcutta but its current home is New York. An expert in Indian classical music, Chatterjee also performs with non-Indian musicians that represent various genres and religious backgrounds. He says music obliterates cultural and religious differences that have historically caused conflicts in South Asia. “Music is that unspoken truth,” he says.
While Chatterjee gives each genre of devotional music its weight, he says they’re all based on the same root element: “Singing about the divine, their deeds and what they signify in our lives is at the core.” Last month, Chatterjee held a concert with Salman Ahmad, a Sufi guitarist of the Pakistani band, Junoon. The two perform together through Common Chords, an intercultural initiative created by Queens College. “We are symbolizing two opposite poles,” says Chatterjee. “He’s Muslim; I’m Hindu Brahman. He’s from Pakistan; I’m from India. He’s a rock star; I’m an Indian classical musician. How much more different can you get?”
Since 2008, Chatterjee has been trying to revive musical culture in Afghanistan after its Islamic Taliban government banned any form of musical expression in the 1990s. “There is no reference anywhere in the Quran or in the Hadith [Prophet Mohammad’s teaching and sayings] that music is haram or blasphemous,” says Chatterjee. He refers to the culturally prolific and ascetic strand of Islam, Sufism.
Sufis recite mystical poetry to music in a genre called qawwali. Qawwali fuses Persian melodic and rhythmic structures with the dhrupad vocal genre, and reflects the fusion of Muslim and Hindu traditions in northern India. Practicing qawwali is a means to reach ecstatic communion with God through the repetition of verses. When it’s performed during rituals in Sufi shrines, vocalists and musicians play not only to move themselves, but to evoke emotion among their listeners and fellow devotees and help them reach God.
“Qawwali is not only this idea of experiencing ecstasy, but the qawwal also has an intellectual discourse with their audience,” says Sonny Mehta, vocalist and artistic director of the Texas-based ensemble, Riyaaz Qawwali. Riyaaz Qawwali consists of eight musicians from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. With their diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, the members have transformed the traditional qawwali style to include any and everybody interested in spiritual music.
Mehta grew up listening to the late, prominent qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He says his group appreciates that qawwali allows for lyrical improvisation. The singers utilize that freedom by singing poems from different religious texts in the qawwali tradition. “What we try to do is create bridges between the religions of South Asia,” Mehta says. Riyaaz Qawwali’s first album, Kashti, includes songs based on Sufi, Hindu and Sikh texts.
Riyaaz Qawwali perform Man Kunto Maula, a song by the seminal Sufi musician and scholar, Amir Khusro. Video by Riyaaz Qawwali
Much of Riyaaz Qawwali’s performances are based on the interaction between the members and their audience. In Urdu, riyaaz means musical practice, and for Mehta, musical practice leads to devotional practice. “In the Sufi context, the ultimate performance will be in front of God,” he says. “These people that we’re sitting in front of are faces or souls of God.”
Each of these musicians are carrying on their sacred musical traditions, but are also developing them in their own ways. Whether they revive ancient hymns or incorporate foreign influences, each has done so with hopes of spreading these traditions in contemporary India and in the Indian diaspora.
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