Sikh Formations, Vol. 7, No. 3, December 2011, pp. 211–244
Balbinder Singh Bhogal THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC (RA¯ G) AND WORD (SHABAD)
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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 remaining 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 new ground 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 aesthetics/fine arts (music) in the study of Sikh traditions was thus a key aim of the conference. 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 relatively 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
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Figure 1.
Audience. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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 departments, 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 aesthetics, 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? sbdu gurU suriq Duin cylw [[
The Word is the Guru¯ and mindfulness of its Music the disciple (GGS: 943, Ra¯makalı¯, Guru¯ Na¯nak, Siddha Gosat) _ 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?
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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 evocation 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, transported. 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 kı¯rtan) includes four fundamental aspects: ra¯g (melody), ta¯ l (rhythmic beat), surat (concentrated intent of consciousness), and shabad (Wordmeaning) – (see Bhai Baldeep Singh’s article in this issue). This indicates that gurshabad kı¯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).
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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).
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 GuruÂŻ :
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bwxI gurU gurU hY bwxI ivic bwxI AMimRqu swry ]
The Word (ba¯ nı¯) is Guru¯ , and Guru¯ is the Word; the Word contains the Ambrosial _ Nectar. (GGS: 982, Nat, Guru¯ Ra¯m Da¯s) _ kbIr cot suhylI syl kI lwgq lyie ausws ] cot shwrY sbd kI qwsu gurU mY dws ]183]
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Kabı¯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 Kabı¯r jı¯) ndir kry sbdu Gt mih vsY ivchu Brmu gvwey ] qnu mnu inrmlu inrml bwxI nwmuo mMin vswey ] sbid gurU Bvswgru qrIAY ieq auq eyko jwxY ] ichnu vrnu nhI CwieAw mwieAw nwnk sbdu pCwxY ]59]
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 (niramalaba¯ nı¯). 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¯ makalı¯ 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 kı¯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, kı¯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, subjectivity 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 dialogue 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 instruments, etc.). The conference aimed to grapple with a hermeneutics that can cater for both musical evocation through praise (kı¯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 interplay and complement each other. Indeed, in daily practice, performance of kı¯rtan
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Figure 5.
Figure 6.
Audience (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
Jan Protopapas, Francesca Cassio, Arvind Mandair, Prabhsharandeep Singh, Inderjit Kaur.
(Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
(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 song’s rendition – and this
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Figure 7.
Madan Gopal Singh. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
cycle between the two may alternate many times during one performance, the combination 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 anthropological, others philosophical and religious, as well as those from within the fine art of performance. Below is 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¯ nı¯ Kı¯rtan. What is kı¯rtan?; Dr Raja Mrigendra Singh (Yale University and Guru¯ Nanak_ Dev University) Guru¯ -Sikh sacred music’s hermeneutics; Dr Francesca Cassio (Vicenza Conservatory, Italy) Learning shabad reets in Western contexts. An approach to cultural rules and universal experience of sound;
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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) Kı¯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 Kı¯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 kı¯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 d’eˆtre 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 individuals 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 other’s particular naming in their diversity, and so encourage one to mature in one’s views through an enrichment and refinement – for Sikhi is an edification – and such learning is the force against ideology, hegemony, and homogenization of the diversity of life: Ek (one) never displaces Anek, Asan˙ kh, Apa¯ r (many); the mind’s 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 GGS’s 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¯ nı¯-kı¯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 (mı¯ri-pı¯ri; sant-sipa¯ hı¯), 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¯nı¯-kı¯rtan sings? – _ a stand for the one that mysteriously remembers the Truth in the world and thus takes 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 delusion 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 Ihde’s Listening and voice: Phenomenologies of sound showed, back in 1976, how over-determined much theory and philosophy is by epistemologies of visual representation and metaphor. This oculocentrism has been combined by Derrida into an phallogocentrism, 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 perversities? Is sound or affect in general gendered? Is music sexist and/or racist? Given music’s 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 music’s 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 God’s flavor (har-ras), in the GGS: ‘All these spices have been made from the sound-current – na¯d (of the Word/Name)’ (GGS: 16, Sirı¯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, Sirı¯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, Sirı¯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 West’s bias of phallogocularcentrism, a Western ‘feminist’ critique has developed 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 dictated 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, cliche´d 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 distance. 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¯ nı¯ is, for _ as an the element of not being made or invented but actually being received, and received 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 autobiographical self’ (Becker 2004) in Gur-Sikh lexicon, a¯ p-gava¯¯ıai, 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. siqgur imilAY Dwvqu QMim@Aw inj Gir visAw Awey ] nwmu ivhwJy nwmu ley nwim rhy smwey ] Dwvqu QMim@Aw siqguir imilAY dsvw duAwru pwieAw ] iqQY AMimRq Bojnu shj Duin aupjY ijqu sbid jgqu QMim@ rhwieAw ] qh Anyk vwjy sdw Andu hY scy rihAw smwey ] ieau khY nwnku siqguir imilAY Dwvqu QMim@Aw inj Gir visAw Awey ]4]
