In one week a group of kirtan students will meet for the 16th consecutive summer to learn with Bhai Baldeep Singh, this time in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  This is how I have spent my summer vacation each year for more than a decade and a half. These summer workshops, together with the annual winter gatherings, have been the foundation of learning and have provided the tools for this current project to sing all the shabds in the two volumes of Gurbani Sangeet.

This is something I wrote one year ago after the summer kirtan gathering. It is a personal history of my kirtan journey:

The first time I heard Gurbani Kirtan it was a song that my heart knew and I wanted to learn more about this music. In those days we listened to recordings and tried to learn to sing the shabds, but inevitably we simplified the melodies, Americanized them and we could only sing what we could hear. Or sometimes we would hear things but lacked the ability to reproduce them. We learned how to sing along with harmonium and sometimes teachers would come from India. Classes were centered around learning shabds line by line with harmonium.

One day in 1975 a friend told me, “you know, the harmonium is not the original instrument for kirtan. In the old days people sang with stringed instruments.” This excited me and I tried to imagine what the music would sound like. I was sure it would be beautiful. “Where can we learn this?” I asked. No one knew.

Reading from Siri Guru Granth Sahib I wondered about the ragas given. What would this sound like in raga dhanasri, rag bilawal, sri rag? Can shabds be sung in these ragas? How do you learn ragas? There were some Americans learning Indian music and Indian instruments but the opportunity never came for me.

In the early 1990’s a Sikh moved to our town who was from the Nanaksar tradition. He knew how to sing shabds and he knew about tala and ragas. I asked him if there are melodies in ragas that match the name of the shabd and he knew some of them. He gave me the notations and taught me how to sing them. I enjoyed these shabds and wanted to understand the ragas and tala structure. Unfortunately this friend moved out of town and the learning was discontinued.

In the summer of 1996 an Italian friend, Kirti, told me about someone she had met in New Mexico. He was a Punjabi who could speak Italian and was restoring the stringed instruments that used to be used in kirtan. I hoped that I might also be able to meet this person. The following spring someone handed me a piece of paper and said “you might be interested in this.” It was a flyer announcing that Sangeet Kaur and Harbhajan Kaur were organizing a workshop in New Mexico with a teacher who was a 13th generation exponent of Sikh kirtan. He was reviving stringed instruments and would be teaching the traditional music from the guru times. “This must be the person Kirti told me about,” I thought. “This is what I have been waiting decades to learn”. I was so excited I immediately called Sangeet Kaur and signed up for the workshop.

I had no expectations for the workshop but came to learn about the old ways. From the first day I realized this would be unlike any previous experience and would require an attitude of going back to kindergarten and a willingness to start at the beginning. The knowledge shared left a hunger for more and the practice was a challenge that begged to be pursued. The final day of the class was heart-breaking as my heart feared that another feast might never come and the hunger might never be satisfied.

Bhai Baldeep had mentioned that he would like to teach an intensive 9-day workshop so the next summer I organized one. Since that time we have been meeting twice a year. The process has required much patience on the part of the teacher as well as the students. The voice instruments required a lot of cleaning to scrape off old habits and patterns and polish with the tools of naad yoga. Focus, pronunciation, and understanding were improved along with musical skills in rhythm and melody.

In 1999 I asked Bhai Baldeep if he would sing at my son’s wedding. He said “I will get my great uncle to sing.” It was a great honor to have Bhai Avtar come to New Mexico for the wedding. In the 1980’s he had visited with Yogi Bhajan and had sung in some of the American Sikh gurdwaras but it had been many years since those visits. After the wedding Bibiji invited Bhai Avtar Singh to return in August for Yogiji’s birthday celebration. Bhai Baldeep arranged for Bhai Avtar to teach during the August visit. This began regular visits by Bhai Avtar and Bhai Kultar to teach in Espanola during the annual birthday celebration. Yogi Bhajan encouraged his students to learn classical Sikh kirtan. Several students have studied with various teachers, and the sangat deepened its interest in “raga kirtan.” 

For those of us studying with Bhai Baldeep Singh, after years of imagining the sound of kirtan sung with stringed instruments, the sounds are appearing as we learn to play the instruments crafted by our teacher, jhori, taus and the voice instrument. Personally, this has been a profound and transformative journey. Most importantly it has been a meditation on the bani revealed through the Sikh gurus through the medium of music. For us, the gian travels on the waves of sound to touch the heart, still the mind and awaken the soul.

