Comparative South Asian Music Theory and Gurbani

1.1 What is Comparative Musicology?

Comparative musicology — sometimes now called ethnomusicology in its broader sense — is the systematic study of music across cultures, with particular attention to structural similarities and differences, historical connections and divergences, and the cultural meanings that different communities attach to their musical practices. The field has its intellectual roots in the nineteenth-century Comparative Musicology (Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft) of scholars like Carl Stumpf and Erich von Hornbostel, who used early recordings and phonograms to study musical scales, tuning systems, and rhythmic patterns across the world's musical cultures.

Contemporary comparative musicology is more theoretically sophisticated and methodologically self-aware than its nineteenth-century predecessors. It has absorbed the critiques of universalism and ethnocentrism that have transformed the humanities and social sciences since the 1960s, recognizing that comparative claims require careful attention to the commensurability of the categories being compared, the politics of who is doing the comparing and why, and the risk of flattening genuine cultural difference into convenient schemata. Bruno Nettl's foundational work on comparative musicology has been particularly important in setting methodological standards for cross-cultural musical analysis (Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology, 2005).

1.2 Why Compare? The Case for Comparative Sikh Music Studies

Comparative musicology offers several specific benefits for Sikh music studies. First, comparison illuminates what is distinctive about Sikh musical practice by identifying both what it shares with and what differentiates it from related traditions. The Sikh musical tradition developed in a multi-religious cultural environment in which Sufi music, Hindu bhakti traditions, and the classical Hindustani musical world all played significant roles. Systematic comparison with these traditions clarifies the nature of Sikh appropriations, transformations, and innovations.

Second, comparison can help resolve historical questions where direct evidence is limited. If the SGGS uses a raag in a way that diverges from the Hindustani classical tradition but corresponds to the use of the same or a related mode in an adjacent tradition (Sufi music, regional folk music, or Carnatic music), this comparative evidence can shed light on the musical world of the Gurus and the sources they may have drawn on.

1.3 The SGGS as a Comparative Musical Document

The SGGS is itself a deeply comparative musical document. Its composers represent multiple traditions — Hindu Vaishnava bhakti, Sufi devotional poetry, and Sikh theological thought — and they composed within the shared musical world of classical Hindustani raag. The inclusion of compositions by non-Sikh ਭਗਤ (devotional poet-saints) such as Kabir, Namdev, Ravidas, and others in the canonical Sikh scripture is itself a statement about the universality of certain musical and devotional forms that transcends sectarian boundaries.

Studying the SGGS comparatively means asking not only how its musical structures compare with those of adjacent traditions but how its composers navigated the multi-traditional musical world of their time — what they borrowed, what they transformed, and what they invented. This is a form of historical musicology that requires both technical musical analysis and contextual historical understanding.

Hindustani Music as the Primary Framework

The Hindustani classical music tradition provides the primary theoretical framework for understanding the SGGS's musical structure. The raags, taals, and compositional forms of the SGGS all belong to the Hindustani tradition as it existed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Punjab. Understanding Hindustani theory is therefore not merely comparative context but directly relevant to understanding the SGGS's musical logic.

The theoretical foundations of the Hindustani system were systematized in the early twentieth century through the work of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, whose classification of raags into ten thāṭ (parent scales) provides the standard organizational framework for contemporary Indian music education. Bhatkhande's system, while influential and pedagogically useful, is itself a modern construction that has been criticized by scholars of Indian music history for imposing a regularity on the raag system that did not fully exist in historical practice (Kaufmann, The Ragas of North India, 1968).

The Thaat System and Its Limitations

The thāṭ system classifies raags according to the parent heptatonic scale from which they derive their notes. The ten thāṭ of Bhatkhande's system — Bilawal, Kalyan, Khamaj, Bhairav, Poorvi, Marwa, Kafi, Asawari, Bhairavi, and Todi — each generate a family of raags with the same pitch collection but different characteristic phrases, ornamental patterns, and emotional characters. For the student of SGGS raags, understanding the thāṭ system provides a useful organizational framework, even while recognizing its limitations as a historical account.

The limitations become apparent when we ask whether the raags of the SGGS fit neatly into the thāṭ classification. Some do; others diverge from their classical thāṭ affiliations in ways that have generated musicological debate. These divergences may reflect the preservation of older modal practices in the Sikh tradition, regional variants of classical raags, or deliberate innovations by the Gurus. Determining which explanation applies in specific cases requires detailed comparative analysis.

The Carnatic-Hindustani Divide

The Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (North Indian) classical music traditions share ancient common roots but have diverged significantly over the past millennium, developing distinct theoretical frameworks, compositional genres, and performance practices. Understanding the points of convergence and divergence between these two major traditions is important for assessing whether any SGGS raags show Carnatic characteristics that would be absent from purely Hindustani-derived music.