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 Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people who are deeply disorientated by Alzheimer’s 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 distinguished through music – as the former is linked to music (e.g., bhajan) and the latter to silence (e.g., zazen). Gur-Shabad Kı¯rtan seems to involve both without either extreme, or perhaps their integration: its ecstasy is its enstasy, and its excitement its tranquility. jogI AMdir jogIAw ] qUM BogI AMdir BogIAw ]
Within the yogis, You are a Yogi; within the sensualists, You are a Sensualist. (GGS: 71, Sirı¯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¯ hı¯) way. That way is often understood as the way of ra¯ j-jog and as one involving jogı¯-bhogı¯ – viz., where ascetic renunciation is understood as inseparable from the sensuality of the householder life. This is because:
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eyk mih srb srb mih eykw eyh siqguir dyiK idKweI ]5]. . . moih gieAw bYrwgI jogI Git Git ikMgurI vweI ]9]
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¯makalı¯ Dakhanı¯, 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¯gta¯ l) and the symbolic (shabad) for the enlightened (gurmukh, paraupka¯rı¯, sant, bhagat, brahmgia¯ nı¯). The One Musical Word contains the silence of the yogi as a melody: eyko igAwnu iDAwnu Duin bwxI ]
Knowledge and meditation are contained in the one melody of the Word (dhuni-ba¯ nı¯). _ (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˙ gı¯t) into a court (darba¯r) entertainment, ignoring its soteriological context as part of a path (ma¯ rgiya-san˙ gı¯t). According to Dr Cassio (in this issue), Indian and Western scholars have focused extensively on the Shastriya San˙gı¯t (classical music) in its darba¯rı¯ (court) form, rather than documenting and analyzing the Margiya San˙gı¯t (sacred tradition) and its relation to the Deshı¯ (folk), as in the Gurmat. . . [and that actually] Gurmat San˙ gı¯t represents a unique case in which all three categories of Indian music (Deshı¯, Margiya and Shastriya) are combined together. There is a strong element of folk (Deshı¯) tradition in ballads such as the va¯r, and the lava¯n, together with the presence of devotional forms like the kı¯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). Kramer’s reflections are illuminating because they provide us with a preliminary lens through which to comprehend 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 movement 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 subtractability, and the second (where it connects with words and the contingent) its imprintability. 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 music’s autonomy and contingency can work in two ways:
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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 music’s ‘a priori ambiguity’ [between autonomy and contingency] (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 music’s 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 Singh’s paper below, Kramer employs a scene from George Eliot’s last novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), where a mother sings to her child: I think my life began with waking up and loving my mother’s 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 song’s contingency in the mother’s 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 songfulness 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 interruption 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 representation 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¯ nı¯-kı¯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-initself: 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan or -san˙ gı¯t, we can see these ambiguous forces working to _ tensions required for learning and growing beyond the language create the transitional 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan employs _ embodiment shabad and ra¯g-ta¯ l to speak beyond words and music towards an actual 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 selfishness, 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 (kı¯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 (kı¯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 one’s 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan is thus forever pointing beyond itself as text, as book, as shabad, via its _ structure and frame of rag-tal, towards the surprising and revolutionary musicological ¯ ¯ intimacy of a being in constant becoming. The child does not ‘remember the
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mother’s voice as a timbre but as a source of intimacy’ (ibid., 54). Gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯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-kı¯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, Spitzer’s Music and philosophy (2006) begins with an epigraph from Schleiermacher: ‘There can be no concept of a style.’ This rather obvious though overlooked 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:
