Editor’s Note:
July 2022 will mark twenty-five, unbroken years since Bhaī Baldeep Singh began teaching the bi-annual Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta Intensive Retreats in 1997. Nothing comparable to these retreats exists in living Sikh memory. While many have subsequently imitated his language, do not be fooled: there regrettably is in fact nowhere else one may undergo equally systematic training in kīrtana that bears meaningful musical continuity with the kīrtana historically sung by the Gurū-s and their fellow Gurbāṇī recipients.
Convening in January and July across the globe—from Española to Sultanpur Lodhi, from Perugia to San Francisco—these courses have initiated a remarkably diverse saṅgat into what survives of the field of GurSikh sacred music—including its original rāgas, tālas, exegesis, instrumentation, pedagogy, oral narratives, performance history, improvisational approaches, aesthetic analysis, etiquette, and repertoire. Beyond imparting experiential knowledge and historical context regarding the core GurSikh spiritual practice to scholars and practitioners alike, the retreats have funded the responsible documentation of the very elders who have carried memories of the Gurū-s’ kīrtana to our century.
In celebration of the quadranscentennial anniversary of the Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta Intensive Retreats, The Vital Anjan is publishing serialized installments of a sizable interview with Bhaī Baldeep Singh—conducted over several days in January 2022. The text of the interview largely reproduces what was spoken, reflecting occasional additions and corrections to the transcribed record by its participants. The Vital Anjan is also carrying supplemental reflections by those who have had the opportunity to attend the intensive retreats. As always, submissions are welcome at editor@vitalanjan.com.
Finally, a word about the series’s title is in order: it derives from one of the metaphors Bhaī Baldeep Singh would use in conversation with the tradition’s knowledge-bearers. The mules of Punjab were known to reliably deliver goods of the sort that would not be looted—like bricks or wholesale foodstuffs—unaccompanied over several miles, afterwards returning to their respective owners. Bhāī Baldeep Singh would refer to himself as the Gurū’s mule (ਖੱਚਰ, khaccara), inviting his elderly interlocutors to unburden their memories—as if loading knowledge of the Gurū-s’ music onto his back for safe transportation to the coming generations. His wry humor lay in the fact that this priceless knowledge of the Gurū-s’ song was no longer valued by the Sikhs; hence, it was transportable with no greater likelihood of plunder than bricks or grains. Without further ado, Part I:
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Nihal Singh : The 1990s proved a very consequential decade in your quest to revitalize the Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta Paramparā and thereby GurSikh affairs. Paint a portrait of yourself in the later 80s and early 90s to help us understand the journey that had already taken place before you began the first intensive retreat during the summer of 1997 in Española, New Mexico.
Bhāī Baldeep Singh: That’s quite a question. It is a heavy burden to carry when I go back in time. All the work I was able to accomplish, that which I was able to recover—gives me the strength to walk. But that which I could not achieve—elders I could not document, others I documented and spoke with, interacted with… There are many categories I could make.
One is some of the elders who were very kind to me, very glad that I was, that I was there at the time, with the intent that I had… But they had nothing more to give. They had not been practitioners for decades, and things had been forgotten. At times, if I was able to insist, they would try to remember something, and those things would be very simple. And some that… almost like… the multiplication table of two one remembers from childhood.
There were others who had forgotten a particular vocation, but they remembered other things from within the tradition. I could cite Bhāī Gurcharan Singh, my elder granduncle, as an example. I tried in the early ‘90s to have him recite some of the pakhāvaj or tablā bōls. He was an outstanding talent in the ‘30s and early ‘40s. If he had continued, he would have been known the world over. He would have been among the greatest legends of the twentieth century; he was that talented. But he and his teacher, elder brother, Bhāī Arjan Singh—they fell out.
Doubts seeped into their relationship—more in the mind of Bhāī Gurcharan Singh, who was young and… You know, it’s like two alpha males getting separated by doubt and some illusion, misconceptions, misunderstandings—all of them put together. At best, what my granduncle could muster or mutter at that time was when he would say, ‘I used to play DhiRDhiRDhiRDhiR… DhiRDhiRKiṬTK…” So the fact that he remembered that “DhiRDhiR” and that there were legends… His hand used to be really stunning… But that was the only thing that he was able to utter.