There is a certain irony being in New York City, surrounded by the marvelous creations of the human mind, much of it brilliant, plenty that is not, singing in my hotel room about the temporal nature of it all. Viewing the city from atop the Rockefeller Center it all seems here to stay, the towers taken out on 9/11 just a tiny fraction of the whole landscape. A lot of faith has been placed in granite, marble and steel. Architecture, art, music, theater,  fashion, food –humans are very creative, so many ideas to express. What is it about the artists who take their art to the bigger questions? Is that what makes the great art great? Is it the connection to life and death and here and hereafter and peace and pain and love and God? Some art, while clever and entertaining, feels shallow, while some art is actually heart wrenching and soul touching. What about the great ones who make us laugh?

The artists show us another way of looking at the world, at life, our experience, our relationships. It’s not just the piece of art that moves us, although it may be beautiful or executed with amazing technical skill. It is the artist’s experience we feel and what it evokes within ourselves, the resonance, the connection. We see the world the way they saw it, we begin to appreciate the small everyday sights and sounds differently. The artists capture a feeling we recognize or they help us understand in a way we didn’t understand before or question in a way we didn’t question before. There are countless creative innovators and inventors–painters, sculptors, philosophers, singers, photographers, composers, performers, designers, writers, teachers–the great ones move us just the same.

The artists show us life. Art matters, life matters more. The art is just what remains of the experience, and becomes a reflection of the experience the next participant brings. Is art for collecting or is art for living? Bringing the art to the life brings the art to life. Living the life is the art.

What happens when the artist is a great Guru? How do the Guru’s songs touch this 21st century life? This project could easily become a checklist to complete, but it is richer to take the songs in, apply them where they matter, imprint the vision of the artists, look at what they have shown us, seek to see the way they saw. What would the Guru artist see here now?

On the plane to New Jersey for my daughter’s graduation as a new Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, I pulled the airline magazine from the seat pocket and turned to a hopeful book review for The Woman Who Changed Her Brain by Barbara Arrowsmith Young. It’s about another scientific discovery that basically confirms what the ancient wise people figured out before experiments, research and clinical trials were the standard.

This book tells the story of people with severe learning disabilities (including the author herself) who have been able to rewire their brains through consistent brain exercises. Beyond coping with their challenges or finding ways to get around obstacles, exercising the brain can actually transform the circuits, rewire the programing, create new possibilities.

This is possible because of brain plasticity. The brain isn’t rigid, set for life. It can change, it’s malleable.

To me it seems like the best encouragement for a regular practice. The mental habits that keep the eyes seeing what’s wrong, the heart shut down, the tongue engaged in trivia, the ears enticed by drama, can be transformed by daily practice. The mind, engaged in simran, like the honeybee in the flower, the eyes see the One everywhere, ears hear the Truth, the heart holds love and devotion, the tongue recites the praises.

Brain plasticity, heart elasticity, sadhana complicity, purify toxicity, crush ego centricity, dispel duplicity, gentle simplicity, serene felicity, real authenticity.

Where is Sādh Sangat? Where is the community of those who love the Lord? Where are the servants who have left ego behind? Where are the ones who meditate on the Fearless One? Where are the ones who aren’t afflicted by sorrow? Where are the ones who don’t desire anymore?

Is the Sādh Sangat people or is there only One Sādhu? Is there a place to go to be with the Sādhu or is the Sādhu here and everywhere?

If Har is within each and every heart how can we be that for each other? Is sangat where ego is gone and instead of showing that self to each other we show the One within?

Is sangat what I get out of the encounter or is sangat what I give?

It is not easy to walk on the path. How do we help each other live in remembrance? How do we help each other remain in the sanctuary without sorrow, without fear, without desire? How do we stay in the shelter of love?

Does sangat have to feel good? Or is sangat sometimes a churning, a rubbing, a polishing, a challenge as I have to see myself through the eyes of truth that may reveal something I would rather leave hidden? Is sangat always like a velvety polishing cloth or can it be rough like sandpaper? Can the sandpaper be painful? If it hurts is the sandpaper to blame?

How many people is sangat? Can sangat be one? How about two? How about me and you?