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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 hermeneutic 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 Benjamin’s 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 correlations 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 Singh’s 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 understanding 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 inextricability 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¯ nı¯-kı¯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 ungovernable art, yet an art that nevertheless requires provisional or contingent ‘rules’ to manifest. Music as feeling par excellence creates a value in transgressing all hermeneutic meaning, tradition, and codification. Neither can this interpretation, which reads gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯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 Word’s transgressive love, the force of unconditional freedom to renew itself. Would not then traditions, in capturing the treasure of gurba¯ nı¯kı¯rtan, to some extent restrict not what gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan has been or is, but what_ it _ cannot be contained and reduced could be? Is this not why the force of multiplicity to singularity? Though there may be much to learn from employing hermeneutic theories of the meaning of music, one perhaps needs to recognize that music is the ultimate 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. Hermeneutic 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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Anhd bwxI gurmuiK vKwxI jsu suix suix mnu qnu hirAw ]
The Gurmukh chants the Unstruck/Speechless –Speech (anahad-ba¯ nı¯); hearing it, _ listening to it, my mind and body are rejuvenated. (GGS: 781, Su¯ hı¯, Guru¯ Arjan) It seems to me that the Name’s or gurshabad’s 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:
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swc kI miq sdw nauqn sbid nyhu nvylE ]
The Teachings of Truth are forever new; the love of the Shabad is forever fresh. (GGS: 242, Gaurı¯ Pu¯ rabı¯, Guru¯ Na¯nak) _ swihbu myrw nIq nvw sdw sdw dwqwru ]1] rhwau ]
My Master is forever fresh and new; He is the Giver, forever and ever. !1!Pause! (GGS: 660, Dhana¯ sarı¯, 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 disciplinary 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 GGS’s textual clues to understand its musicality (ra¯g-ta¯ l), Bhai Baldeep Singh points out that that textual evidence 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/technical traditions. Being a thirteenth-generation exponent of gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan, Bhai Baldeep Singh argues _ today – though much has been that the tradition has not been broken and is still extant
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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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan and those who are not. For the _ must undergo an intensive and disciexponents to become tradition-bearers they plined training to the satisfaction of acknowledged masters of that tradition. Yet that very tradition has always been diverse, and hence Bhai Baldeep Singh’s research includes engaging the ‘memory-banks’ among the Gur-Sikhs, Namdharis, and the Muslim Raba¯bı¯s. Bhai Baldeep Singh’s article therefore involves a wide-ranging and illuminating discussion about what kı¯rtan is – given that its uniqueness is centered not around music, but around (spiritual) enlightenment for, as he argues, ‘gurba¯ nı¯ kı¯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 one’s personal and public life. Thus, within the context of realization and awakening, gurba¯ nı¯_ kı¯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¯ nı¯-kı¯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 tradition of gurba¯nı¯-kı¯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 therefore 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan tradition lies, then, in the insight that meaning often _ rather than merely in what is said. This is because tone, lies in how something is said 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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Figure 8.
Bhai Baldeep Singh. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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 kı¯rtan is, exploring initially what he calls its four pillars: ra¯g, ta¯ l, shabad and
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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¯ nı¯-kı¯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 rı¯ts, gurba¯ nı¯ compositions – _ ¯ s, do not create where he makes the important point that, unlike musicians, the Guru gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan but receive it as revelation – and then goes on to explore the difference _ a revealed and a composed song. This discussion ends with a list of 22 vital between elements that define what gurba¯nı¯-kı¯rtan is. The article then discusses the importance _ rıts of the Guru¯ s, and what, therefore, kırtan is of experiencing the original shabad ¯ ¯ 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan and its peaking [elite] performers’ _ with Dr Navtej Purewal’s article – which (Singh, 2011, 272). (Compare this view 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¯ nı¯-kı¯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 Linden’s 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 Singh’s sense), is nevertheless researching the area of gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan. Kaur’s article argues that _ kı¯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 kı¯rtan should instigate a move from sound to the soundless; from entertainment to liberation. It is, however, problematic to frame one’s 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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hir hir hir gunI hW ] jpIAY shj DunI hW ] swDU rsn BnI hW ] CUtn ibiD sunI hW ] pweIAY vf punI myry mnw ]1] rhwau ]
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¯varı¯, Guru¯ Arjan)
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AMqir joiq sbdu Duin jwgY siqguru Jgru inbyrY ]3]
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¯ jarı¯, Guru¯ Na¯nak) Duin mih iDAwnu iDAwn mih jwinAw gurmuiK AkQ khwnI ]3]
The meditation is in the music, and knowledge is in meditation; become Gurmukh, and speak the Unspoken Speech. !3! (GGS: 879, Ra¯ makalı¯, 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 sargun to the other-worldly nirgun, then a deeply problematic regime of hierarchical _ is thereby set up, and they _ ultimately split not only body and affect from binaries 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 absorption, 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 Kaur’s claim that ‘we do not have direct evidence of the original oral tradition’ (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 tradition’s 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 guidance 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 nonstarter. Nevertheless, there is a critique of ra¯g-ta¯ l in the GGS, but it is a qualified critique, 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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Figure 9.