And this with some embarrassment—because he saw a grandnephew of his genuinely wanting to learn. But he had not thought about percussion for decades… Embarrassed in a very humble, very beautiful manner—when there is intent to share… And he opened up the diaries in front of me; he remembered suddenly that he had the diaries in those conversations. Eventually, he sent me to Bhāī Arjan Singh ‘Tarangaṛ’ saying, ‘If you really want to know, then there is nobody else.’ The greatest percussionist of his times was Bhāī Arjan Singh ‘Tarangaṛ.’ So I went in search of Bhāī Arjan Singh ‘Tarangaṛ.’
The idea of the work I needed to do was very narrow in the beginning. In the later ’80s, when I was thinking about recovery and revival and Sikh renaissance… Cultural resurgence is the term I added maybe two years later. Initially, it was ‘Sikh renaissance.’ And ‘the era of Sikh renaissance is upon us.’ I used perhaps a term like ‘sabhyācharik krāṅtī’ or ‘socio-cultural revolution.’ These are some of the words I had used when I was in my very late teens.
Everybody had pointed out—because I was privy to… Or I had a private audience with some of the last remaining Sikh elders… The die was cast in their minds. They did not think equally of the contemporaries of Bhāī Avtar Singh and Bhāī Gurcharan Singh. For us they are all great names… Everybody who had a white beard at the time, those who were seniors: we thought they were all the same. That’s how even I would have come to the table.
But then I was being educated by so many elders who knew that the actual knowledge from the Gurūs’ times that remained was only with Bhāī Avtar Singh-Gurcharan Singh. And one was obviously bombarded with the performances many people were giving… Like Bhāī Dilbagh-Gulbagh Singh or Bhāī Balbir Singh. I’m talking about the later 80s. And many others whom we now know, they were not even in the field, like Bhāī Sarabjit ‘Rangila’ or Bhāī Sarabjit Singh ‘Laddi.’ Bhāī Amrik Singh ‘Zakhmi’ was doing rounds, but he was in name and seniority barely yet one to reckon with. I was meeting people who knew his father, Bhāī Dharam Singh, and uncle, Bhāī Shamsher Singh…
I was in conversation with people who knew all of them as their youngsters, as their younger brother-likes or nephew-likes. Bhāī Arjan Singh ‘Tarangaṛ’ was twenty-six years older than Bhai Avtar Singh. So I was able to connect with other elders who were senior, and their perspective included even people like Bhāī Dharam Singh-Shamsher Singh as their youngsters. They would refer to them as ‘Kākā jī,’ like that… This was the advantage I think I had, of seeing the field from the eyes of seniors, where there could not be any chance of a myth being created or generated in my mind for any of the contemporary figures…
I did not come pre-colored, because I was now fairly established within the field of aviation; I did not have any ax of my own to grind when it came to kīrtana. I was not coming in with a set mind. From the very beginning, my focus was on the tradition, on the idea that the tradition was dying. The proposition in front of me was never that my family’s tradition was dying. For that I’m grateful. Whenever I heard from my family elders, they said, ‘Gurū dī paramparā kōī nahīṅ sikkh rehā,’ and ‘Gurū dī dāt alōp hō rahī hai.’ That it is near-extinct, dying… That people—meaning the saṅgat at large—that their priorities had changed, that they are not informed, aware about what is precious…
So the most important custodians or storekeepers of the tradition were established by others, not by my granduncles; they did not say ‘we are the only ones.’ I approached them from the outside. Others said they are it. Theirs is the actual knowledge. That is how my journey began. I came to my own elders from the outside; I am not an insider. That gave me a major advantage. I did not have any template that I was adhering to. I was starting with a blank canvas, coming only with the ability to analyze the knowledge systems in front me—to see the missing links and begin a clinical search for them from across the memory spectrum of the near-extinct GurSikh civilization.
I recognized Bhāī Avtar Singh-Bhāī Gurcharan Singh in 1982 at age thirteen, when I had not been formally introduced to them, and I had no idea they were coming. At a big Gurpurab, there would be thousands of people in the saṅgat, so my father would sit in the back, wherever there was space. Because of my near-addiction to watching fingers on the tablā, I would sit as near the stage, as close to the front as I could. So I would be unaccompanied; as a child you could sneak in front, and elders would always give space to a thirteen-year-old kid.
