Hermeneutics of Sikh Music

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THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC
(RG) AND WORD (SHABAD)
Balbinder Singh Bhogal
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To cite this article: Balbinder Singh Bhogal (2011): THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC (RG) AND
WORD (SHABAD), Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, 7:3, 211-244
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Balbinder Singh Bhogal
THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC
(RA
G) AND WORD (SHABAD)

Introductory essay
From 21 to 23 May 2010, an international conference under the title Hermeneutics of
Sikh Music (ra
g) 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 remain-
ing papers will form a second issue to come out in due course.
Conference report
The Hermeneutics of Sikh Music (ra
g) and Word (shabad) conference broke newground in

the study of the Guru
Granth Sa
hib (GGS) by reinvigorating attempts to make academic

reflection (largely within the humanities) take much more seriously the importance of its
musical dimension. The bringing together of philosophy/religion (scripture) and aes-
thetics/fine arts (music) in the study of Sikh traditions was thus a key aim of the confer-
ence. Before the conference, Hofstra University also negotiated the appointments of two
highly regarded proponents of the Sikh musical heritage, Bhai Baldeep Singh (Founder and
Chairman of Ana
d Foundation, and Founder of Ana
d Conservatory: an Institute of Arts,

Aesthetics, Cultural Tradition and Development Studies) and Dr Gurnam Singh (Dean,
Faculty of Art and Culture and the Founder Professor and Head of Gurmat Sangeet
Chair in the Department of Gurmat Sangeet at Panjabi University, Patiala) to run two
courses at Hofstra University and give two concerts to students and the wider public in
the Fall of 2009. Regarding the courses and concerts organized, the S.K.K. Bindra
Chair of Sikh Studies provided an environment within which all participants in this rela-
tively new field of Sikh Studies (religious and musical), even given the contested histories
of the musical heritage of the Guru
s, were able to come to the table to begin a scholarly

and mutually beneficial conversation to revive interest in a rich musical tradition that is
perceived by some to be in crisis and near extinction.
Hofstra University was able to invest its resources and time into such endeavours
partly because it was given an endowment by Dr Hakam Singh to set up another
ISSN 1744-8727 (print)/ISSN 1744-8735 (online)/11/030211-34
#2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2011.640420
Sikh Formations, Vol. 7, No. 3, December 2011, pp. 211244
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Chair in the field of Sikh Studies, this time located in the Music Department. After a
long and extensive search, Dr Francesca Cassio was appointed to hold the Sardarni
Harbans Kaur Chair in Sikh Musicology in the fall of 2011. The possibility of these
two chairs in Sikh Studies at Hofstra University within the Religion and Music depart-
ments, enabled reflection on the nature of the Sikh Guru
s musical Word. Given that the

Guru
s Word (gur-shabad) is a musical Word that is sung, it is unfortunate that past and
current academic structures have split this musical Word apart into literature or aes-
thetics, humanities or fine arts rarely are both taken together. The call for papers
then set out an initial framework for re-engaging the original vision of the Guru
s and
treating the Word as music and the music as Word. This, however, required bringing
scholars and practitioners together by asking both groups to think about the possibility
of musical meaning and its possible interpretation: what kind of hermeneutics would
be required to interpret a musical Word, a Word that sings?
HU N H| | 8M 11
The Word is the Guru
and mindfulness of its Music the disciple

(GGS: 943, Ra
makal
, Guru
Na
nak, Siddha Gosa

_
t)
Is music a language? Is there meaning in music? Perhaps there is universal meaning in
music given the popular platitude that music is the only universal language. Or is
the meaning in music mediated by culture to such an extent that one is hard put to
speak of universals? If the latter, then does that imply a cultural limit to the supposed
universal nature of the GGS arguably the musical text par excellence? If the Word
(shabad) needs to be translated across linguistic contexts, does Sikh music also require
translation into culture-specific and musical idioms to be efficacious? How should
musical meaning be interpreted and translated? Is it even possible, and if so, desirable?
Figure 1. Audience. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
2 1 2 S I KH F ORMATI ONS
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But perhaps music sidesteps the mirror of representation: language is mediated by
thought, whereas music is unmediated emotion; language is indirect and secondary in
comparison with music, which is direct and primary. This may be why language can
be translated and music cannot; music evokes rather than comments. The musical evoca-
tion of a variety of emotions is often argued for, and as such within a religious context
can act as a catalyst for religious ecstasy for the listener to be touched, moved, trans-
ported. Music is a key that unlocks different subjectivities as well as connects one to the
wider community. It is not surprising, then, to see the combination of music, devotion,
subjective transformation and collective mobilization across the world in many traditions
sacred and secular. Should we not then ponder the meaning, efficacy, and power of
music and so interpret its musical meaning?
Not so long ago, at least in the West, it would have been unorthodox to claim that
music possessed meaning, whereas today it is commonplace and there have been many
publications on the hermeneutics of (Western) music in the past two decades. Certainly,
within the Indian context, ra
g is understood as inherently meaningful, tied to different

times of the day and night as well as the seasons, evoking a range of bha
vas (emotions)
and rasas (flavours). If Indian music generally is understood to be laden with meaning
depicting basic emotions (shta
yi bha
va) and their aesthetic experience (rasa), then that

meaning is not only open to interpretation, but is already an interpretation handed down
by tradition; there could, then, be the possibility of a hermeneutics of Sikh music.
Exponents of Sikh musicology have argued that the basic concept of Sikh sacred
music and song (gurshabad k
rtan) includes four fundamental aspects: ra
g (melody), ta
l
(rhythmic beat), surat (concentrated intent of consciousness), and shabad (Word-
meaning) (see Bhai Baldeep Singhs article in this issue). This indicates that gurshabad
k
rtan is unique as a genre of music and as a literature of religio-socio-political

Figure 2. Audience. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
HE RME NE UT I CS OF SI KH MUSI C 2 1 3
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knowledge, for music and thought imply and enhance each other. For the Sikh tradition,
music from the very beginning includes the Word, just as the Word is already music, for
it was given and revealed in song: Word is Music and Music is Word, and this Musical
Word, closely aligned if not identified with the Name, is also the Guru
:
Figure 3. Hakam Singh and Raja Mrigendra Singh. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
Figure 4. Raja Mrigendra Singh and Balbinder Singh Bhogal. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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F| N N J F| ||8 F| m|H H v
The Word (ba
_
n
) is Guru
, and Guru
is the Word; the Word contains the Ambrosial

Nectar.
(GGS: 982, Na
_
t, Guru
Ra
m Da
s)
N| 8 HJM| HM N| MN M|U HH v
8 HJ HU N| H N H UH v9cv
Kab
r, the stroke of a lance is easy to bear; it takes away the breath.

But one who endures the stroke of the Word is the Guru
, and I am his slave. 183

(GGS: 1374 Salok, Bhagat Kab
r j
)
U| N HU W H|J H |8J H NU v
H |HM |HM F| H H| HU v
H|U N HN |m |U UN HF v
|8J J| |Um H|Um N HU F vcv
When (that One) bestows the Glance of Grace, the Word (shabad) comes to abide
within the heart, and doubt is eradicated from within.
The body and mind become immaculate, through the Immaculate Word (niramala-
ba
_
n
). Let His Name (na
m) be enshrined in your mind.

Through the Word as Guru
(shabadi-guru
) is one to be carried across the terrifying

world-ocean: know the One, here and hereafter
(which) has no form or color, shadow or illusion; O Na
nak, realize the Word

(shabad). 59
(GGS: 944, Ra
makal
Guru
Na
nak)
In the Gur-Sikh context, then, meaning must be broadened to include the affective (music,
tone, rhythm) as well as the cognitive (thought, concept, fact). This new departure for the
field of Sikh Studies raises many questions: What is the nature of musical meaning? Does
it evolve, and if so, can it also regress? What is the connection between music (gurshabad
k
rtan) and interpretation? Is there a musical hermeneutics in general, and if not, should
we construct one? How many schools of Sikh musical hermeneutics (taksa
ls) are
there? What is the relation between ra
g and shabad, k
rtan (singing) and katha
(exegesis)?
What is the difference between dhrupad and khya
l forms? What is the relationship

between music, mantra, chant and trance? What is the relationship between music, sub-
jectivity and memory? What is the relationship between the musical, religious and
political?
The purpose of the conference was to bring these two crucial dimensions of Sikh
thought and practice, philosophy and aesthetics, together to initiate an academic dialo-
gue between the Word (language, meaning, interpretation) and its performance in music
and song (ra
g/melody, ta
l/metric cycle, laya/tempo, bha
v/expression, with instru-

ments, etc.). The conference aimed to grapple with a hermeneutics that can cater for
both musical evocation through praise (k
rtan) and philosophical contemplation

