SIKH SACRED MUSIC AND RABINDRA SANGIT

Abstract

This article investigates the parallels between two regional examples of north Indian music that strictly do not fall within the classical Hindustani music tradition: Punjabi Sikh sacred music (kirtan) and Bengali Rabindra Sangit. On the whole, it examines how these two musical genres were institutionalized and canonized as extreme examples of imperial knowledge formation, respectively, along the lines of traditional and modernist music making. While the invented tradition of Rabindra Sangit became a crucial identity marker for Bengalis after the death of its composer, Rabindranath Tagore, kirtan of course lies at the heart of the Sikh tradition. The article particularly highlights the inherent intellectual, moral and aesthetic tensions between the musical practices defined by the orthodox and the ever-changing lived musical experiences of Sikhs and Bengalis over time. Some of its main issues concern authenticity and spirituality in music as well as the relationships between music and words.

Notes

1 Of course, Alan P. Merriam first defined the concept music in culture in his classic The Anthropology of Music (1964) but he later amended it to music as culture.

2 The Greek modes are musical scales that were in use in Western music before the emergence of the tonal or major–minor system in the seventeenth century.

3 She was a student of the founding father of the early twentieth century English folk music revival Cecil Sharp (1859–1924) and the second wife of the Ceylonese-English art historian Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877–1947).