And when I saw them coming in… I sort of fell in love with them, not knowing who they were. And then a few moments later, I suddenly grew frightened: what if they were not them? I was afraid I had a single heart and had given it to these three people who came. What if they were not them? What would I do then?”
Bhāī Ashok Singh ‘Bagṛīāṅ’ was one of those elders who helped me assess the field in the later 80s. I had met him through the Chandigarh fraternity. He told me later that he was the one who stood on the stage to make the announcements: ‘They have authored a book—done this and this and that—so let me invite Bhāī Avtar Singh- Bhai Gurcharan Singh to sing.’ And I remember they sang ‘Mana Jāpahu Rāma Gupāla’ after a maṅgalācarana. And as the tablā was played, I was in heaven.
Afterwards, we met in the laṅgar hall at the back of the gurdvārā in Sector 34, which was sort of reserved for the performers and graṅthī-s and kathāvāchaka-s and singers and other speakers who would come… So that they wouldn’t have to stand in the line… Still in the paṅgat, but a little separate place so that those performing on stage could come and go quickly… And that is when I was first introduced to my granduncles.
I remember, even now, the image of Bhāī Avtar Singh with his arm around me, blessing me—praying for me. And my father telling him, ‘he plays the tablā and has a lot of interest in kīrtana.’ So just a general ‘shābash shābash, bravo bravo’ kind of a thing… I was already aware about my granduncles since 1980 because of the All India Radio transmissions. I would be glued to the radio broadcast at 5:30 p.m. sharp—hoping their record would be played, and when it was, my joy would know no bounds. ’82 is this meeting. And then five years go by, in which I am established in my resolve to be an aviator. Aeromodelling championships and so forth…
All of that is done by the summer of ’87 when I visit my granduncles during the vacations. That introduction and learning the Naṭ Narāin Paṛtāla from the books in 1987—a lot of journey has already happened, but I was in no way qualified or in a position to think with an entire-community perspective, that there is nobody else, that they are it. I was not comparing anything; it wasn’t the purpose. I was just taken by the music, and fortunate to be associated with the source of that music.
It was only after 1987 when I began to hear from my granduncles that things have changed. That the knowledge is dying. It was never about the music in the family. And there was a reason for that. They said, ‘We have not encouraged anyone to take up music as a profession in the house. Because the era has changed, and there is too much corruption. Politics has become too prominent and dominant. There is no place, no space left for good men, good women.’
That logic, at the very onset, was clear to me. The people responsible for no one in the family learning were my granduncles themselves. They said, ‘We didn’t want any of our children to follow, because it’s a very dirty business now. You can learn music. It’s okay. But not to become a professional musician—a singer or a player.’ So that never clashed with the idea of revival. The entire field of Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta was dying. Whether there was a familial preference to learn or not never clashed with it; it was always about the community-at-large’s heritage.
Of course, my grandfather who died in 1986—Giānī Bhagat Singh—was the one who taught me my first composition from the tradition in 1985: “Thiru Ghari Baesahu Hari Jana Piarē.’ And my grandmother, Bībī Sant Kaur, would speak of the music and its journey whenever we met, because of my interest. But my understanding of the gravity of the situation came from Bhāī Avtar Singh-Gurcharan Singh from 1987 onwards. Whenever they came to Chandigarh, I would meet them. It is after 1987 that I begin meeting with Bhāī Ashok Singh ‘Bagṛīan,’ traveling to the Bagṛīan Fort in 1990 when my granduncles were visiting with him there, and continuing to visit him very frequently after 1990. So I spent time with all of these elders.
Another was Giānī Dalip Singh, a superintendent of one of the Yol—Young Officers Living—prisoners of war camps during World War II. He was responsible for overseeing a camp where captured officers of the Axis powers were imprisoned at Dharamsala—then in Punjab, in present-day Himachal Pradesh. My father-in-law, Dr. Luigi Costanzo was among the Italians imprisoned at Dharamsala for five years. Giānī Dalip Singh was quite the scholar of Bāṇī. He also had precious memories of Bābā Jwala Singh, greatly valuing his kīrtana, and that of his sons, Bhāī Avtar-Gurcharan Singh.