(katha
) as one phenomenon. If it is not what is said but how it is said that structures
meaning, then tone is as, if not more, important than the words spoken. Much can
be gained from creating an academic space and forum where these two modes can inter-
play and complement each other. Indeed, in daily practice, performance of k
rtan
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(singing the sacred hymns) can be, and often is, accompanied by a katha
(exegesis,
interpretation), where music and singing give way to thought calling for contemplation
and contemplation returns to the feeling being evoked by the songs rendition and this
Figure 5. Audience (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
Figure 6. Jan Protopapas, Francesca Cassio, Arvind Mandair, Prabhsharandeep Singh, Inderjit Kaur.
(Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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cycle between the two may alternate many times during one performance, the combi-
nation bringing about a transformation in the audience.
The call for papers attracted a number of participants to address the conference
themes through various disciplines and approaches, some socio-historical and anthropo-
logical, others philosophical and religious, as well as those from within the fine art of per-
formance. Belowis a list of participants and their paper titles (abstracts can be found on the
Hofstra University Sikh Studies web site: http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/
Colleges/HCLAS/REL/SIKH/sikh_hermeneuticsmay2010_abstracts.html]
Bhai Baldeep Singh (Ana
d Foundation, Delhi, India) Gurba
_
n
rtan. What is k
rtan?;
Dr Raja Mrigendra Singh (Yale University and Guru
Nanak Dev University) Guru
-Sikh
sacred musics hermeneutics;
Dr Francesca Cassio (Vicenza Conservatory, Italy) Learning shabad reets in Western contexts.
An approach to cultural rules and universal experience of sound;
Figure 7. Madan Gopal Singh. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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Dr Madan Gopal Singh (Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Delhi,
India) On the margins of the stylized Word. Meanings and their aural surplus;
Dr Inderjit Nilu Kaur (University of California, Santa Cruz) Musical meaning in Guru
Granth Sa
hib;
Jan Protopapas (University of Maryland, Maryland) K
rtan Chaunki. Affect, embodiment

and memory;
Dr Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Gurmat Sangeet, aesthetics and
subaltern subjectivities;
Prabhsharandeep Singh (PhD candidate SOAS, London University) Shabad K
rtan, the
Sikh space and violence of translation;
Prabhsharanbir Singh (PhD candidate, University of British Columbia, Vancouver) Sikh
sacred music in the age of nihilism;
Dr Navtej Purewal (University of Manchester) Performing k
rtan across text, tradition and

boundaries. A social history of the rababi tradition;
Dr Bob van der Linden (University of Amsterdam) Sikh music, empire and the study of world
music;
Dr Judith Becker (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Conference respondent.
Because Sikh Formations intends to publish some of the papers in a forthcoming issue, I
will not review each of these papers here but instead turn to those papers selected for
publication in the present issue.
Introduction to this issue
Preliminary remarks on the nature of a scholarly platform
At the inception of work in a relatively new field of study, it is imperative to consider the
views of whichever individuals and groups might want to stake a claim on the subject. It
would be improper to assume at the beginning, that certain groups or certain individuals
are right and others wrong. This can only lead to an ideological manipulation of the
academic enterprise, and an abuse of the power of scholarship. Thus, at the genesis
of a relatively new scholarly platform, no particular view can be endorsed and others
rejected outright. Each individual or group must be allowed to make their case and
let their views be judged on the basis of the strength of their arguments, the integrity
of their methods, and overall quality of their work.
Keeping the multiple voices unified and multiple could be seen as a key raison detre of
the Sikh Guru
s, who never claimed exclusive ownership of the truth (which would

necessitate the homogenization of that diversity into a singular naming or language,
individual or group). Quite the contrary the Sikh Guru
s saw the truth in multiple indi-

viduals and groups that spanned, geography, time, tradition, religion, lineage, caste and
language. This openness to difference through multiple traditions and ways seems
crucial to recall at this juncture. Perhaps Sikhi is a tradition of traditions one that contains
the possibility of purist and populist modes of dissemination and thus demands numerous
and varied namings and ways. That is not to suggest there is no center, only that that
center cannot be exclusively owned by any one group or individual and that those
that should be listened to should not be those who command it, but those who have
earned it by the quality of their engagement and the merit of their actions.
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Therefore the task set by the Guru
s seems to be not only to follow the right, but to

learn how to relate to each others particular naming in their diversity, and so encourage
one to mature in ones views through an enrichment and refinement for Sikhi is an
edification and such learning is the force against ideology, hegemony, and homogen-
ization of the diversity of life: Ek (one) never displaces Anek, Asan
kh, Apa
r (many); the
minds thought or meditative absorption never displaces the body and its feeling of
existential location and responsibility to the other.
I am very optimistic that the work presented here will initiate a new kind of debate
one that has been sorely lacking in the field. This new debate will allow everyone their
say but, more importantly, can be used to generate a collective effort on the part of the
various individuals and groups to respect the diversity, complexity and sheer beauty of
the GGSs illuminatingly dense, multilayered and critically inclusive vision one that
could be understood as a tradition of traditions, a genre of genres which necessitates
a multiplicity of voices to even begin to capture its musicological and literary richness
and difference, ranging from its high art of dhrupad to its popular folk tunes.
The hermeneutic and deconstructive meaning of
gurba
_
n -k rtan
If music itself is deeply personal and culturally vortexed, highly disciplined and yet open
to sophisticated interpretations and emotional nuance (Benzon 2001), then how much
more so would a musical Word bind together the particular and universal, the personal
experience with the collective experience of reality? And given that sikhi (the way of
being a learner) integrates both ascetic and worldly roles into one through the
warrior-saint (m
ri-p
ri; sant-sipa
), does this balance not immediately and always

sing of an intimate politics? a force sensual and emboldening that grounds the self
within the polis readying it for action, an action that begins with self-transformation
along the nodes of phronesis (an unteachable ethical know-how)? Could gurshabad be
any other force than an intimate politics? Is that not the song Gurba
_
n
-k
rtan sings?
one that mysteriously remembers the Truth in the world and thus takes a stand for the
renewal of the world as creative force against the Power of sloth and desire that
would make one forget this heterogeneous Word/Truth through the ignorance and delu-
sion of self-interest! But this balance between body and mind, between mysticism and
politics, requires a new epistemology that includes the ear as much as the eye.
Don Ihdes Listening and voice: Phenomenologies of sound showed, back in 1976, how
over-determined much theory and philosophy is by epistemologies of visual represen-
tation and metaphor. This oculocentrism has been combined by Derrida into an phallogo-
centrism, which Martin Jay names phallogocularcentrism (1994, 494), that is, how
modes of knowing are dominated by seeing alone (ocularcentrism), by Western modes
of metaphysical thinking alone (logocentrism) and finally by white male (hetero)sexuality
alone (phallocentrism). But what are the epistemologies of the ear and their perver-
sities? Is sound or affect in general gendered? Is music sexist and/or racist? Given musics
role as handmaiden to national rhetoric, imperial quests, and empire building, can its
nationalized auditory modes signal anything other than cultural bias and prejudice?
Do the national anthems of America, the UK, India and China etc., signal anything
beyond stereotype?
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If meaning is a basic force in music history and an indispensable factor in how,
where, and when music is heard (Kramer 2002, 1), then hermeneutics is not only a
possible theorization of music but probably an unavoidable one. And if that is the
case, then, recognizing that we often relate musics ephemeral and elusive touch
upon us abstractly through analogies be they about generative musical forms, or
the imagery of paintings, the words of a language or the values of a culture one
cannot ignore the power of metaphor in constructing musical meaning (Spitzer
2004). For example, sound is often understood through the other senses, such as
sight, taste and touch; note that ra
g itself means color, the Word is to touch and

move one, and one is meant to taste the musical Word, Name, and Gods flavor
(har-ras), in the GGS: All these spices have been made from the sound-current
na
d (of the Word/Name) (GGS: 16, Sir
ra
gu Guru
Na
nak); Oh my mind drink in

the sublime nectar of Hari, and your thirst shall be quenched. Those Gurmukhs who
have tasted it remain effortlessly absorbed (sahaje rahe sama
i) (GGS: 26, Sir
ra
gu
Guru
Amar Da
s); those who meditate single-mindedly on the Name. . . drink the

Ambrosial Nectar forever and ever. . . Manmukhs [Egoists] do not know the Name. . .
they do not savor the taste of the Word (shabade sa
du), they are attached to the love

of duality (la
ge du
jai bha
i) (GGS: 28, Sir
ra
gu, Guru
Amar Da
s).
Music is not only, therefore, full of meaning via metaphor, but also acts as an agent
to unite the senses and their diverse experiences, since it provides the tonal frame to
interpret correctly what is being attended to whether it is an ambiguous cinematic
scene or an everyday experience in whichever location at work, in the street or at
home: sound, tone, music will structure meaning hermeneutically as the first portal
of understanding and to inform the listener how to interpret what is happening as
one that should induce fear, anxiety, concern or warmth, joy and celebration.
Music is also the first to generate movement, action, and value. In this regard, even
within the Wests bias of phallogocularcentrism, a Western feminist critique has devel-
oped an affective sensing, where one does not only see and read, but hears and listens:
I always privilege the ear over the eye. I am always trying to write with my eyes
closed. What is going to write itself comes from long before me, me [moi] being
nothing but the bodily medium which formalizes and transcribes that which is dic-
tated to me, that which expresses itself, that which vibrates in almost musical
fashion in me and which I annotate with what is not the musical note, which
would of course be the ideal. This is not to say that I am opposed to meaning,
not at all, but I prefer to speak in terms of poetry. I prefer to say that I am a
poet even if I do not write poems, because the phonic and oral dimensions of
language are present in poetry, whereas in the banal, cliched language, one is far
removed from oral language.
(Cixous 1984, 146)
Irigaray writes,
Investment in the look is not as privileged in women as in men. More than any other
sense, the eye objectifies and it masters. It sets at a distance, and maintains a dis-
tance. In our culture the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch and
hearing has brought about an impoverishment of bodily relations.
(Irigaray 1978, 50)
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In singing and listening one often, by force of the internal feeling, closes the eyes. The
GGS is not only to be read in meditative chant and prayer (pa
_
th), but also to be sung and
heard (ga
viai, suniai) often disabling the eyes.