Inderjit Nilu Kaur. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh)
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 tradition’s practice: to re-read renunciation of the world ( jogı¯) within the embracing of the world via the householder’s life (bhogı¯); to engage in the world, which not only demands saintly contemplation (sant) but also the need to cultivate a warrior’s fearlessness (sipa¯ hı¯); 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 one’s 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 Kaur’s argument, this means that gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯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 dualistic logic by having to justify why ‘it is not that music is of no significance’ (2011, 308). Yet for the Guru¯ s, nirgun exists exactly where sargun 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): myrw pRBu sd rihAw BrpUir ]5]
My Lord is always fully pervading everywhere. !5! (GGS: 842, Bila¯valu, Guru¯ Amar Da¯s)
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Inderjit Kaur’s 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-Sikh’s Music in the Word and the Word in the Music.
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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 attention to semiological and philological reflections on the pedagogical philosophy of teaching gurba¯nı¯-san˙ gı¯t within Western, secular contexts. This leads her to explore a number of _ but perhaps the most important is to chart the implications of the systematization themes, 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 education’ (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¯lı¯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 Singh’s Gurmat Vidyalay at Rakab Gunj Gudwara, Delhi; Professor Kartar Singh’s Gurmat Sangit Academy in Anandpur; the Shahid Sikh Missionary College in Amritsar; Sant Baba Sucha Singh’s Jawaddi Taksal as well as the allied Principal Sukhwant Singh’s 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 Bhatkande’s system, using instead a traditional teaching method, and that is the Institute of Arts, Aesthetics, Cultural Tradition and Development Studies of Bhai Baldeep’s 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 Bhatkande’s era’ (2011, 320). Combining this thought about the past with the current pedagogical scene, Cassio notes that the key ‘question about teaching Gurmat San˙ gı¯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¯rı¯/‘court entertainment’) performed during the Sikh Guru¯ s’ time, Cassio writes that out of the four types of darba¯rı¯ dhrupad then extant: Nahuar-ba¯nı¯, Gauhar-ba¯nı¯, Khandhar-ba¯nı¯ and Dagar-ba¯nı¯ – only the latter has survived into the present. In agreement with Bhai Baldeep Singh that perhaps Gurba¯nı¯-San˙ gı¯t was the fifth form of medieval dhrupad, Cassio argues that the possible links _between these two forms of dhrupad (Gur-ba¯nı¯ and Dagar-ba¯nı¯), 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¯nı¯ as dhrupad alone, given her acknowledgement of the important diversity of genres _in the GGS, which also includes folk genres.
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Figure 10.
