Sikh music is the classical music style that is practised within Sikhism. It exists in institutional, popular, and folk traditions, forms, and varieties. Three types of Sikh musicians are rababis, ragis, and dhadhis. Sikh music exists in various melodic modes, musical forms, styles, musicians, and performance contexts.
Terminology Sikh music is also known as Gurbani Sangeet (; meaning music of the speech of wisdom), or Gurmat Sangeet (; meaning music of the counsel or tenets of the Guru), and also as Shabad Kirtan (). There is no clear consenus on which term should take precedence to name the entirety of Sikh musicology, described as a parampara (tradition). The term Gurbani Sangeet pre-dates the term Gurmat Sangeet. Other terms include Puratan, which is used in revivalist contexts for traditional Sikh musicology.
Whilst the term Gurmat Sangeet has come to be used as a name for all Sikh kirtan performed as per the prescribed ragas found within the Sikh scripture, Inderjit Kaur believes a more fitting term for the raga genre is "rāg-ādhārit shabad kīrtan". She further believes that the Sikh musicology as a whole should be referred to as "gurmat sangīt shāstar/vigyān", of which, raga kirtan is a genre found within.
History
Period of the Sikh gurus
Musical expression has held a very important place within the Sikh tradition ever since its beginning, with Guru Nanak and his faithful companion, Bhai Mardana. Textual traditions connecting Guru Nanak and Mardana to music include the Janamsakhis and the Varan of Bhai Gurdas. There are also artistic depictions of Guru Nanak and Mardana as musicians amid various 18th and 19th century paintings, where Guru Nanak is shown singing whilst Mardana is playing his instrument.
References made to music during the time of Guru Nanak found within the Varan of Bhai Gurdas, includes:
Regarding the Kartarpur chapter of Guru Nanak's life, Bhai Gurdas states:
Mardana was a player of the rabab (plucked lute), and would travel alongside Nanak and play the instrument when Nanak spoke his teachings. As a result of this, Mardana is credited as establishing the rababi tradition in Sikhism. When Guru Nanak received a revelation, he would exclaim: "Mardaneya! Rabab chhed, bani aayee hai" ['Mardana, play the rabab, bani (sacred composition/verse) has occurred to me'].
After Guru Nanak settled down in the locality he founded, known as Kartarpur, the accompanying verse compositions to the music he and Mardana conjured were recorded in various pothis, of which the Guru Harsahai Pothi claims to be an extant text of this kind.
During the time of Guru Nanak, the predominant musical tradition of the era was the dhrupad and dhamar, which ended up influencing this early Sikh musical expression. Later, other musical traditions, such as khayal, tappa, and qawwali, began to influence the Sikhs.
After the passing of Guru Nanak, his successors would continue to expand Sikh musicology and add new flavours and colours to it. Guru Angad, the second guru and immediate successor of Nanak, regularized the chanting of the Āsā kī Vār ("Ballad of Hope") composition in the early morning hours as a carol. Angad's successor, Guru Amar Das, institutionalized the practice of ending kirtan performances with the Ānand ("Bliss") composition. As for the next guru, Guru Ram Das regulated the performance of the Lāvāṅ verses as kirtan to form the prime component of Sikh wedding ceremonies.
According to popular Sikh tradition, Guru Arjan was a player of the sarandā (waisted bowed lute) and is also remembered as the inventor of the upright jọṛī (drum pair), which he had derived from an older instrument known as the mridang. Guru Arjan was also the one who compiled the Adi Granth, the first edition of what would become the Guru Granth Sahib later-on, which was and remains the main source for Sikh religious musical theory and practice. Guru Arjan is further credited with establishing the practice of there being five kirtan chaukīs (sittings) at the Harmandir Sahib shrine in Amritsar. The five sittings of kirtan that were established by him are as follows:
early morning chaukī performance of the Asa ki Var mid-morning chaukī performance of the Anand mid-day chaukī performance of the Charan Kanwal evening chaukī performance of Sodar nighttime chaukī performance of Kalyan
In a case of mythology interacting with history, various instruments' origin is credited to Sikh gurus. The tāūs (bowed fretted lute) and dilruba are ultimately of Iranic origins, with the taus designed into a unique peacock shape and introduced into Sikh music by Guru Hargobind and the later dilruba invented by Guru Gobind Singh. The saranda is traced back to Guru Amar Das and Guru Arjun. Furthermore, the Sikh gurus actively patronized and encouraged the musical development of professional kirtan performers.
Post-guru period
The first decline of Sikh musical traditions began following the death of Guru Gobind Singh and execution of Banda Singh Bahadur in the early 18th century. After the death of Banda, the Sikhs had to disperse to places of safe haven during state persecution and thus their established musical institutions could not easily be sustained whilst they were fighting for survival. At many points during the 18th century, no kirtan was being performed at the central Sikh shrine of Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar due to the reigning governments' genocidal policies enacted against the Sikhs. However, later on the same century, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, who himself was a renowned kirtankar, restarted many Sikh musical traditions that had been on the brink of extinction. The various Sikh states (especially Patiala, Nabha, and Kapurthala) of the 19th century also did their part on ensuring the smooth passing of Sikh musical tradition throughout the generations by patronizing many Sikh musicians.