The long tradition of political protest generated through its singer-song writers and
performers is testament to that inner feeling and listening for song has never only
been about reverie. How and why have we become conditioned then to believe the
GGS understood as a book or text is the core of something called Sikh-ism,
which is merely a modern religion (viz., code for morality, non-violence, subjective
feeling) unsuitable for public expression? When actually could one legitimately interpret
the GGS as a banquet of political and public protest songs rallying against corrupt and
hypocritical practices be they religious, social or political? In other words, because
there has always been music in poetry and poetry in music (McCombie 2003, 5), these
two as one, the song and poem, should not lead to the de-linking of the personal from
the socio-political, for the song is a public outcry of the poet.
Music (ra
g-ta
l) and poetry (shabad), however, do not fully name what gurba
_
n
is, for
the element of not being made or invented but actually being received, and received as an
inestimable Gift by human imagination, must not be forgotten. Furthermore, the GGS
whilst it may be heard and read simultaneously sings an unheard music (anahad-na
d)
and is therefore also an unseen text (anahad-shabad) given the ecstasy of union
with and transformative taste of the Word (shabade sa
d) and Name. And this is why

some scholars see the need to talk about languaging, musicking and trancing as
modes of embodiying the text or becoming the music by the loss of the autobiogra-
phical self (Becker 2004) in Gur-Sikh lexicon, a
p-gava
ai, a
p-ma
re. Indeed, the GGS

sings precisely of this loss of (false sense of) self and its epistemic duality as the key
way to merge effortlessly and spontaneously with the revealed music (sahaj dhun) of
the Word (see below).
In as much as the self is understood in its deepest and most authentic home to be an
orchestra of endless melodies, (struck) music may be one way to re-connect with
this (unstruck anahad) musical self.
H|N |H|Mm |Hm |H W| |Hm mU v
H |J H MU |H J HHU v
|Hm H|N| |H|Mm UH Um |Um v
| m|H H HJH | H |H H|U HN |H J|Um v
J mN H HU mU J H8 |Jm HHU v
|U NJ N H|N| |H|Mm |Hm |H W| |Hm mU v0v
Meeting the True-Guru
, the wandering mind is held steady; it comes to abide in its

own home.
It purchases the Name, chants the Name, and remains absorbed in the Name.
The outgoing, wandering soul, upon meeting the True-Guru
, opens the Tenth Gate

[within].
There, Ambrosial Nectar is food and the spontaneously revealed music resounds;
the world is held spellbound by the music (dhuni) of the Word (shabad).
The many strains of the Unstruck Melody resound there, as one merges in Truth.
Thus says Nanak: by meeting the True-Guru
, the wandering soul becomes steady,

and comes to dwell in the home of its own self. 4
(GGS: 440, A
sa
, Guru
Amar Da
s)
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Scientific studies have also shown that music is deep and can reach the deepest part of us
even when nothing else can. Thus, Oliver Sacks (2008) describes how music can
animate people with Parkinsons disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to
stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people who are
deeply disorientated by Alzheimers or schizophrenia (dustcover). In Kristevian
terms, the perverted Symbolic (language) of the above people can be healed, at
least temporarily, by the conscious integration of the Semiotic drives (music, tone,
rhythm, etc.). The GGS sings constantly about reconnecting with the true musical
Word that lies at the core of the self by overcoming, disciplining, and even losing the
ego (haumai) and its duality (dubidha
). Music in the GGS then ranges from the kind

that is played, sung and heard to the kind that is not played and occurs at the core of
all beings and things effortlessly, spontaneously, inaudibly, creatively that constitutes
an illumined ever wakeful and blissful peace that forms who one and life really is.
According to Aldridge Music and consciousness are things we do (2009, 9). He
goes on to argue:
Achieving con-sciousness, from the Latin con (with) and scire (to know), is the
central activity of human knowledge. At the heart of the word is a concept of
mutuality, knowing with others. Our consciousness is a mutual activity, it is
performed. . . Performing both music and consciousness are potent ways of
achieving this balance of unity of the external and the internal [10]. . . Sense is
made, it is an activity. . . language evolves from gestures (Corballis 2003) . . .
when we talk about consciousness we are essentially talking about intersubjectivity.
Making music together is an active way of changing consciousness that is embodied
[11]. . . all mystical traditions encourage us, to altered states of consciousness where
we lose our sense of self and attain that sense of unity with others [13].
(Aldridge and Fachner, 2009, 9)
William James famously argued that our normal waking consciousness. . . is but one
special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from the filmiest of screens,
there lies potential forms of consciousness entirely different (1911, 388). And we
know that consciousness (or the experience of consciousness) can be transformed and
altered by various influencing factors music, dance, drugs, just to name the more
obvious ones. Studies have shown that there is a continuum of states beyond the
normal thinking consciousness, that range between two extremes of ergotropic (exciting,
hyper-aroused, ecstatic) states and trophotropic (damping, hypo-aroused, tranquil) states
(Fischer 1971, cited in Aldridge and Fachner 2009, 17). This continuum between
rapture (ecstasy) and meditative absorption (enstasy)
1
can often be triggered and distin-
guished through music as the former is linked to music (e.g., bhajan) and the
latter to silence (e.g., zazen). Gur-Shabad K
rtan seems to involve both without

either extreme, or perhaps their integration: its ecstasy is its enstasy, and its excitement
its tranquility.
HN| mU| HN|m v N| mU| N|m v
Within the yogis, You are a Yogi; within the sensualists, You are a Sensualist.
(GGS: 71, Sir
ra
g, Guru
Na
nak)
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Hence the cross-traditional and paradoxical phrases that mix the ergotropic excitement
of worldly battle (ra
j) with the trophotropic stillness of inner worldly meditation

( jog), is evidenced in the Sikh (sant-sipa
) way. That way is often understood as the

way of ra
j-jog and as one involving jog
-bhog
viz., where ascetic renunciation is under-

stood as inseparable from the sensuality of the householder life. This is because:
UN H|J H H H|J UN UJ H|N| U| |UU| vv. . .
H|J N|Um N| HN| W| W| |NN| U| vcv
All are within the One; the One is within all this vision the True-Guru
has shown
me. . .
The Guru
, the detached Yogi, has enticed all hearts; He plays His harp in each and
every heart.
(GGS: 907, Ra
makal
Dakha
_
n
, Guru
Na
nak)
Sikhi involves an ambiguous and a paradoxical conflation where struck rests within unstruck
(anahad), and music rests in silent music (anahad-dhun), as does the Word rest within the
Unstruck Word (anahad-shabad), making a (nondual) continuum between semiotic (ra
g-
ta
l) and the symbolic (shabad) for the enlightened (gurmukh, paraupka
, sant, bhagat,
brahmgia
). The One Musical Word contains the silence of the yogi as a melody:
UN |Nm |m | F| v
Knowledge and meditation are contained in the one melody of the Word
(dhuni-ba
_
n
).
(GGS: 1188, Basant, Guru
Na
nak)
Musical autonomy and linguistic contingency: The work of Lawrence Kramer
Lawrence Kramer argues that musical meaning is to be found in networks of individual
subjectivity, social life, and cultural contexts revealing musical meaning to be a basic
force in music history (Kramer 2002, 1). That is to say, if we bring into play the context
of meaning, then the question of whether music has meaning becomes, precisely, the
meaning of music (ibid., 2). Furthermore, that meaning underwent a radical change
when music itself began to be perceived as an art form: in its modern form, the
problem of meaning arose with the development of European music as something to
be listened to for itself as art or entertainment rather than as something mixed in
with social occasion, drama, or ritual (ibid., 1). This is not dissimilar to the dynamics
of the dhrupad genre of singing as it transitioned from classical music (shastriya-san
t)
into a court (darba
r) entertainment, ignoring its soteriological context as part of a

path (ma
rgiya-san
t). According to Dr Cassio (in this issue),

Indian and Western scholars have focused extensively on the Shastriya San
t (classical
music) in its darba
(court) form, rather than documenting and analyzing the Margiya

San
t (sacred tradition) and its relation to the Desh
(folk), as in the Gurmat. . . [and that

actually] Gurmat San
t represents a unique case in which all three categories of Indian

music (Desh
, Margiya and Shastriya) are combined together. There is a strong element

of folk (Desh
) tradition in ballads such as the va
r, and the lava
n, together with the

presence of devotional forms like the k
rtan, and classical genres such as the dhupad.

(Cassio, 2011, 324)
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However, whatever change occurs, according to Kramer it does so along two axes that
are held in an ineluctable interplay: between autonomy and contingency, i.e., between
gaining universality and self-presence through the transcendence of specific meaning,
and in counterpoint the historical concreteness of an identity that gains its selfhood
through contextually constructed meanings (Kramer 2002, 2). Kramers reflections
are illuminating because they provide us with a preliminary lens through which to com-
prehend a key dialectic at work in the papers gathered below, and that is between two
readings of tradition that could easily be understood through the categories of autonomy
and contingency (cf. for example Bhai Baldeep Singh and Dr Cassio with Drs Navtej
Purewal and Bob van der Linden). Thus Kramer notes that what we experience as
unconditional is always somewhere marked by the irrationality of its attachment to
the contingent. Music, the art of collapsing distances, plays out this paradox as
nothing else can (ibid., 3), and that narration and depiction address the human
subject [externally]; music dramatizes or enacts the scenarios of subjectivity from
inside the listener or performer (ibid., 7).
Furthermore, Kramer provides some insight as to why the Sikh Guru
s Word was
sung and was revealed musically as well as being written to music (in 31 ra
gas):
To make anything more itself, or more anything, just add music. On the other hand,
music remains entirely unaffected [4] by the things with which it mixes, no matter
how they may direct or even coerce its expressivity. . . Music adds something to
other things by adding itself, but loses nothing when it takes itself away. . . music
is known by and valued for its transcendence of any specific meanings ascribed
to it; identity seeks to become substance in music, even though music, being
more event than substance, continually eludes this desire in the act of granting it.
(Ibid., 3-4)
The content of the Guru
s musical Word is constantly deconstructing the projections of

the dualistic mind, be they religious or secular as well as any and all namings of the
ultimate be it God, Guru
, Word or Name, since these are repeatedly noted as ineffable.