There were also fans of Bhāī Harchand Singh ‘Kalsi’ in Mohali. Many followed one or the other. Some held that the Namdhārī-s had the best kīrtana. Others followed the ‘Zakhmī-s’, while still others were fans of Bhāī Balbir Singh. So in Chandigarh and Mohali at that time, there was a critical discourse I was privy to. In 1988 or ’89, I was also introduced to Balbir Singh ‘Kalsi,’ who was an exponent of Agra Gharanā. He was Sardār Sohan Singh’s student and Ustād Faiyaz Khan Sahib’s grand-disciple. I came to learn he was also a distant cousin from my maternal grandmother’s side, and his daughter went on to marry my elder brother. I was already singing some of the Gurūs’ original masterpieces, such as‘Bāpāri Goviṅd Nāē,’ however I was able to at the time.
My association with ‘Kalsi’ Sahib expanded my horizons to Hiṅdustānī classical music. He took me to Bhāī Chattar Singh, the dilrubā player, to tablā maestro, Ustād Lachman Singh ‘Seen,’ to Paṅḍit Om Prakash Mohan—to everybody. I had no idea why all the Sikh musicians, when they learned who I was, would shrink back. Years later, I learned it was because they held my ancestors in awe. In their words, these musicians had only a ‘little,’ but this ‘little’ they shared was precious for me.
But they were shy; they always thought I would be judging them, thinking I’m a descendent of great people. In their humility, they would as if step back, thinking ‘what are we in front of them? Nobody. You already have everything within your household.’ This is the beautiful demeanor and the sort of gestures of humility I had to face, not knowing quite how to negotiate them, how to push back… To say, ‘No, no, no. Here I am; please teach me this, and teach me that.’
Nihal Singh: How did you come to identify harnessing the memory of the elders—especially as it relates to Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta—as indispensable for bringing about a GurSikh renaissance?
Bhai Baldeep Singh: I was a student of strategy and tactics. From 1985-88, I took my bachelor’s degree. Defense Studies was one of my main subjects—in fact, the main subject I actually studied. Others I just barely passed. They were general subjects—English and so forth. I barely used to go to classes; I was flying most of the year. Somehow, I have always had the ability to analyze things—to look at and think about them. In 1989, when I was selected at age nineteen-and-a-half, I had passed the Service Selection Board interview for the Indian military. It is a six-day interview process. We were broken into sets of ten for individual tasks, group tasks, command tasks, group discussions—where they monitor everything. They even check how you sleep. We used to joke, ‘it’s as if they’re looking for their own sons-in-law.’
The military brass is a very closed group, especially when you’re going to enlist as a commissioned officer. It’s like a club; they don’t let you in easily. They don’t care if there are vacancies among the spots that must be filled each year. They say, ‘if we find ten less, so be it.’ Even in my batch, there were seventy-six vacancies in the entire country, and only sixty-two of us were selected. Even when you look at it with that parameter, it shows there was a guy who passed screening and vetting for joining the military as an officer.
So around 1989, I was in a dilemma: whether to continue flying—which was my passion, really—or whether—and my head was coming in now, talking of responsibility—I needed to renounce flying to harness the elders’ memory. That is when I said that ‘serving the paramparā is also serving the nation.’ I responded to those saying ‘the military is an amazing service,’ replying, ‘I am enlisting in a better army: Akāl Purakh kī Fauj. ਹਿੰਦੁਸਤਾਨੀਅਤ ਦੀ ਰਾਖੀ ਕਰਨਾ ਤੁਹਾਡਾ ਕਾਰਜ ਹੋਵੇਗਾ, ਤੇ ਇਨਸਾਨੀਅਤ ਦੀ ਰਾਖੀ ਕਰਨਾ ਹੁਣ ਮੇਰੀ ਜਿੰਮੇਵਾਰੀ ਹੋਵੈਗੀ। While you are responsible for serving the Indian nation, I am taking on responsibility for humanity, the nation of Akāl Purakh. The sun, moon, stars, and all the knowledgeable ones are the pūnjī—the wealth—I will safeguard. I shall be the Gurū’s jōhrī—jeweler—tē pūṅjīpatī—custodian.’ When I renounced a military flying career, this was my response to those trying to dissuade me. These theorems were already set. So between 1988-89, a lot is happening very quickly, and in the November of ’89, I am selected for the Air Force.
