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The Magic & Mystery of Music

by I.J. SINGH

 

 

It was around five on a Saturday morning and my wife was still sleeping. I could not sleep because Monday to Friday I am up early, and with the passing of the years my internal physiological clock has become more insistent. I made myself a cup of tea and put on a CD of Aasa di Vaar, a composition from the Guru Granth.

The opening lines informed me that this was a ballad written in Raag Aasa to be sung to the melody of "Tunda Asraaja." (The poetry of the Guru Granth is largely, though not entirely, set to music in the classical system of Indian music. The shabads - the hymns of the Guru Granth - are in 31 ragas. Raag Aasa is one of them.)

The raagi (singer) was excellent. At its conclusion, my mind wandered to the melody of "Tunda Asraaja." I wondered where that melody had come from and why it rated a mention in the Guru Granth.

Much of the Guru Granth - with minor exceptions - consists of hymns that are composed to be performed in raag - a system of classical musicology unique to the subcontinent. The raag, beat and tempo are specified and the good raagis respect the tradition, but not as often as they should. Even the best raagis usually sing the first hymn in raag, and that takes about 10 minutes. Subsequent hymns in a program that might last two hours usually follow catchy tunes and hummable melodies.

The story of "Tunda Asraaja" comes to us from the time and space where the subcontinent's history and mythology intersect. The story speaks of a minor king of a small principality who took a younger wife. The king also had a young, handsome, strapping son from his first marriage. The young queen became enamored of her stepson. The son resisted the seduction but was falsely accused by the spurned queen and sentenced to death. One of his hands was chopped off - hence the descriptive tunda, literally, "one without hands," for the hapless prince - and he was banished from the kingdom. In time the truth came out. He returned in honor and all was well.

Similar petty rendering of the humdrum and universal trivia of life can also be found in Greek, Arab or Irish folklore. The Old Testament provides more elaborate examples. The literal truth of such tales cannot be ascertained and is unimportant to their metaphorical meaning. It would hardly deserve a place in scriptural writing.

In Aasa di Vaar, Guru Nanak was writing of lofty philosophy, universal principles and divine truth. Nothing is to be gained from the retelling of a tawdry tale of human weakness, and the Gurus never recommended that such tales form the basis of Sikh teaching, reflection or emulation. Why, then, did Guru Nanak draw our attention to this tale of human failing and temptation?

Mind you, he was not the only Guru to do so. There are several vaars (ballads) in the Guru Granth, and most of them carry the instruction that they be performed to some well-known folk melody of the time. Many folk melodies were based on similar tales in dramatic or sizzling detail. Now, several hundred years later, these instructions are meaningless to most of us; we neither know the melodies nor the stories that went with them.

I wonder what the Gurus were thinking when they prescribed both the raag and the folk melody for the singing of the liturgy. Admittedly, the recommended tune is derived from the raaa that has been specified in the Guru Granth, so it is not that you may sing either in raag or in a folk tune. In fact, most folk ballads of those days were raag based.

The fact that the hymns of the Guru Granth are principally composed in the classical mode of music tells me that the Gurus truly explored and celebrated the Ultimate Reality through the magic and mystery of music. The beauty of this is what they wished to communicate and teach. At the same time, I believe that the Gurus also recognized that the common person knew little and cared less about classical music. To appreciate good music requires training and a discerning ear. Such an educated ear does not occur by accident, except rarely; it is acquired by exposure, learning and discipline. Yet most people, even those blessed with only a tin ear, will sway to a rhythm, though not always gracefully, and hum a tune, even if tunelessly.

Music can indeed move mountains.

Preaching can be deadly dull. It can put intelligent minds to sleep. (I have taught enough years to know that ultimately the only person left standing, awake and interested after a long lecture is the lecturer.) The Gurus knew all this. Then why not bring people to the lessons of life and its philosophy through poetry that can touch people's soul via music that they already hum and whistle in their streets and in their lives? In time their tin ears will become refined and sensitized to the notes of a different music. In time people will evolve to reach and hear the matchless music of the classical tradition.

Ultimately, the goal of kirtan lies beyond even that.

Its goal is to train the inner ear - the heart and soul - that responds and vibrates to the celestial music within, music that springs without a chord being struck and requires no musical instrument except that of a willing and open heart. This is what the Gurus intended.

The Gurus used popular music, language and the poetical idiom of the day to bring their message to the Sikhs. I think this was the reason for specifying melodies and tunes from the folk ballads of the day. In more modern times, I have heard of quawaals (they sing popular music often in an entrancing mixture of raag-based folk melodies with a lot of improvisation, in situations somewhat like jam sessions that can last hours) singing gurbani in a style that is traditionally more suited to revelry.