Music would then form a natural ally to this kind of anti-reductionist critique. A musical
Word, or a Word that emerges from, and as, music, can also then raise its voice in
protest and yet remain unsullied by its commentary. This is partly because the move-
ment away from the ego or false-self advocated within the GGS is not a straightforward
denial of subjectivity or the ego in toto (as you see in some religious views), because this
ego is to be transformed not eradicated. Thus as the music of ra
g-ta
l deconstructs haumai/
manmukh through the temporal power of affect (as that which internalizes the universal
autonomy of openness and meaninglessness), so too does the grammar of shabad,
through the power of words, simultaneously construct the sacia
r/gurmukh through
meaningful and contingent identifications.
Kramer calls the first aspect of music (to remain itself as autonomous), its subtract-
ability, and the second (where it connects with words and the contingent) its imprintabil-
ity. He notes their relation: the subtractability of music is always in counterpoint with
its imprintability (ibid., 4). The Guru
s were always critical of metaphysical claims that

ignored the contingent and existential conditions of life. Similarly, Kramer writes, I am
always suspicious of claims to ineffability, because people who invoke the unspeakable
may use it to justify unspeakable things (ibid., 5). This seems to explain in part why
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the embodied nature of the song that contains both aspects of autonomy and contingency
is the genre in which the GGS is made/given for both Kramer and the Guru
s see
music/song envelop this double and ambiguous power. That is to say, the power of
musics autonomy and contingency can work in two ways:
Music has the power to give its makers and auditors alike a profound sense of their
own identities, to form a kind of precious materialization of their most authentic
selves, in the mode of both personal and group identity. But at the same time
music has the power to alienate the sense of both types of identity. . . [And] at
least unsettle the sense of identity and may even undo it altogether.
(Ibid., 6)
Kramer calls this double work musics a priori ambiguity [between autonomy and con-
tingency] (ibid., 7) thus making the human internal landscape a liminal one ripe for
transformation: Music thus addresses the subject from a (virtual, symbolic) liminal zone
set between particular manifestations of autonomy and contingency (ibid., 8). Kramer
argues that we must move beyond the prejudice against musical meaning that always
reads it in terms of lack: simply because the lack of linguistic meaning has been seen
and treasured as musics essential trait and difference from all other systems of
thought that depend on language (ibid.,11-12). He claims then that musical meaning
is essentially non-verbal, and cannot have meaning in the same way words do (ibid.,
14). In contrast to words, then, what applies with music is not the overt representation,
but the covert significance (ibid.).
Like the opening of Bhai Baldeep Singhs paper below, Kramer employs a scene from
George Eliots last novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), where a mother sings to her child:
I think my life began with waking up and loving my mothers face: it was so near to
me, and her arms were round me, and she sang to me. . . and because I never knew
the meanings of the words they seemed full of nothing but our love and happiness. . .
(Eliot 1967 [1876], 250. Cited in ibid., 51)
Kramer argues that the song gains its meaning from its very musicality or what he calls
songfulness precisely because it is not understood by the child. In other words, the
song here works not by what it signifies, but by the material presence of its signifiers,
which addresses the listener with an unusual, richly gratifying intimacy (ibid., 52).
However, though the autonomy of the musical intonations is felt as wholesome, they
are felt by the child and this reveals the songs contingency in the mothers particular
way of singing or vocalizing the words. Kramer therefore posits a lacuna in previous
reflections on this issue and makes a point that I think is pertinent to the songs and song-
fulness of the GGS:
In most traditions, it is precisely the assumption that song is enunciation that makes
the song as vocalization, song as withdrawal of meaning, significant. For that very
reason, however, enunciated song must continually posit the possibility of its inter-
ruption by a transformation into vocalized song. It is this possibility, constitutive of
the very category of song, that has not been given its theoretical due.
(Ibid., 53)
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The words that are written can by sung in numerous ways, but up to a certain point (of
pure affect) where the way of singing, in its very intonation, outstrips the meaning of
those words (of pure grammar) and within the context of the GGS, this would
involve the transition from the heard or struck symbolic Word (shabad) to silent or
unstruck semiotic Word (anahad Shabad), from human projection, interpretation and rep-
resentation in words of what the experience of freedom or awakening is like, to that very
experience itself, embodied in and through the act of singing and being the vocalization
of various musical sounds. Bhai Baldeep Singh understands this transition from the
[socially constructed] intent to the [psychological] intentlessness required to sing
gurba
_
n
-k
rtan. Kramer writes,

Songfulness is a fusion of vocal and musical utterance judged to be both pleasurable
and suitable independent of verbal content. It is the positive quality of singing-in-
itself: just singing. . . There is thus, once again, a sense of immediate intimate
contact between the listener and the subject behind the voice.
(Ibid., 53)
Thus, within gurba
_
n
-k
rtan or -san
t, we can see these ambiguous forces working to

create the transitional tensions required for learning and growing beyond the language
and habit of an old-self, into the new (and necessarily surprising/disruptive) language
and autonomy of an ever-arriving self. Thus the songfulness of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan employs
shabad and ra
g-ta
l to speak beyond words and music towards an actual embodiment

of the experience. Kramer notes, songfulness seems not only to elude but also resist
critical or analytical understanding (ibid., 54). Thus the words of shabad (which literally
state the ineffability of the true One and its condition) begin with meanings, but set the
direction of their own transcendence in the performance of them in song backed by ra
g
and ta
l. The direction that shabad sets, centering the ego in selflessness rather than self-
ishness, is crucial, though the end lies in an uncapturable musical meaning beyond words.
Thus we could denote three modalities (riding on the back of Kristeva and others).
The Paternal Symbolic, the Maternal Semiotic, and the Word, that is, thought and
feeling, indirect representation and direct effect (of the affective), narrative meaning
and poetic transcendence of meaning, the rational calculation of dianoia and synthetic
intuition of noesis; the Word (shabad) and its music (ra
g-ta
l) engaged with through its

songfulness or praising (k
rtan). And it is through a unique and rare integration that

a state beyond the realms of both symbolic words and semiotic music is achieved
through that very act of singing and/or listening; the beauty of symbolic language
(shabad) is made sublime through music (ra
g-ta
l), and that musicality contains within

itself a further possibility of radical transformation through its songful praising
(k
rtan) into a nameless but embodied wonderment or astonishment (visma
d) through
a transformed mind ( jag, chit), where one embodies a direct relation to the very
such-ness or as-it-is-ness of reality in, as and through ones body. Now, when
music is the Word and the Word is music within and as the self the semiotic is fully
integrated into the symbolic.
Gurba
_
n
-k
rtan is thus forever pointing beyond itself as text, as book, as shabad, via its
musicological structure and frame of ra
g-ta
l, towards the surprising and revolutionary

intimacy of a being in constant becoming. The child does not remember the
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mothers voice as a timbre but as a source of intimacy (ibid., 54). Gurba
_
n
-k
rtan is a way
to regain that lost intimacy through an act of pure listening and singing.
Meaning in Shabad is thus only a beginning the re-directing of attention away
from that which fixes subjectivity into deluding and hurtful repetition of desire and
fear; but shabad is music, and its very musicality (ra
g-ta
l) and songfulness (mode of

expression, vocalization) takes the further step of transporting that (importantly
paused) subjectivity into the realms beyond meaning. (It would be more accurate,
however, to note simultaneity here, since there are no necessary steps with a musical
Word; when the Word comes first and music follows is merely one way of listening;
obviously at other times the music may strike one first and then the words, hence the
quotation marks around further step). Thus,
songfulness projects meaning loss as the outcome of a relative indifference to
meaning, a kind of higher carelessness or forgetfulness that simply does not avail
itself of the symbolic, allows the symbolic to lie unused even if its words may
still be heard clearly. Songfulness does not exactly constitute a resistance to or
escape from the symbolic, but an interlude of imperviousness to it.
(Ibid., 64)
That is to say, sound or music provides a background to everything as for the GGS
everything is singing; every form and being sings His Praise (GGS, Jap). Kramer
writes, songfulness initiated the infant Mirah into a bliss that precedes and surrounds
the symbolic (ibid., 65). In summary Kramer writes that the song
. . . characteristically positions a meaningful conjunction of words and music among
multiple potential modes of meaning loss. . . From this, however, it by no means
follows that meaning should take a lesser role in the understanding of song. On
the contrary, it remains the very nucleus of song. But any understanding of song
does need to take account of how and why meaning is so regularly cast off.
(Ibid., 66)
It is clear from the content of Gur-Shabad that the various states of enlightenment
described in the GGS, as well as the mode of being that embodies them, are ultimately
ineffable. What better mode then, beyond clearly stating in words that it cannot be told,
than to employ music to firmly bring home the point? The songfulness of the GGS is
beyond the words and music, but is attained through those very words and music.
This is the a priori ambiguity of gurshabad-k
rtan as well as a fundamental critique