And I remember to this day that I was reluctant. I was wondering whether I should go or not go, so I actually ended up going there in an undecided state. It’s almost like now, when I am undecided whether I should fight the election or not. It was something similar: a major plunge. The thought process was to renounce the world; now the thought process is to accept the world again. That’s the difference in these thirty-two years. So if I go and fight the election, that means I am coming back into the world. I’m saying, ‘okay here I am. Let’s do the work.’
At that time, the trouble was it was becoming clear to me I had to renounce everything. I gave this argument to my granduncles, because they pressed me immediately, in January and February 1990, asking, ‘what are you doing? You should be flying. We would still teach you; you could still come and learn.’ I said, ‘if I go into flying and fighters, at minimum the discipline is I would have to rest nine hours, because the g-forces when you fly can wreck a body if you don’t.’ Otherwise you might be absolutely fine, but the body won’t be able to take the stress, and it could become medically unfit for flying.
And then you have to study hard. You have to pass your instrument ratings. Aviation is a full-time vocation; twenty, twenty-two hours are gone. Maybe you have one or two hours for yourself in the early years. You have to really work very hard: you have to get into physics and chemistry, etcetera. It’s a crazy thing. And I knew at that time, that if I went, for many years in the beginning, I wouldn’t have any time. So to fly is full-time work, and as I also said at the time, to recover the tradition—to revive it—that also is full-time work. So these fundamentals were already clear.
I articulated then that ‘every civilization lives in the memory of its people.’ Because every elder I met said things like, ‘Āh bhī beṭiā yād… Āh yād āgaī hai baī…’ That, ‘I just had a recollection… I just remembered.’ So ‘yād’ as ‘memory.’ And remembrance or remembering was something which I was hearing every moment… ‘Remember. Remember! Yād, yād, yād! Yād was happening. Mērē yād naīṅ. Āh yād āgēā. Āh yād kar lā. I don’t have a yād. Oh, I just got a yād! You do the yād…’ So I was introduced to the idea of memory, of memorializing, remembering, reminiscing, having a recall.
This began with my grandfather in 1985, and increased since 1987. ‘Jō bhī yād haegā, āyā—asīṅ likh dētā. All that we had a yād of we wrote down.’ So yād, memory—it was introduced at the very onset. When I’m pushing back by ’89, that ‘every civilization lives in the memory of its people…’ Which you’ve translated—I don’t have to repeat that. Your English translation of my poem was carried in my “Memory and Pedagogy” paper. If you create a wedge—a separation wall constructed out of total ignorance—between the memory-bearing elders and the unassuming youngsters, you have a dead civilization. So these concepts and theorems were already fully-formed and etched.
And these are what led me to eventually renounce my career to the shock and surprise of everyone. They didn’t realize so much had been happening, that I was witnessing and understanding concepts with such seriousness. It’s not just ‘okay, I also sing some’ or ‘oh yeah, my elders are great.’ That was never the point. The idea is about what made them great. So what is the key to greatness, to have Gurū dī kuṅjī—the key to awakening, emancipation?
And then 1984—the attack on the Golden Temple… The Akāl Takht destruction… All that was happening in the 1980s… I am an analysis, defense studies, and strategy person. So I was analyzing it all. I’m reading history from ’87 onwards. And that was also my socio-political response. As I said at the time, ‘We as a community, we as Sikhs have hit rock bottom. The question now is how do we recover?’ And then—after many months of thinking—I said, ‘well, here it is.’
Bāṇī Gurū did not come as prose; revelation came incarnate as song. “Jaisī Mai Āvai Khasam Kī Bāṇī…” The Gurū is not talking about it. He is singing it in verse. This is the dhurā—the pivot: the center of everything. I understood very early on that it is the key element to salvage; my whole focus has been to recover the Gurūs’ song as it came. All jewels, all nectar is within Bāṇī. What would we be without it?