Keeping all this in mind, I cannot become too impatient or intolerant of raagis who adopt and adapt tunes of Bollywood to the hymns from the Guru Granth. This is why I can also enjoy someone singing a shabad accompanied by a guitar strummed in country and western mode. It is true that a popular or catchy tune might distract us from gurbani by drawing our attention to the
words and poetry of the song, but can we not hope that in time the power of the word in gurbani will overpower the words, poetry and mood of the Bollywood lyric?

Let me illustrate my concerns and thinking with a case study.

Dya Singh is a turbaned Sikh of Indian origin, who was born and raised in Malaysia. He is excellently trained both in the raags of gurbani and in Western music. God gave him a mellifluous voice with talent galore. So he performs gurbani keertan. He sings the Sikh liturgy, but his music doesn't hew to tradition all that much. He has become an expert at the fusion of Eastern and Western rhythms, medleys and instruments.

The result is a unique and electrifying product, very different from the kirtan we are used to in gurdwaras. His tunes are catchy and hummable. Young Sikhs who usually slink away from gurdwaras follow him around from gurdwara to gurdwara as if he were the Pied Piper.

Now, here's the rub. The last time I attended one of his performances - I should call it a concert - young Sikhs came out of the woodwork to attend and enjoy, but many of the older Sikhs of a different generation, including the local granthi (in a gurdwara, he's somewhat comparable to a pastor or a minister), were visibly upset.

These keepers of our faith were not pleased. The only Sikhs in his ensemble were Dya Singh himself and his daughter. There was a Nepalese Hindu on the tabla and a couple of 'white' Australians of Christian background - one playing a native Australian instrument, the other strumming a guitar.

To many, this was mind-boggling. What are we to make of the ruling that only Sikhs should perform kirtan in a gurdwara? There is considerable irony in such an edict. We forget that Bhai Mardana was a Muslim who accompanied Guru Nanak, as was the first dhaaddi (singer of Sikh ballads), Abdul Natha, in the time of the Sixth Guru.

As Gurmukh Singh, a British scholar, pointed out to me, Bhai Chaand - a celebrated raagi and an exponent of the rebab (a stringed instrument probably of Middle Eastern origin) - was Muslim, as is Bhai Lal, the present raagi at Nankana Sahib in Pakistan.

Parenthetically, I want to point out to you another enigmatic cultural Sikh practice that has baffled and bothered me to no end, and still does. In gurdwaras all over the world, in places ranging from Indian villages to New York, I have seen women sing the liturgy ... except in the Harmandar - the Golden Temple - at Amritsar! This ban on women singing in the Harmandar was lifted
only 10 or 15 years ago, when a special exemption was made for a group of women singers from North America. The law may have changed, but the general practice at this historically most important gurdwara still remains unchanged, regressive and contrary to Sikh teachings of gender equality.

I remind you again that I come from a bias that likes to hear every shabad sung in the raag specified for it in the Guru Granth. But that is so rarely heard, even from the best-known traditional raagees. I also enjoy kirtan in folk tunes and catchy rhythms, which is what most raagis perform. But such performances hardly ever upset the guardians of our tradition.

Look at it another way. I enjoy a violin concerto by David Oistrakh or Isaac Stern, but am not averse to country music or jazz. I love Hariprasad Chaurasia and Ravi Shankar, but a ghazal (a lyric often, but not necessarily, romantic, sung by a crooner in the intricate style of Indian music) rendering by Jagjit Singh can be equally satisfying in a different context.

So why not let Dya Singh do his thing? It is different and may not be everyone's cup of tea, but where is the harm? Just as many of us graduated from nursery rhymes to love classical music and even opera, some of his listeners might fall in love with gurbani by listening to pop-kirtan.

I agree that a shabad tune derived largely from an extremely trendy party song can be distracting. Performers need to watch their step in such matters. If a rendering of a hymn connects the listener to the Infinite, fine; if it does not, then we need to recast the hymn to a different melody. The idea is to bring the listener to a closer awareness of the celestial music within - what gurbani calls the music that springs forth without the striking of a note.

People also point out that at times Dya Singh performs in less than ideal settings - away from gurdwaras - where some of the audience may be drinking or smoking and without the reassuring presence of the Guru Granth. As a Sikh, I am troubled by such criticism. But then I think, when Guru Nanak traveled from place to place and performed his heavenly kirtan, did he mandate that his audience sit in a particular posture, in a clean setting, in a spiritual ambience, with their heads covered and shoes removed, or did he expect that the magic of his kirtan, which brought people to him, would also transform them and make them behave differently, in time if not immediately.

I remember that in the 1960s, in the heyday of the Beatles and the drug culture, the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, at the start of his outdoor concerts, would forcefully direct his audience to refrain from consuming alcohol and from smoking tobacco or pot. There is no reason why any artist cannot follow such a practice.