of all scripture that claims to capture truth in the Word, especially if that Word
resists music.
The limits of musical meaning: against or before interpretation?
There is a danger in adopting hermeneutics as a method see (Bhogal 2001; 2005; 2011).
For example, Spitzers Music and philosophy (2006) begins with an epigraph from
Schleiermacher: There can be no concept of a style. This rather obvious though over-
looked point brings to fore the specific nature of the problem regarding the imposition of
an interpreted meaning onto music. Like style, music is perhaps before interpretation,
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rather than against it; it is that from which reflection may spring, but that which cannot
be fully reflected upon without undoing the one making the reflections. Spitzer makes
a similar case via the work of Theodor Adorno:
At issue for him [Adorno] is a point so simple as to be breathtaking: the instant we
consider music as a document (of a theoretical model, a semiotic code, a hermeneu-
tic window, a cultural unit, a social practice) it ceases to be music. We appreciate
music as music precisely because it is music and not the many things with which it can
be compared. To be sure, models and contexts are revealing, but only as staging
posts on the path to the tones. Musical meaning can never be captured by analytical
systems or hermeneutic readings.
(Spitzer 2006, 6)
Hence, music is prior to language and before reflection a first language of the body
and its sounds (not unlike Benjamins idea of the thingness of things as a particular
language). More specifically. Spitzer argues:
The problem with hermeneutics, at least in its raw state, is that one-to-one corre-
lations between style traits and cultural tropes are always undone by the fact of
context dependence. . . mediation. . . In other words, just as the technical meaning of
a chord depends on how it is used (its context dependence), so the cultural
meaning of an idiom is always mobile or dialectical.
(Ibid., 7)
The different styles of the Sikh Guru
s note Bhai Baldeep Singhs oral knowledge of how

the Guru
s sang particular shabads providing an astounding and inestimable treasure of

affective and musicological meaning reveal both a continuity of how the shabads were
sung. However, they must also contain another history of those same performances a
history of how they were used in different and changing contexts. This brings us back to
the central problematic of hermeneutics, which concerns how to bring a text of the past
to speak again in the present only now, the situation seems altered by our discussion of
singing and the musical meaning of a musical Word.
Are affective/musical modes of dissemination able to maintain style across time and
context? Or is it merely an illusion to regard their relative longevity as comparable to
that of written texts? Is crying and/or laughing their songfulness that is the same
across time and culture? Are tears (of joy or suffering, birth and death) the universal that
music sings? For this universal is to be understood within time how else would tears
gain meaning without the context of particular events? The continuity of tradition then
requires a different logic from that of choosing autonomy over contingency or vice-versa
one that understands both the universal and particular through a temporal process that
integrates both identity and difference without letting either dominate; in my under-
standing this middle way is not about balance but about the inseparability of two
forces. As Buddhaghosa writes in his Visuddhimagga (xvii. 166-7, in Gethin 1998,
143), there is neither identity nor difference in a sequence of continuity regarding
the totality of spatio-temporal beings and things, not one is either identically the same to
itself, or radically different from itself; continuity or tradition is thus constantly changing
but neither in terms of complete identity, nor in terms of complete difference. There are
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those who live out and enact these two extremes by insisting upon an eternal capture
on the one side, and the abrupt invention/fabrication of new forms on the other.
Musical meaning, if it means anything as the temporal form par excellence, surely
shows how these positions emerge from an unknowable middle, denoting an inextric-
ability that produces a third unforeseen element, rather than the search for a midpoint of
moderation between extremes.
Indeed, the classical example of the stringed instrument is meant to show exactly
how having a string too loose or too tight does not result in producing a musical
note. That productive and transformative quality, which transcends both the silence of
the limp string and the silence of the snapped string, is not the point of balance
(which implicitly speaks only of two opposites) but a certain integrative tension that
employs looseness and tightness as two oppositional forces together to bring forth
the third element of sound. And these two forces would obviously differ in their
tension in order to produce music, given different materials, as each human form
would need to find its own way of producing its voice, sound and song its style
which cannot be taught independent of those humans bodies. A general philosophy
means nothing to musicians; for them, the universal can only be intimated through
the specific mechanics of their very being.
If music is essentially a subjective experience of autonomy (for my best loved song
could be your prison), and if the Word is unavoidably social (as Wittgenstein informs us,
there is no such thing as private language), then the Guru
s shabad, being a musical

Word, ties the subjective experience to an objective process the personal interlocked
with the political. Spitzer begins his Music as philosophy with a quotation from Beethoven:
As soon as the feeling opens up a path to us, then away with all rules (2006, 1),
but concludes his book in the vein of the middle way of integrative tension referred
to above by returning to a paraphrase of the same idea: art puts feeling back into
rules (ibid., 280).
The art or kala
of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan seems to operate on parallel lines: with the Name

or Word or love all is fine, but without it nothing will avail. This rhetoric defines
Name/Word/love or bhagati as inherently trangressive, not necessarily so. This is
because the rhetoric ultimately renders the force of the Name/Word/love as an ungo-
vernable art, yet an art that nevertheless requires provisional or contingent rules to
manifest. Music as feeling par excellence creates a value in transgressing all hermeneu-
tic meaning, tradition, and codification. Neither can this interpretation, which reads
gurba
_
n
-k
rtan as an ultimate feeling and value, an ultimate freedom, hide its lawless
transgression. Visma
d and humility then become resonant expressions of the power

of the Name and the Words transgressive love, the force of unconditional freedom
to renew itself. Would not then traditions, in capturing the treasure of gurba
_
n
-
k
rtan, to some extent restrict not what gurba
_
n
-k
rtan has been or is, but what it

could be? Is this not why the force of multiplicity cannot be contained and reduced
to singularity? Though there may be much to learn from employing hermeneutic the-
ories of the meaning of music, one perhaps needs to recognize that music is the ulti-
mate force to dissolve all meaning and human projection, and that is probably why the
Guru
s sang deconstructing the old to engender a renewal of the uncapturable. Her-

meneutic meaning is intended to aid this deconstruction as a creative act of renewal, and
perhaps not to capture meanings and chisel them into stone for others to bow down to
in silence.
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mJU F| NH| F| HH H|F H|F H J|m v
The Gurmukh chants the Unstruck/Speechless Speech (anahad-ba
_
n
); hearing it,
listening to it, my mind and body are rejuvenated.
(GGS: 781, Su
, Guru
Arjan)
It seems to me that the Names or gurshabads love is sustained in any relation precisely
because that which calls for the greatest love refuses to remain fixed, and sings forever
unpredictably for the love of the musical Word/Name is forever fresh and new, as the
Lord and His creation is forever fresh and new:
H8 N| H| HU H|U J MU v
The Teachings of Truth are forever new; the love of the Shabad is forever fresh.
(GGS: 242, Gau
_
r
Pu
rab
, Guru
Na
nak)
H|J H | HU HU U v9v J v
My Master is forever fresh and new; He is the Giver, forever and ever. 1Pause
(GGS: 660, Dhana
sar
, Guru
Na
nak)
So the thought the Gur-Sikh tradition leaves us with is this: can there be a tradition of
truth when truth is a song of the ever new? Can there be a tradition of the song that is
life itself? Any answer to this question that ignores the musical dimension to words is
bound to fail. But do not all answers fail as the Guru
s themselves testify? Why

else would they constantly urge us to sing in praise?
Introducing this issue and its six articles
For this first issue, a good range of the papers presented at the conference have been
chosen to speak at a number of different levels and thus introduce a number of dis-
ciplinary approaches. So, while we have perspectives that come from bearers and
exponents of the oral tradition, as well as from those outside the tradition who focus
on the textual exegesis within a theological frame (first two articles), we also have
the introduction of anthropological, ethno-musicological, philological, semiotic and
phenomenological perspectives in the next two articles. Finally the last two articles
in this special issue of Sikh Formations locate the Sikh musical Word within socio-political
and historical frames.
1. Bhai Baldeeep Singh
Against those that claim that it is sufficient to merely read the GGSs textual clues to
understand its musicality (ra
g-ta
l), Bhai Baldeep Singh points out that that textual evi-
dence is lacking and sparse. Similarly, regarding its instruments the textual evidence
within the GGS does not go beyond merely naming them. Information about how to sing
the ra
g, how to perform the ta
l, how to play and indeed make the instruments, is not

found in the GGS; another source is required and that is the oral and practical/tech-
nical traditions.
Being a thirteenth-generation exponent of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan, Bhai Baldeep Singh argues

that the tradition has not been broken and is still extant today though much has been
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lost. Bhai Baldeep Singh has spent nearly 20 years researching and reviving those very
traditions or pedagogical streams as he calls them for they include much more
than simply recounting how a song was sung and regaining various ra
g-ta
l forms of
the Guru
s repertoire. The traditions also include how these songs and forms were,
taught, cultivated, remembered, and rendered along with how the instruments
were made and played. No one else has researched and archived the breadth and
depth of the ra
g-ta
l musicality of the shabad of the GGS as much and for as long as