In the early 19th century, the harmonium began to be used amongst local musicians, eventually including Sikhs, in the Indian subcontinent; however, its adoption would have devastating impacts on native Sikh instruments. The harmonium was easy to learn and play, plus it was easily transported, which led to it becoming popular and eventually replacing many local Sikh instruments. However, the harmonium is unsuited for playing traditional raga music because of its rigidness, fixed-state, and equal-temperament tuning that cannot create the microtonal inflections and ornaments required within raga music.
Then around the turn of the 20th century, a group of Sikh scholars, namely Charan Singh, Kahn Singh Nabha, and Vir Singh, promoted traditional Sikh music as part of the religious community's "identity, culture, and society." During the partition of Punjab in 1947, one of the three Sikh traditional music institutions, the Rababis, would suffer a deathblow it has not since recovered from, as many former Muslim rababis who had performed at Sikh shrines moved away to Pakistan and future performances by Muslim rababis at Sikh sites was barred by the Sikh clergy due to changing sociocultural norms. The Muslim rababis did not have any Sikh patrons in the newly formed Pakistan, as the local Sikhs also left for India, leaving their traditional art in decline.
These reoccurring disturbances also led to the decline of many aspects of Sikh musical tradition. Sikh music performed as per the musical modes, melodies, and forms prescribed as per the Guru Granth Sahib declined greatly. This was accompanied by a decline in the usage of traditional Sikh instruments, especially stringed-instruments (such as the rabab, saranda, and tāūs [bowed fretted lute]) which were mostly supplanted by the introduced harmonium by the early-to-mid-20th century. Additionally in the same time period, traditional drum instruments, such as the mridang and jori, also became scarce amongst the Sikhs, having been replaced by the tablā.
Changes can also be observed regarding the size of kirtan groups who were performing. Before, it was normal for there to be four performers (chaukī, literally, “four”, consisting of a vocalist, supporting vocalist, stringed melodic instrument player, and drummer) but the standard size of a kirtan group performance was reduced to a trio of three persons. This reduction in a role is due to the decline of stringed instruments, as before there was a dedicated stringed-instrumentalist in a kirtan group. Nowadays kirtan groups consist of the two vocalists playing the harmonium alongside a drummer on the tabla.
In recent times, the traditional raga based Sikh musical tradition (including singing the partal with a complex array of taals) has fallen out of favour and been replaced with "semi-classical, light, light, folk or even filmy" styles. However, efforts are being undertaken to revive traditional Sikh raga musical expression. Traditional Sikh instruments have been supplanted by the harmonium, violin, mandolin, and electronic keyboard, and are at risk of extinction.
Revival and documentation of the traditional forms
The first effort to revive the musical traditions of the Sikhs in their autochenous form, incorporating both the historical instruments, metres, and modes, began in the 1930s–1940s by the Sikh Reht Maryada movement. During the 1970s, the Namdhari leader, Jagjit Singh, tried in his own effort to revive the musical traditions of the Sikhs. Many youth were trained in traditional Gurmat Sangeet at Bhaini Sahib through the Namdhari effort. The next push for the revival of Sikh traditional music was in 1991 during the Adutti Gurmat Sangeet Sammellan at Gurdwara Gur Gian Prakash, or the Jawwadi Taksal, in Ludhiana. The Jawwadi Taksal sought to bring back traditional instruments that the harmonium had supplanted and revive the usage of raga metres and modes. In circa 2007, the SGPC made a similar push to resurrect the traditional Sikh instruments and ragas at its gurdwaras but this was a short-lived attempt and was given up on after three or four lessons due to the difficulty of teaching the musical performers the traditional methods and tools. It has been argued by Amandeep Singh (dilruba player) that the harmonium distracts the congregation whilst the traditional instruments help create a meditative experience.
Some scholarly work has been conducted to identify original raga traditions that were invented and performed by the Sikhs. The Punjabi University of Patiala conducted work in 1979 for this purpose, analyzing the musical traditions practiced by the eleventh-generation familial ragi brothers, Gurcharan Singh and Avtar Singh, eventually publishing their study of 500 shabad executions plus the notations by the two brothers under the title Gūrbāni Sangīt: Prāchīn Rīt Ratnāvalī. In 1991, during the traditional Sikh musicology campaign by the Ludhiana Jawaddi Kalan (Sikh school of music), an audio-recording effort of traditional Sikh ragi families' performances, in-order to document and preserve the Sikh music tradition, was overseen by Sant Succha Singh. A committee was formed for the purpose of identifying the authentic Sikh raga traditions and renditions of various raga types, known as the Rag Nirnayak Committee. The findings of the committee were commended upon by Gurnam Singh in 2000. A later and updated edition of the Gūrbāni Sangīt: Prāchīn Rīt Ratnāvalī provides the views of the late Bhai Avtar Singh Ragi on the subject of autochenous Sikh raga traditions and styles. Greater investigation is needed to look at the issue in further-depth, such as viewing the diverse rag-form and notation material, and also the identification of different rag versions with different taksāls (schools of music). Inderjit Kaur's research on ghar variants of different ragas links the usage of many of them to the Sikh gurus, which could legitimize their usage in contemporary Sikh musical performances.
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