I am also baffled at how upset some people become just because of Dya Singh's fusion of Indian and Western musical traditions. Why go ballistic here? When a guitar-strumming convert to Sikhism sings a ballad to the glory of the Khalsa or a shabad in his heavily accented Punjabi, we are full of admiration. Do we have a double standard here? It seems to me that kirtan should be so that the dignity of gurbani is not lessened.

But we need not be so thin skinned about it. The important thing is to bring the music of our Gurus and their teachings to those who will never hear them otherwise.

My personal bias is to favor kirtan in raag, but most of the current crop of raagis shy away from it and prefer pop music. Here, I merely take charitable note of this; by no means do I intend to diminish classical music or the appreciation of it. Classical raag can effortlessly merge the shabad with the mood and the aura as nothing else can.

Perhaps, then, it is possible to live with the juxtaposition in the same setting of some kirtan in raag, along with liturgy in the mixed beat and distracting tunes of popular culture. Do not forget that, just as in the time of the Gurus, even now not many people recognize classical music or have the patience for it.

Some years ago I invited some raagis for kirtan at our house and requested that they sing every shabad in the raag specified in the Guru Granth. They demurred, suggesting rightly that most of the sangat will remain unmoved. In humor, I responded that my living room was small and unable to accommodate fully the sangat, so, if the raagis sang in raag, guests who appreciated their singing would stay while others would saunter off into the backyard.

And that is exactly what happened.

In any event, the fault lies neither with Bollywood nor with the stars.

 

[Edited from the original which first appeared in Being & Becoming a Sikh, by I.J. Singh. 2003. Pages 65-71. The Centennial
Foundation, Guelph, Ontario, Canada]


July 13, 2010
ijsingh99@gmail.com




 

Conversation about this article

1: Gobinder Singh (U.S.A.), July 14, 2010, 5:05 PM.

I.J. Singh ji touched upon a subject which is close to my heart. I have heard Asa di Vaar by many ragis and it usually follows certain style distinctive from traditional singing of shabads. I wonder if it's similar to the folk tune of Tunde Asaraaje di dhunni? But we hardly ever hear any of the other vaars sung in the prescribed dhunnis. The argument for traditional versus contemporary kirtan style is a mute point. Even most of the 'traditinal' ragis use harmonium for their kirtan. Hardly a traditional/ authentic instrument. Ragis like Bhai Avtar Singh ji and Bhai Balbir Singh ji carried on the original style of kirtan with tanti saaz (stringed instruments).

2: Raj (Canada), July 14, 2010, 11:14 PM.

I wanted to record and publish all "Dhunnies" in the Guru Granth Sahib and shared my desire with Bhai Avtar Singh ji on his last trip to Alberta. He loved the concept and promised to be part of the project. But, a few days later I found out he had fallen sick and was returning to India immediately. I never asked Kultar Veer ji if he was familiar with those dhunnies.

3: Ravinder Singh Taneja (Westerville, Ohio, U.S.A.), July 15, 2010, 10:09 PM.

Whatever grabs you, is what I say. Personally, I enjoy all kirtan regardless of who sings it (with some exceptions; i just can't stand a flute accompaniment). I grew up listening to Sant Sujan Singh but purists would object to his blend of classical, folk and qawaali. Fact is, the experience was transporting.

4: Mohan Singh (Toronto, Ontario, Canada.), July 17, 2010, 9:49 AM.

The original Aasa di Vaar has 24 Pauris, and dhunnis of Tunda Asraaja apply to pauries only. Like this, there are 22 Vaars in the Guru Granth, each one of them are in form of pauries. Guru Arjan added matching sloks to almost all vaars while compiling the Pothy Sahib (except Basant ki Vaar and Vaar by Satta Balwand). Rest of the sloks are titled as 'Slok Vaara to Vadhik' [GGS: 1410]. In Aasa di Vaar there are 59 shloks, 44 by Guru Nanak and 15 by Guru Angad. The raags do not apply to any slok in the Guru Granth. No raag have been suggested for the sloks of Farid and Kabir or Shok Mahalla 9 and for the Gatha, Funhe and Chaubale as these banis are in the form of sloks. As regards Asa di Vaar, Guru Arjan instructed us to recite it every day in the early morning and he also recommended reciting Chhant of Guru Ramdas from Raag Aasa [GGS:448]. So it starts as Chhant (Aasa), slok, pauri (Aasa in Tunda Asraaja dhunni). By and large, the kirtaniye have their own style of singing in raag or other melodious tune. The tabla player recites the pauri, but when it is recited by the harmonium player, the same pauri will be repeated by the tabalcchi. To attract younger generations popular tunes should be okay, and there are some jathas using such tunes. Re kirtan of Aasa di Vaar, I like that of Bhai Niranjan Singh Jawadhikala; re vyakhya, I like that of Prof. Darshan Singh as my favourite. As far as Dya Singh is concern, I love his recent recording of Sukhmani Simran. It's a real good one, soul touching and creates positive energy.

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