Bhai Baldeep Singh. Furthermore, as a tradition-bearer his voice and perspective are
unique and indispensable for any discussion on the topic, for, as he notes, when
tangible records are lost, memories assume extraordinary importance. (2011, 246).
Indeed, one of his key arguments lies in the distinction between the very few
actual exponents of the tradition of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan and those who are not. For the

exponents to become tradition-bearers they must undergo an intensive and disci-
plined training to the satisfaction of acknowledged masters of that tradition. Yet that
very tradition has always been diverse, and hence Bhai Baldeep Singhs research
includes engaging the memory-banks among the Gur-Sikhs, Namdharis, and the
Muslim Raba
s.
Bhai Baldeep Singhs article therefore involves a wide-ranging and illuminating
discussion about what k
rtan is given that its uniqueness is centered not around

music, but around (spiritual) enlightenment for, as he argues, gurba
_
n
rtan does
not merely make a person a great musician (sangitagya) but . . . a saint (2011,
248). This means that its performance is tied not to entertainment and the
concert hall, but to the psychological and social transformation of ones personal
and public life. Thus, within the context of realization and awakening, gurba
_
n
-
k
rtan originates in the transformation of the individuals who became the Sikh
Guru
s themselves, and their songs, some of which are testimonial, aim to instigate
that very transformation in those who listen to and sing the repertoire.
The way something is said/sung far outweighs what is said, such that the way the
Guru
s sang and the tradition of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan that remembers that way of singing

become indispensible to the meaning of the words that were sung; the pitch, meter,
tone, rhythm, pace, duration, color, feeling, intensity, etc., all of which are not
given in the text provide an inestimable hermeneutic resource for the meanings
the literal words can hold. Just singing in any way we like reflects only our personal
maturity and understanding (or lack thereof). Thus Bhai Baldeep Singh who is not
against diverse forms and ways of singing the GGS argues that, in ignoring the tra-
dition of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan, we ignore this inestimable treasure, and our singing carries

only the weight of our own insight/experience (or lack thereof). That is why people
flocked to hear Bhai Avtar Singh and Bhai Gurcharan Singh: not because they are
good musicians per se or have particularly beautiful voices, but precisely because they
are living embodiments of a tradition that remembers how the Guru
s sang and there-

fore have access to an inestimable treasury of affective knowledge or musicological
meaning. And it is believed that, if anywhere, it is in their humble performances that
the possibility of transformation may be realized.
The value of the gurba
_
n
-k
rtan tradition lies, then, in the insight that meaning often

lies in how something is said rather than merely in what is said. This is because tone,
rhythm and music are non-representational modes of carrying knowledge; they are
therefore direct and unmediated. Language relies on the mediation of words or
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symbols to re-present meaning in abstract forms and concepts and is therefore an indirect
and mediated form of carrying knowledge. Now, if one defines culture as language in
terms of words then, of course, over time cultures, languages, et cetera change.
But, if one were to focus on tone and music, then, because of the lack of mediation
in their form, one may come closer to what is universal. And if this is the case,
then it is not too difficult to realize that a melody of a poetic song is much easier to
keep intact over centuries than are the words of a prose text; furthermore, the
feeling or affect of the song gained by how the words are sung will have greater longevity
than words of a text that are merely read. This is indeed how many oral cultures
encoded and passed on their knowledge, through singing, chant and mnemonic
devices (evident in the Vedic, Buddhist and other cultures). This is why some consider
music the first language: implying that perhaps, tone is universal and words are
relative.
With such reflections, Bhai Baldeep Singh embarks on a fascinating discussion of
what k
rtan is, exploring initially what he calls its four pillars: ra
g, ta
l, shabad and
Figure 8. Bhai Baldeep Singh. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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chit, the music of the notes or melody, the rhythmic balance, the Word/hymn, and the
due intentness or consciousness of the singer. Then he explores and delineates how the
very notion of a tradition of affect, tone, and music is to be understood. Drawing on his
training, research, and work on reviving the production of the instruments of the Guru
s
court, he then discusses gurba
_
n
-k
rtan instruments and their revival (where he sees

the same unfortunate scenario occurring as he saw with the ra
g controversy; that is,

a marked difference between the tradition-bearers and promoters of newer
fabrications).
The article then moves on to a discussion of shabad r
ts, gurba
_
n
compositions
where he makes the important point that, unlike musicians, the Guru
s, do not create
gurba
_
n
-k
rtan but receive it as revelation and then goes on to explore the difference
between a revealed and a composed song. This discussion ends with a list of 22 vital
elements that define what gurba
_
n
-k
rtan is. The article then discusses the importance

of experiencing the original shabad r
ts of the Guru
s, and what, therefore, k
rtan is
from the perspective of its actual pedagogy. Regarding the evolution of the tradition,
he notes a difference between the early tradition of highly trained elite singers and
the later trend towards lay congregational singing, which he reads as a major blow
to the aesthetical excellence of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan and its peaking [elite] performers

(Singh, 2011, 272). (Compare this view with Dr Navtej Purewals article which
sees congregational singing more along the lines of a democratization).
Finally, Bhai Baldeep Singh argues against those who say that all traditions change,
even musical ones; from his experience a remarkable consistency between disparate and
diverse individuals can be found about how a ra
g/shabad was sung, and for him this can

only mean one thing: that they shared one single source the Guru
s themselves. Thus,
Bhai Baldeep Singh claims that gurba
_
n
-k
rtan managed to maintain its integrity, even

during colonial times and under the reforms then initiated, and he cites some examples
to support his view (compare Bob van der Lindens contrasting argument, below).
Towards the end, he argues that there is a dire need for a critique and assessment of
current (highly controversial) work being done in the field of Gur-Sikh musicology,
to enable this new discipline to survive and flourish.
2. Inderjit Nilu Kaur
Noting what was said in the introduction regarding the beginning of a new field of study
and the necessity to remain open to all voices, Inderjit Nilu Kaur, although not trained in
the humanities or the fine arts (and not a tradition-bearer in Bhai Baldeep Singhs
sense), is nevertheless researching the area of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan. Kaurs article argues that

k
rtan should create deeper listeners out of its participants through sahaj dhia
n
which she translates as serene meditation/contemplation where the mind is
detached from and elevated above worldly concerns and emotions (2011, 303); that
k
rtan should instigate a move from sound to the soundless; from entertainment to
liberation. It is, however, problematic to frame ones argument this way not least
because, alongside sahaj dhia
n, the Guru
s also employ sahaj-dhun, indicating clearly

that meditation is not to be understood as being without sound, color, music and
melody; furthermore, the Word itself is understood as a musical and celestial melody
shabad-dhun; and finally, even meditation is found in music:
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J| J| J| N| Jl v H|m HJH | Jl v
H H | Jl v || H| Jl v
U|m K | H H v9v J v
Sing the Praises of Hari, Hari, Hari. Meditate on the effortless music/melody
(sahaj-dhuni).
The tongues of the holy Saints repeat it. I have heard that this is the way to emancipation.
This is found by the greatest merit, O my mind. 1
(GGS: 409, A
sa
var
, Guru
Arjan)
m| H| HU | HN H|N N | vv
Gaining the Divine Light within his heart, one is awakened to the melody of the Word
(shabad-dhun) the True Guru
settles his conflicts. 3

(GGS: 489, Gu
jar
, Guru
Na
nak)
| H|J |m |m H|J H|m NH| mN NJ| vv
The meditation is in the music, and knowledge is in meditation; become Gurmukh,
and speak the Unspoken Speech. 3
(GGS: 879, Ra
makal
, Guru
Na
nak)
Thus the GGS combines effortless or serene meditation supposedly beyond emotion
with emotion through music. That is to say, if we assume this shift from the worldly
sargu
_
n to the other-worldly nirgu
_
n, then a deeply problematic regime of hierarchical
binaries is thereby set up, and they ultimately split not only body and affect from
the mind and its contemplation, but also and disturbingly music from the Word,
prompting one to ask: if the goal is to move from sensual affect to mental ascetic absorp-
tion, then why would the Sikh Guru
s employ music and singing in the first place, and use

terms like sahaj-dhun, shabad-dhun? It then becomes rather inexplicable why the Word
itself is simultaneously musical, and finally why the structure of the GGS is ordered by 31
ra
gas. This dualistic interpretation runs counter to the actual teachings of the GGS itself
(given that the eradication of duality or dubidha
is one if its central teachings).

Inderjit Kaurs claim that we do not have direct evidence of the original oral tra-
dition (2011, 298) will no doubt be found to be equally problematic by those who
discuss the existence of an unbroken oral tradition. Thus, side-stepping the oral tra-
ditions claim on musical performance, Kaur tries to rely solely on the GGS itself for
musicological clues. However, such a textually exclusive position can easily lead to an
overly literal reading of shabad flattening the very range, complexity and ambiguity
that a musical Word calls for. Furthermore, as others will quickly state, there is no gui-
dance concerning the actual performance of the ra
g only their names and ta
l etc., are
given. Relying on the written text over the oral tradition is perhaps, therefore, a non-
starter. Nevertheless, there is a critique of ra
g-ta
l in the GGS, but it is a qualified cri-

tique, since any activity undertaken without the Name is futile even meditation and
ascetic denial of the emotions of the body. Anyone who attempts to recover this critique
dualistically will fail to capture its nuance by interpreting the GGS to mean that shabad is
more important than ra
g-ta
l and thus elevating meaning above singing and meditation.

The desire to deduce practical musical guidelines (Kaur, 2011, 305) from the GGS
itself is therefore rather a dubious enterprise.
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The ascetic denial of the affective body is clearly contradicted by the GGS itself
(especially with regard to the need to eradicate dualistic thinking dubidha
, durmat),
as well as by many central tenets within the traditions practice: to re-read renunciation
of the world ( jog
) within the embracing of the world via the householders life (bhog
);
to engage in the world, which not only demands saintly contemplation (sant) but also
the need to cultivate a warriors fearlessness (sipa
); to practice not only personal

meditation (simaran) but also collective service (seva
); to not only isolate yourself on

the journey but also to participate in the collectivity of the true (sat-san
gat), etc.
Thus the nuance of being in the world and ones body but not being attached to
them is missed by any dualistic and hierarchical interpretation that demands that the
body be denied to gain the higher mind. Ironically, following Kaurs argument, this
means that gurba
_
n
-k
rtan or its na
d/sound and dhun/music has to be denied in

order to gain the soundless anahad. Even Kaur finds herself cornered by her own dua-
listic logic by having to justify why it is not that music is of no significance (2011,
308). Yet for the Guru
s, nirgu
_
n exists exactly where sargu
_
n exists; Aka
l, Na
m,
Shabad, Guru
exist right here in the world, in the body in the family household, in
the community (san
gat) and its way (panth). Silence is therefore not the absence of
sound (as it would be in a dualistic interpretation); silence is rather the source of all
sounds and can only be heard in sound; the Unstruck exists within and as the
struck, for the Guru
s state that the Lord is both absent (vijog) and present (sam
jog)
and everywhere fully pervasive (sarab bharpu
ri):
H HU |Jm | vv
My Lord is always fully pervading everywhere. 5
(GGS: 842, Bila
valu, Guru
Amar Da
s)
Figure 9. Inderjit Nilu Kaur. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh)
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Inderjit Kaurs paper reminds scholars in the field not to forget the textual content of
the GGS in pondering the Guru
s musicality, but over-interprets the Word rather too