There were elderly people including Air Marshal K.S. Bhatia, Jarnail Singh Chahal of the Indian Police Service… Professor Devinder Singh and others… I remember in ’89, when I was telling them that the recovery must begin at the level of memory. It has to do with the intangible—with the sūkham and abōdh virsā. I learned the terms later, but said at the time it had to do with the yād: ‘yād vich jō Gurū dī dāt hai.’ The Gurūs’ endowments living in the minds and memory are what cannot be distributed after the death of the elders. It can only be learned, studied, imbibed when they are living. And only when you are a recipient of their pleasure to pass on knowledge—when they accept to teach you. Tangible assets can be distributed after death, but not the intangible assets of a person.
So these thoughts are all pre-January 1990. November ’89 I get selected; January ’90 my course is to start. January, February, March, there is a bureaucratic delay because of some paperwork… By the spring of 1990, I take the decision to renounce my flying career. But all the ideas were already formed by 1989. It is the key year. The idea of setting up a Vidyāsar Trust. Vidyāsar—the abode of learning, is the Kartā Purakh Parmeswara, the Akal Purakh Itself. Then vidyādhar—the bearers of knowledge. And then vidyā kadar—the ones who appreciate knowledge, who have the kadar of vidiā. The ecosystem where the Gurūs’ gifts live on requires the cooperation of all three. So these concepts were written by a nineteen-year-old fellow, by a nineteen-and-a-half-year-old fellow, on what needs to be done.
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Dr. Francesca Cassio , Professor of Music at Hofstra University (New York) and the Sardarni Harbans Kaur Chair of Sikh Musicology since 2011, offers these reflections on the 25th anniversary of the Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta Intensive Retreats:
With a newfound enthusiasm for rāga-based śabad kīrtana, there is an increasing offering of ‘camps’ and ‘workshops’ that claim to impart the teaching of kīrtana compositions in the ‘classical’ style, as if this expression signified a traditional, a centuries-old way of singing. While recent scholarship is debunking the concept of Indian ‘classical’ music as a colonial fabrication, on the other hand, it often goes unrecognized that not all rāga-based songs are ‘purātan śabad rīts,’ meaning heritage compositions that trace back to the times of the Gur-Sikh Gurū-s. Most of the rāga-based śabads performed by contemporary rāgīs, and taught in modern-day institutions, are in fact newly composed-songs following twentieth-century standards.
Over the past twenty-five years, Bhāī Baldeep Singhs’ Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta retreats played an important role in re-orienting perspectives on the tangible and intangible heritage of the Sikhs, disentangling it from the colonial language as well as from the modern Hiṅdustānī musical system. His Gurbāṇī Sangīta retreats have in fact not only reintroduced the ‘uncolonized’ pedagogy for teaching the original rāgas indicated in the Gur-Sikh Scripture (some of which are not known in modern Hiṅdustānī music), but also contributed to re-establishing the vocabulary, instruments, playing techniques, and repertoire that for centuries distinguished the Gur-Sikh paramparā from other traditions.
Based on the embodiment of these recovered knowledges, this ‘uncolonized’ pedagogical process requires dedication, commitment, and time to let the seeds of gyān grow. As the (English) term ‘retreat’ suggests, the students carve out a ‘space’ from their daily lives, for receiving and cultivating gyān. The Gurbāṇī Sangīta retreats are a pause, a rahāu, for attuning the soul to the frequencies of the Baṇī-Gurū, through songs that carry the seal of the Gur-Sikh Panth. The community of students is synergic in this process, as emancipation and growth do not happen in solitude, but with the support—and the participation—of the saṅgat. By listening to each other, merging voices, and asking critical questions, the group travels together on a sonic path, where all are ‘Sikhs’ or learners, regardless of individual skill or background.
The thorough exegesis of the Baṇī—and the lengthy narratives of the neglected history of the Gurbāṇī paramparā that Bhāī Baldeep Singh tirelessly shares—complete the oral-aural experience of transmission of the gyān mārga, the path of gnosis.
Arguably, the most important experience is not only that of being able to sing purātan śabad rīts, but the ability to listen to and become a living receptacle of knowledge. Over the years, students acquire the capacity of hearing the subtleties that make long-forgotten rāgas, tālas, and song forms humanity’s precious intangible heritage. Since 1997, the story of the Gurbānī Sangīta retreats continues to unfold through an uninterrupted flow of notes and beats that, merging one into the other, revive the ‘uncolonized songs’ and, in turn, let resonate the aural memory of Gurbānī Kīrtana in the present.