Earlier in November, Oxford’s Sikh Society hosted an evening of Gurbāṇī Kīrtana at Keble College. I thus found myself wheeling my joṛī-pakhāvaja in the rain from my lodgings on Manor Road, hoping my umbrella and black canvas bag would be sufficient protection from the chilly—if already all-too-familiar—downpour threatening the only instrument I brought with me from Maryland. To my relief, my joṛī mercifully arrived far drier than I did, and so I proceeded to affix a small handful of sticky wheat flour dough to the bass drum’s leather head. After saying a few words about the joṛī, I began the śāna or display of percussive riches heralding the singing of Gurbāṇī Kīrtana. Dr. Harjinder Singh Lallie was to sing that evening with several of his students, and he kindly provided melodic accompaniment for the śāna on the sāraṅgī. Following the śāna, he spoke briefly about the instruments surrounding him (kābulī rabāb, dilrubā, and tablā), and his extempore remarks concerning the joṛī-pakhāvaja helped crystallize my own appreciation for precisely what some consider the instrument’s challenge.
Dr. Lallie described the joṛī as a highly “traditional” Sikh pair of drums that has all but been replaced by the tablā. Unlike the joṛī-’s dhāmā or the bass end of the pakhāvaja, the tablā-’s bāyāṅ employs the permanent black siyāhī found on all three drums’ treble heads. The “problem” with the joṛī, he went on to caution the assembled saṅgata, is the necessity of making āṭā like that used for roṭī-s whenever one wishes to play, of tending to this dough as one drums, and of removing it afterwards. With a twinkle in his eye, he summed up his argument with the postulate that Paṅjābī-s are “lazy,” thereby accounting for the joṛī-’s decrease in popularity among Sikh-s and the tablā-’s corresponding increase. This was certainly not the first time I have heard the joṛī-’s āṭā critiqued for its inconvenience; Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta enthusiasts from an engineering background are particularly wont to wistfully inquire whether there might not be a more permanent synthetic alternative.
While preparing, applying, managing, scraping off, and cleaning up the joṛī-’s dough undoubtedly constitutes a labor of love, both acoustic and economic benefits accrue from its use on the joṛī. Expertly applied āṭā produces bass of an inimitably sonorous quality. Its spectacular attack and rapid decay are sonically ideal for rendering sātha, the open-handed playing style and repertoire characteristic of the pakhāvaja and joṛī. Because the dough was never intended to last beyond a performance—at times, even beyond a composition—there is no material limitation upon the exuberance with which one may play. Unleashing this sort of open-handed passion on the tablā-’s bāyāṅ would quickly spoil the permanent siyāhī, where loose specks produce an unpleasant buzzing noise. Before acquiring a proper joṛī, I had lost more bāyāṅ-s than I would care to admit to such unbridled enthusiasm. As Dr. Lallie rightly noted—recounting an anecdote related by Bhāī Avtar Singh—more knowledgeable and informed members of the saṅgat have long delighted in witnessing the spectacle of flying āṭā.
More generally, the discipline and dedication the joṛī with its āṭā demands strikes me as both exemplifying and cultivating the GurSikh ethos. As one making roṭī kneads dough to sate the belly’s hunger, the joṛī player makes āṭā to feed the soul. As dough lovingly applied to leather brings the dead skin back to life, experience of the Sabada reforms the mind, turning it from transience to eternity. Like the dastāra, which cannot be donned or doffed instantly as with a cap but rather must be deliberately formed over one’s kesa every morning, the joṛī-’s āṭā represents a conscious decision to keep alive and live by the endowments of the Gurū-s. Acts of this nature operate within a logical framework distinct from the imperatives of efficiency maximization. Ritual—or spiritual automation—is the antithesis of GurSikh worship. Preparation of āṭā for the joṛī and the daily donning of a dastār require one to pause and contemplate the privilege of walking the Gurū-’s path. Reflective participation in these precious acts of bhagatī renews the spirit.
Such an approach to GurSikh tradition counteracts the tendency from more presentist quarters to abstract contemporary praxis away from the particularity of the Gurū-s’ more demanding gifts. There is a fatal presumption in a disciple’s mode of reasoning whenever he or she seeks to ‘update’ or ‘modernize’ the Gurū-s’ instructions. After ascribing an invariably reductionist purpose to the Gurū-s’ teachings, would-be-reformers and apologists for the present dispensation tout impoverished understandings and practices as functionalist substitutes. Some go still further, claiming such truncations represent spiritually purer modes of interpretation and worship. These activities are altogether distinct from the vital task of ascertaining what the Gurū-’s timeless teachings demand of us in our time. In the case of Gurbāṇī Kīrtana, such fuctionalizing tendencies are downstream of spuriously severing the Sabad from its dhuna. Word is inseparable from melody in Gurbāṇī since revelation arrived as song. A sharp distinction between lexical content as meaning and melodic content as medium is untenable where the former was originally experienced as the latter; this indivisible unity initiates us into the mysteries of the akatha kathā.
A GurSikh does not assiduously undergo instruction in rāga and tāla vidiā for the considerable aesthetic pleasures they occasion, but rather for the sake of more fully knowing and celebrating Sabada Gurū. Those who argue any contemporary music—whether popular or neo-classical—will do for singing kīrtana—so long as it is done with devotion—at times accuse those with a love for historically-continuous memory of the Gurū-s’ song—painstakingly sustained through lifelong pedagogical relationships—of giving undue importance to the ‘music’ as distinct from the Bāṇī. This position constitutes a fundamental epistemic rupture with the understanding of Sabad as found within Gurbāṇī and the daily observance of GurSikh-s blessed to preserve the saṅskāra-s of Gurbāṇī Kīrtana. So far from being an arbitrary aesthetic preference orthogonal to understanding Bāṇī, exacting study of the Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta paramparā serves to ensure the GurSikh places no more and no less emphasis on this central aspect of GurSikhī than did the Gurū-s.
Ironically, it is those who undervalue devoted study of this indispensable branch of GurSikh learning in favor of kīrtana sung as per any other manner who are in the position of expressing and enacting a musical preference over and above the example of the Gurū-s. Hence, a GurSikh need look no further for āṭā’s vindication than to remember it has been present in Gurbāṇī Kīrtana alongside the rābāba since Gurū Nanak’s time, affixed to the pakhāvaja or mridaṅga. Gurū Tegh Bahadur—who renounced whatever did not deepen his love for the One in each moment—himself excelled at playing the pakhāvaja. The discipline of dough and the extraordinary, historically-continuous repertory of the Amritsarī Bāja it supports has been formative of remarkable character throughout GurSikh history. As a glob of dough soared off my dhāmā under the vaulted ceiling of Balliol’s Hall during a recent performance, it quite literally struck me that the minor challenges of maintaining the joṛī-’s dough may be understood as preparing the GurSikh to surmount the small and great challenges of life with grace and dignity.
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Nihal Singh