literally to displace or at least demote its music thus misconstruing the Gur-Sikhs
Music in the Word and the Word in the Music.
3. Francesca Cassio
Dr Cassio builds upon her previous publications within the field of ethnomusicology and
anthropology (on Indian classical music, dhrupad, tumri and na
d yoga) by turning her atten-

tion to semiological and philological reflections on the pedagogical philosophy of teaching
gurba
_
n
-san
t within Western, secular contexts. This leads her to explore a number of

themes, but perhaps the most important is to chart the implications of the systematization
and classification of Indian musical forms and scales, the temporal location of particular
ra
gas, and most importantly the invention of a notational schema, introduced by Vishnu
Narayan Bhatkande (1860-1936), which created a revolution in the field of musical edu-
cation (Cassio, 2011, 314). For example, such standardization, Cassio argues, led to the
reduction of an original difference among the ghara
na
s and the genres. This is important, as

she discovers that part of the contemporary Sikh pedagogy also refers to Bhatkande,
although the Sikh Guru
s tradition had an older, peculiar system of ta
m (musical training),
and their repertoire includes ra
gas not classified in the Kramik Pustak Ma
lika
(2011, 315).
Out of all the schools she has spent time in India researching (including Gyani
Dyal Singhs Gurmat Vidyalay at Rakab Gunj Gudwara, Delhi; Professor Kartar Singhs
Gurmat Sangit Academy in Anandpur; the Shahid Sikh Missionary College in Amritsar;
Sant Baba Sucha Singhs Jawaddi Taksal as well as the allied Principal Sukhwant Singhs
Gurshabad Sangit Academy in Ludhiana; and a Gurmat Sangit school for women led by
Mata Vipanpreet Kaur (of Baba Kundan Singh Bhalai Kendra) Dr Cassio concludes
that only one does not employ Bhatkandes system, using instead a traditional teaching
method, and that is the Institute of Arts, Aesthetics, Cultural Tradition and Develop-
ment Studies of Bhai Baldeeps Ana
d Conservatory. She therefore argues that research

projects should be undertaken to identify those original elements in the Sikh Guru
s
repertoire and educational system prior to Bhatkandes era (2011, 320). Combining
this thought about the past with the current pedagogical scene, Cassio notes that the
key question about teaching Gurmat San
t in Western countries thus actually involves

a need for research on traditional and contemporary pedagogy, employing both traditional
and contemporary methodologies (2011, 320).
In this regard, her anthropological training orientates her to ask questions regarding
context and function to chart the evolution not only of various genres but also of language.
Noting the two forms of Dhrupads (haveli/religious and darba
/court entertainment)
performed during the Sikh Guru
s time, Cassio writes that out of the four types of darba
dhrupad then extant: Nahuar-ba
, Gauhar-ba
, Khandhar-ba
and Dagar-ba
only the
latter has survived into the present. In agreement with Bhai Baldeep Singh that perhaps
Gurba
_
n
-San
t was the fifth form of medieval dhrupad, Cassio argues that the possible
links between these two forms of dhrupad (Gur-ba
and Dagar-ba
), as well as the
haveli dhrupad as currently practiced at the Vaisnava temple of Vraj (2011, 325),
should therefore be explored. Despite the dual focus on the old and new, her research
is not exclusively tied to reading gurba
_
n
as dhrupad alone, given her acknowledgement

of the important diversity of genres in the GGS, which also includes folk genres.
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Towards the latter part of the article, Dr Cassio analyizes the contemporary scene
constituted by various communities and markets, where khya
l, thumri and ghazal mix

with pop, New Age, yoga, and film music noting that
Traditional compositions were in fact rich in subtleties (techniques, tuning and
embellishments) that singers and musicians could provide, whereas nowadays
there is a tendency in new contexts to give less prominence to such
aspects, so that compositions have been re-composed or simplified in order to be
sung easily even by people with no musical training.
(Cassio, 2011, 326)
Finally, Dr Cassio explores the philosophy or yoga of sound inherent in dhrupad perform-
ance, for in gurba
_
n
there is no separation between the word and the sonic dimension

(2011, 330); unlike other scriptures tuning, melody and rhythm become integral to
hearing the Word. Thus, she argues that the point where the power of sound
Figure 10. Francesca Cassio. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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touches human consciousness beyond cultural and linguistic differences (2011, 330)
might be a fruitful area of research. And she concludes that
. . . if we assume that dhrupad was a genre in vogue during the Sikh Guru
s era and
that part of the repertoire in the SGGS are dhrupad compositions (as the structure
and the rhythm suggest), then we could consider that the vocal practices for singing
those shabads might refer to the yoga system of sound (called na
d yoga) as used in the

dhrupad tradition.
(Cassio, 2011, 331)
This makes music, she argues, structured as meaning culturally limited, but music as
structured through sound perhaps universal.
Dr Cassios research ultimately points to what she calls the necessity for an intercul-
tural pedagogical method. Through this new method she aims to locate reflections upon
gurba
_
n
san
t within the new academic context of international musicology. Dr Cassio is

uniquely trained to do such work, given her professional background in ethnomusi-
cology, Indian and Western classical music and gurba
_
n
-san
t, as well as her, no less

important, teaching across cultures (Europe, USA and India). Dr Cassios method
then orientates her to research all schools of thought and practice, old and new, to
gain an initial layout of the ground and all its diverse and sometimes opposed views.
Her non-ideological position as a trained researcher allows her to remain objective
and critical in her stance as an academic, while employing a deeply respectful engage-
ment with the Gur-Sikh tradition of gurba
_
n
-san
t as a practitioner.
4. Janice Protopapas
Dr Protopapas employs her discipline of ethnomusicology to provide what Clifford Geertz
would call the beginnings of a thick description of a particular event. In this case, that
event is A
sa
Di Va
r di Chaunk
. In her analytical description, which blends together the

historiography, musicology and anthropology of this performance in more detail than
has ever been done before, to my knowledge. She argues that the musical ritual forges
a sense of identification between the individual and the group (2011, 339), allowing
such hymns to become moments of collective remembrance and renewed strength.
The transformative aspects of the performance as a collective experience bring out a phe-
nomenological dimension which Protopapas argues is to be personally experienced and not
merely attended. In this regard, she explores a range of psycho-emotional experiences that
both guide and are guided by the musical process (2011, 339). Her broader aim is to
gather from such thick descriptions the means to formulate a hermeneutics of Sikh music.
Protopapas thick description gains sophistication because it consists of three illumi-
nating layers: the liturgical and phenomenological context of the hymn as an aural
experience, a historical analysis of the organization of the process itself, and an anthro-
pological depiction of the event as a unique form of social interaction. Employing con-
cepts derived from Judith Beckers Deep listerners (2004), Protopapas argues that a
habitus of listening is created through the deep listening that the k
rtan chaunk
service elicits, thus indicating that the service is an embodied experience, and thus
clearly brings to light the deeply affective nature of the participation. As she herself
notes, such a contextual analysis is rare in the field of Sikh Studies, and she goes on
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to outline in a remarkably clear exposition the whole process, from encountering the
service as musical, to charting its historical development, musical format, and layout
at the Harimandir Sahib.
Dr Protopapas then provides a very detailed description of how the event is experi-
enced, and in a sense re-creating it by translating key hymns into Western staff notation
that can be heard via the Sikh Formations website. The attention to detail is remarkable in
this piece and will be of great interest not only to non-Sikhs but also to Sikhs, given that
various media are employed to communicate her findings and research, including the
charts, diagrams and staff notation of the ra
g-ta
l structures, and the paper also provides

a temporal schema of the whole performance as a sociological and phenomenological
event with audio clips of its key stages.
Dr Protopapas argues that her method aims to show the Divine Word as s abad is
not only embodied through the Guru
Granth Sa
hib, but also encountered through the

human enactment of the service, aurally, viscerally and phenomenologically. (2011,
3612) Her aim, then, is to build a hermeneutics of Sikh music by examining the
Figure 11. Jan Protopapas. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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musical experience of s abad k
rtan through an ethnomusicological lens, drawing from

fields of musicology, cognitive science, sociology and neuro-science (2011, 362).
This paper is part of her larger project, which takes into account the psycho-emotional
effects on the listeners and the social interaction between musician and listener as
essential components to understanding [gurba
_
n
-k
rtan] (2011, 362).

