Guest Artist | Gurbānī kīrtan

Event time: 
Saturday, April 9, 2016 - 1:30pm to 3:00pm
Location: 
Luce Hall Auditorium See map
34 Hillhouse Ave.
New Haven, CT 06511
Admission: 
Free
Open to: 
General Public
Event description: 

Singing at the Gurū’s Court: The Dhrupad of the Gurbānī kīrtan Tradition

also: Public Lecture/Demonstration on Friday – info here.


The performance of Gurbānī kīrtan was established by Gurū Nānak, the founder of Sikhism, in Northwest India during the late 15th century. Since then, kīrtan has been a core practice of the Sikh faith, based on the singing of spiritual hymns. Set to gas and tālas, the chants are performed throughout the day at the Srī Darbār Sāhib (Lord’s court), the holy shrine in Amritsar. More than 5000 hymns have been collected in the Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, the Sikh holy book indexed according to 31 rāgas and their 31 varieties. This volume includes compositions by the Sikh Masters, and poems attributed to Hindu and Sufi medieval mystics, such as Bhagat Namdev, Bhagat Kabir and Sheikh Farid. The Sikh tradition flourished at the crossroads of the Hindu and Muslim milieus, while maintaining the integrity of its own critically inclusive but unique vision. This is reflected in the multifaceted, and yet coherent, corpus of ancient compositions passed on by professional temple musicians, called rāgīs.

The concert will showcase, in particular, the repertoire transmitted by the lineage of Bhāī Jwālā Singh (1879-1952), a legendary rāgī of the Srī Darbār Sāhib. As established in 1968, by a special committee of the Punjabi University of Patiala, this repertoire includes original dhrupad and partāl compositions from the Sikh Gurus’ time (late 15th to early 18th centuries). In comparison with other dhrupad traditions, Gurbānī reveals its distinctive identity, not only for its array of rare rāgas and tālas, but also for being shaped by the sounds of unique instruments, such as the taūs and the jorī-pakhāwaj, whose creation is attributed to the Sikh Gurūs.


Francesca Cassio, Associate Professor and Chair of Sikh Musicology at Hofstra University (NY), has conducted extensive research in India. She was trained in classical vocal music by Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Khan Dagar and Vidushi Girija Devi, and in the Gurbānī kīrtan repertoire by Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh. An accomplished scholar, Dr. Cassio is the author of several publications, including a monograph on dhrupad. In 2015 she was awarded the Stessin Prize for outstanding scholarly publication, with the article “Female Voices in Gurbānī Sangīt and the Role of the Media in promoting Female Kīrtanīe.

Parminder Singh Bhamra, assistant professor of percussion at Anād Conservatory and visiting scholar at Hofstra University, is an exponent of the Amritsari style of Indian percussion. He is a senior disciple of Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh.

Nirvair Kaur Khalsa, founder and director of Khalsa Montessori School in Tucson, Arizona, is currently president of Anād USA, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of Gurbānī kīrtan and other heritage treasures. She has studied Gurbānī kīrtan and taūs under the guidance of Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh. 

Presented with support from the South Asian Studies Council