Francesca Cassio. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
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 performance, for in gurba¯nı¯ ‘there is no separation between the word and the sonic dimension’ _ other scriptures ‘tuning, melody and rhythm’ become integral to (2011, 330); unlike hearing the Word. Thus, she argues that ‘the point where the power of sound
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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
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. . . 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 Cassio’s research ultimately points to what she calls the necessity for an intercultural pedagogical method. Through this new method she aims to locate reflections upon gurba¯ nı¯ san˙ gı¯t within the new academic context of international musicology. Dr Cassio is _ trained to do such work, given her professional background in ethnomusiuniquely cology, Indian and Western classical music and gurba¯nı¯-san˙ gı¯t, as well as her, no less _ India). Dr Cassio’s method important, teaching across cultures (Europe, USA and 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 engagement with the Gur-Sikh tradition of gurba¯nı¯-san˙ gı¯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 Chaunkı¯. 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 phenomenological 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 illuminating 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 anthropological depiction of the event as a unique form of social interaction. Employing concepts derived from Judith Becker’s Deep listerners (2004), Protopapas argues that a ‘habitus of listening’ is created through the ‘deep listening’ that the kı¯rtan chaunkı¯ 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 experienced, 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 ´sabad 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, 361 – 2) 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 ´sabad kı¯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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan]’ (2011, 362). _
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5. Navtej Purewal Concomitant with the entry of gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan into the academic arena, come a whole array _ and diametrically opposed tension between two of new questions, beyond the narrow 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 Purewal’s and Dr van der Linden’s 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 Purewal’s paper provides an excellent case in point by charting the beginnings of a social history of the raba¯ bi tradition of gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan beyond the narrow and distorting _ its divisive identity politics. Thus, she confines of a foreign religious nomenclature and 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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan from the production of _ Thus, before the horror of identity by wider socio-political movements and events. 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 kı¯rtan to Sikhs alone (ostracizing Muslim raba¯ bı¯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¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan to return to a ra¯g-ta¯ l form of ‘traditional’ _ kı¯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 scenario 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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Figure 12.
Navtej Purewal. (Photograph courtesy of Bhai Baldeep Singh).
has been lost to theological ‘world religions’ history’ (2011, 369). Rather than search for kı¯rtan in the pure form of sound, Purewal locates kı¯rtan in the social – allowing her to chart the shifting significance and evolution of various religious identities and institutions 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¯ bı¯s alongside other non-Muslim performers of kı¯rtan: the bhatts and the ra¯gı¯s. __ Purewal argues that Guru¯ Arjan catalyzed a profound change and evolution of kı¯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¯bı¯s Bhai Satta and Balwand (compare Bhai Baldeep Singh’s version of this story and its implications). Thus synchronically there existed the ‘folklore tradition of the bhatts, the Muslim _ Sikh Kı¯rtan hereditary position of the raba¯bı¯s and the sangat-based tradition of _the 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 kı¯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¯ bı¯ and other boundary-crossing traditions’ (2011, 376) connected with gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯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¯ nı¯-kı¯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.
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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-locates gurba¯ nı¯-kı¯rtan within the context of ‘world music’, trying along the way to ascertain ‘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¯ bı¯ tradition as a result of the Sikh Rahit Maryada, as well as the professionalization of kı¯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 kı¯rtan, as well as Sikh identity politics, since the Singh Sabha reformation’ (2011, 386), though, unlike Bhai Baldeep Singh’s reading of such events, Linden does not take into account how such figures resisted the Empire’s requests. Part of Linden’s argument is that all such movements ‘became engulfed in processes of modernization, canonization, and identity politics since the Singh Sabha reformation. . . that all the kı¯rtanists mentioned became more or less involved with the SGPC and the DSGMC, Sikh educational institutions and conferences, modern recording and new media technologies, changing public tastes, the Sikh Diaspora and so on’ (2011, 388 – 9). 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 Singh’s 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 kı¯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 processes of aesthetic change and commodification’ (2011, 392) – such that today gurba¯ nı¯_ kı¯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 transforming 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 determine how a cluster of traditions evolve over time and are disseminated, but specifically how dhrupad, khya¯ l and gurba¯ nı¯ kı¯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.
References Aldridge, David, and Jo¨rg Fachner, eds. 2009. Music and altered states: Consciousness, transcendence, therapy and addiction. London: Jessica Kingsley (first published 2006). Becker, Judith. 2004. Deep listeners: Music, emotion, and trancing. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Benzon, William. L. 2001. Beethoven’s anvil: Music in mind and culture. New York: Basic Books. Bhogal, Balbinder S. 2001. On the hermeneutics of Sikh thought and praxis. In Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity, ed. C. Shackle, G. Singh and A Mandair, 72 – 96. Richmond, UK: Curzon. Bhogal, Balbinder S. 2005. Questioning hermeneutics with Freud: How to interpret dreams and mute-speech in Sikh scripture. Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 1, no. 1: 93 –125.
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THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC (R#G) AND WORD (SHABAD) Balbinder Singh Bhogal Available online: 20 Jan 2012
To cite this article: Balbinder Singh Bhogal (2011): THE HERMENEUTICS OF SIKH MUSIC (R#G) AND WORD (SHABAD), Sikh Formations, 7:3, 211-244 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2011.640420
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