5. Navtej Purewal
Concomitant with the entry of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan into the academic arena, come a whole array

of new questions, beyond the narrow and diametrically opposed tension between two
claimants to authenticity that is, whether it is defined by exclusive obligation to
orality (musical performance) or exclusive commitment to textuality (shabad as law).
Some, if not all of these new questions arise from the wider socio-political history in
which both oral and textual interpretations (as it were) take place. Thus, the benefit
of Dr Purewals and Dr van der Lindens papers, derives from their ability to locate
personal, collective and traditional narratives within the broader frame of a social
history composed by various economic relations, political events and collective
movements.
Dr Purewals paper provides an excellent case in point by charting the beginnings of
a social history of the raba
bi tradition of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan beyond the narrow and distorting

confines of a foreign religious nomenclature and its divisive identity politics. Thus, she
ponders the implications of the once central place of Muslim artists in the raba
bi tradition
to their current marginalization and ostracism. Her title poses the problematic issue that
the once brotherly relationship between Sikh and Muslim has now been soured and
broken by a socio-political history that has left them alienated from each other
though with a very recent rapprochement of sorts. Purewal ponders the implications
of losing an overlapping past to a policing in the present of boundaries between what
used to be inseparable individuals, groups and societies, which seem now sometimes
to be locked into a dichotomous communalism.
One cannot therefore romantically divorce gurba
_
n
-k
rtan from the production of

identity by wider socio-political movements and events. Thus, before the horror of
the 1980s and early 1990s, Purewal cites three key phases of the twentieth century:
the legislative enactment of the Sikh Rahit Maryada in 1925, which restricted k
rtan to
Sikhs alone (ostracizing Muslim raba
s); the growth of collective singing among the

masses to secure a Sikh identity consciousness; and finally the current
revivalism within the field of gurba
_
n
-k
rtan to return to a ra
g-ta
l form of traditional
k
rtan. Later in the article she covers the Gurdwara Reform Movement in ousting
Mahants, and Partition of 1947.
The complexity and hybridity of social relations and movements beyond signifiers
over-determined by the foreign category of religion, point towards a much richer scen-
ario on the ground, where multiple and contrary allegiances exist that show the reading
of loss and separation as merely one among many. For example, the heterolinguality of
the GGS with its mixed vocabulary, according to Purewal, was in use precisely because
of the multiple layerings of power, influence and social movements (2011, 369). It is
therefore important to clarify and understand the relations between patrons, musicians
and what kind of music is actually made. Thus Purewal writes, the status of the
hereditary Muslim musician within Sikh social history is one which, in many ways,
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has been lost to theological world religions history (2011, 369). Rather than search
for k
rtan in the pure form of sound, Purewal locates k
rtan in the social allowing her

to chart the shifting significance and evolution of various religious identities and insti-
tutions across time. To focus merely on how Muslims are viewed through an identity
politics that fixes them negatively or positively is to deny the various and complex
relations to Muslims within Sikh narratives: from Bhai Mardana to Aurangzeb, from
Akbar to Banda Singh Bahadur and of course from the iconic Sufi Sheikh Farid to
the iconoclastic bhagat Kabir. Purewal argues that it makes little sense to employ the
notion that religions constitute culture in exclusive terms. She therefore understands
the raba
s alongside other non-Muslim performers of k
rtan: the bha

_
t
_
ts and the ra
s.
Purewal argues that Guru
Arjan catalyzed a profound change and evolution of k
rtan
by moving away from the elite and highly specialized singing in the court (darba
r)
towards the popular base of collective and much simpler singing by the san
gat, citing
the oral story regarding his (supposed) treatment of the raba
s Bhai Satta and

Balwand (compare Bhai Baldeep Singhs version of this story and its implications).
Thus synchronically there existed the folklore tradition of the bha
_
t
_
ts, the Muslim
hereditary position of the raba
s and the sangat-based tradition of the Sikh K
rtan
Maryada (2011, 374). However, later she notes that the Singh Sabha reforms of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the institutionalization of k
rtan
practice in an act of moving away from hereditary forms (2011, 375) resulting in a
performance that became streamlined into a modernist form bereft of the depth of
its historical musicality (2011, 376). Purewal then locates the demise of the raba
and other boundary-crossing traditions (2011, 376) connected with gurba
_
n
-k
rtan
within clear political movements of changing social relations, such as the creation of
a profession and changing patron-client relations and kinship patterns. For Purewal,
then, gurba
_
n
-k
rtan is always connected with the political through varying and changing
social movements.
How then, are we to understand the continuity of an oral tradition in the light of
such devastating social and political changes? This is the question that Dr van der
Linden contemplates.
Figure 12. Navtej Purewal. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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6. Bob van der Linden
Building on his earlier publication (2008) regarding the rise of the moral languages of
the Panjab within the context of the Singh Sabha reformist movements, Linden re-lo-
cates gurba
_
n
-k
rtan within the context of world music, trying along the way to ascer-
tain what is cultural and what is universal in the study and practice of Sikh sacred music
(2011, 383). The broader argument regards the instability of authenticity and aesthetic
arts within the context of historical change. How, for instance, is a medieval tradition
meant to be true to itself in the light of radically new media technologies, as well as
being located in globally diverse and constantly changing diasporic communities?
Following the work of Wiedman (2006), Linden also argues that the impact the
British Empire has had on Indian music should not be underestimated in terms of
Orientalism, canonization, institutionalization and so on (2011, 384). Not only via
the introduction of the European harmonium, but through the elision of the raba
tra-
dition as a result of the Sikh Rahit Maryada, as well as the professionalization of k
rtanists
in the commercialization of their performances within a public space. More saliently, he
argues that the oral tradition (following the lineage of Baba Jawala Singh) became
involved in the long-term historical processes of institutionalization and canonization
of k
rtan, as well as Sikh identity politics, since the Singh Sabha reformation (2011,
386), though, unlike Bhai Baldeep Singhs reading of such events, Linden does not
take into account how such figures resisted the Empires requests. Part of Lindens
argument is that all such movements became engulfed in processes of modernization,
canonization, and identity politics since the Singh Sabha reformation. . . that all the
k
rtanists mentioned became more or less involved with the SGPC and the DSGMC,
Sikh educational institutions and conferences, modern recording and new media tech-
nologies, changing public tastes, the Sikh Diaspora and so on (2011, 3889). That
Figure 13. Bob van der Linden (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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is to say, they were all involved in processes of institutionalization, canonization and
identity formation (2011, 388), which has some impact on the way traditions pass
on their practices. Bhai Baldeep Singhs distinction between tangible and intangible
aspects of a tradition would seem to require a more nuanced critique as indicated
earlier, non-representational modes of knowing may be passed on and memorialized
very differently from representational or written forms of knowing.
Nevertheless, Dr Linden finds it difficult to imagine how a tradition and/or its
aesthetics would not change over time, and, acknowledging the inevitability of
change, considers that the concept of sacred sound does not further the historical,
aesthetic and musicological understanding of k
rtan (2011, 391), because it assumes

an unchanging practice. Linden is much more interested in pondering, for example,
whether or not khya
l influenced dhrupad during the time of Guru
Gobind Singh and

under the patronage of the Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. Charting the
number of changes, Linden concludes that all these developments signify complex pro-
cesses of aesthetic change and commodification (2011, 392) such that today gurba
_
n
-
k
rtan is re-packaged as sacred music within the world music classification and
genre. Following Dusenbury (1992), Linden sees a trade-off between the retention of
traditional modes of expression, which he claims may alienate contemporary audiences,
and the attempt to connect with people by conveying the meaning, and thus transform-
ing or sacrificing the sounds of the GGS. This brings to mind again, however, the string
that is either too tight or too loose to hear the music that lies dormant within it, the
trade-off cannot be dualistically figured in an either/or choice. What is certain,
however, given the papers here, is the necessity to conduct research, not only to deter-
mine how a cluster of traditions evolve over time and are disseminated, but specifically
how dhrupad, khya
l and gurba
_
n
rtan relate, overlap and interact if they do so at all.

Note
1 This distinction was made by Mircea Eliade in 1958 (1989, 77) to show the difference
between the Western form of ecstasy which is literally to stand outside of oneself, and
the Eastern enstasy where one stands inside oneself to better characterize their
meditative states.
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G) AND WORD (SHABAD)

g) and Word (shabad) was held at Hofstra University, Long Island,

g) and Word (shabad) conference broke newground in

hib (GGS) by reinvigorating attempts to make academic

d Foundation, and Founder of Ana

d Conservatory: an Institute of Arts,

s, were able to come to the table to begin a scholarly

s musical Word. Given that the

and mindfulness of its Music the disciple

nak, Siddha Gosa

g is understood as inherently meaningful, tied to different

va) and their aesthetic experience (rasa), then that

rtan) includes four fundamental aspects: ra

rtan is unique as a genre of music and as a literature of religio-socio-political

is the Word; the Word contains the Ambrosial

r, the stroke of a lance is easy to bear; it takes away the breath.

, and I am his slave. 183

). Let His Name (na

m) be enshrined in your mind.

) is one to be carried across the terrifying

nak, realize the Word

rtan (singing) and katha

l forms? What is the relationship

l/metric cycle, laya/tempo, bha

v/expression, with instru-

rtan) and philosophical contemplation

d Foundation, Delhi, India) Gurba

Nanak Dev University) Guru

rtan Chaunki. Affect, embodiment

rtan across text, tradition and

s, who never claimed exclusive ownership of the truth (which would

s saw the truth in multiple indi-

s seems to be not only to follow the right, but to

), does this balance not immediately and always

g itself means color, the Word is to touch and

d (of the Word/Name) (GGS: 16, Sir

nak); Oh my mind drink in

i) (GGS: 26, Sir

s); those who meditate single-mindedly on the Name. . . drink the

du), they are attached to the love

i) (GGS: 28, Sir

viai, suniai) often disabling the eyes.

l) and poetry (shabad), however, do not fully name what gurba

d) and Name. And this is why

re. Indeed, the GGS

, the wandering mind is held steady; it comes to abide in its

, opens the Tenth Gate

, the wandering soul becomes steady,

). Music in the GGS then ranges from the kind

rtan seems to involve both without

j) with the trophotropic stillness of inner worldly meditation

) way. That way is often understood as the

j-jog and as one involving jog

viz., where ascetic renunciation is under-

l) and the symbolic (shabad) for the enlightened (gurmukh, paraupka

r) entertainment, ignoring its soteriological context as part of a

t). According to Dr Cassio (in this issue),

(court) form, rather than documenting and analyzing the Margiya

t (sacred tradition) and its relation to the Desh

(folk), as in the Gurmat. . . [and that

t represents a unique case in which all three categories of Indian

, Margiya and Shastriya) are combined together. There is a strong element

) tradition in ballads such as the va