Attuning the Mind to the Divine: The Pluriversal Archive of Sikh Liturgical Songs

In heterodox traditions of pre-modern South Asia, singing and listening to sung poetry was a transversal way of engaging with spiritual knowledge. This system was incorporated and implemented in the early 16th century by the founder of the Sikh faith, Gurū Nānak (1469-1539), who established kīrtan (or the singing of liturgical hymns) as a core practice and an essential component of the Sikh listening habitus (Feld 2024; Becker 2004). According to Sikh thought, the divine Word emanating from a non-human force (the Sat Gurū) is the agent that attunes the mind of the disciple, operating a transformation from a self-willed individual (manmukh) into a Gurū-oriented person (gurmukh) (Mandair 2023). Since early Sikh history, the Word-as-Gurū was imparted in musical forms according to melodic frameworks called rāga-s that were functional to the transmission and embodiment of the Word. These rāga-based poetries constitute the main body of the Sikh canonical Scripture, the Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib. Organized according to 31 main ‘melodic’ chapters, the Scripture includes songs from six of the ten historical Sikh gurus, as well as devotional poetries attributed to Sufi and Bhakti saint-composers of the premodern era. While in the Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, the Word has been transmitted in written form, for centuries, the musical setting of the verses has been passed on orally in heritage compositions that are credited as original from the Sikh gurūs’ times. The Sikh musical heritage is in danger of disappearing today, and preserving these compositions is critical to studying Sikhi(sm) as a pre-modern cultural system that envisioned and sustained an ecology of knowledges of the Global South (Santos 2014). Through a decolonial lens, this lecture discusses Sikh musical literature as a pluriversal archive of liturgical sung poetry of premodern South Asia, whose rāga-based renditions were not regarded as an art form but rather as an integral component of Sikh education.