Several raags in the SGGS have been identified by scholars as potentially having Carnatic connections or parallels with Carnatic ragas (the Carnatic term for the equivalent concept). The SGGS's Raag ਭੈਰਉ, for example, has been compared with the Carnatic raga Mayamalavagowla; Raag ਦੇਵਗੰਧਾਰੀ has Carnatic parallels. Whether these correspondences reflect historical connections or merely the convergent evolution of similar modal materials from a shared ancient tradition is a question that requires careful comparative analysis.

Methodological Considerations

Comparing Hindustani and Carnatic raags requires attention to the different theoretical systems within which they are defined. The Hindustani thāṭ system and the Carnatic melakartā system (72 parent scales in a systematic mathematical grid) are different organizational frameworks, and mapping between them is not straightforward. Moreover, what counts as "the same" raag across traditions — same scale, same characteristic phrases, same emotional quality? — is a theoretical question without a simple answer. The methodological standards for comparative claims about raags must be carefully established before such comparisons can yield reliable conclusions.

The Perso-Islamic Musical World of Punjab

The Punjab of the Sikh Gurus was deeply interpenetrated with Persian and Islamic cultural traditions, including musical ones. The Mughal court at Delhi, the Sufi khanqahs (hospices) throughout Punjab, and the broader cultural world of Persianate North India all contributed to a musical environment in which Persian-derived musical concepts, instruments, and forms coexisted with indigenous Hindustani traditions.

The SGGS's inclusion of compositions by Muslim Bhagats and Sufis — Kabir (whose poetry sometimes echoes Sufi imagery), Sheikh Farid Shakarganj (a historical Sufi saint), and others — creates direct bridges with the Islamic devotional music tradition. The influence of Sufi musical aesthetics on the broader bhakti tradition has been extensively documented by scholars including Regula Qureshi in her pathbreaking work on qawwali (Qureshi, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan, 1986).

The Maqam-Raag Connection

The relationship between the Arabic-Persian maqām system (the modal system of Arab and Persian classical music) and the Indian raag system has been a subject of musicological interest for centuries. Several Indian raag names appear to derive from Persian or Arabic words, and historical sources suggest that musicians in medieval India were aware of and engaged with the maqam tradition. Whether specific SGGS raags show maqām influences — in their scale content, characteristic phrases, or emotional associations — is a question that comparative analysis can address, though it requires expertise in both traditions.

The Bhakti Musical World

The Sikh Gurus composed within a vibrant bhakti (devotional) musical culture that included the Vaishnava kirtan tradition, the Shaiva devotional music of South India, and numerous regional devotional music forms. The SGGS's inclusion of compositions by Hindu bhakti poet-saints — Namdev, Ravidas, Trilochan, and others — creates direct connections with these traditions, while the Gurus' own compositions engage both with and against bhakti theological and musical norms.

The bhakti movement as a whole was characterized by a preference for vernacular languages over Sanskrit, for direct personal devotion over ritual formalism, and for music as a primary medium of devotional expression. All of these features are shared by Sikh kirtan. What distinguishes Sikh kirtan from the broader bhakti tradition is primarily theological: the specific understanding of the Divine as ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ, the emphasis on ਨਾਮ ਸਿਮਰਨ, and the communal institution of the ਸੰਗਤ as the primary context of devotional music.

Musical Convergences and Departures

Musically, Sikh kirtan shares with the broader bhakti tradition the use of the raag system, the compositional forms of pad and bhajan, and the call-and-response structure. What distinguishes the SGGS's musical organization — the systematic arrangement by raag rather than the typical bhakti compilation by deity or regional tradition — reflects a distinctive theological and aesthetic vision that elevates the musical framework to scriptural principle.

Folk Music in the Sikh Tradition

The Sikh musical tradition has never been exclusively classical. Folk and regional musical traditions — the ਲੋਕ ਸੰਗੀਤ of Punjab — have always coexisted with and influenced the classical kirtan tradition. The ਢਾਡੀ (dhadi) tradition of heroic balladry, the ਕਵੀਸ਼ਰੀ tradition of devotional poetry recitation, and various regional folk forms all contribute to the rich musical culture of Sikhism.

The ਢਾਡੀ tradition is particularly significant: hereditary professional singers who perform heroic ballads about Sikh history and martyrdom, accompanying themselves on the ਢੱਡ (small barrel drum) and sarangi. Michael Nijhawan's ethnographic study of the dhadi tradition documents how these performers navigate the tensions between devotional authenticity and popular entertainment in contemporary settings (Nijhawan, Dhadi Darbar, 2006). The dhadi tradition illuminates how Sikh musical culture encompasses genres beyond gurdwara kirtan that are equally integral to Sikh religious and cultural life.

ਵਾਰ and the Classical-Folk Interface

The ਵਾਰਾਂ (heroic ballads) in the SGGS represent a particularly interesting site of interface between classical and folk musical culture. The traditional ballad (vār) was a folk genre celebrating the exploits of warriors and heroes; in the SGGS, this form is transformed into a vehicle for devotional theology, celebrating the divine rather than human heroism. The musical associations of the ਵਾਰਾਂ — each of which in the SGGS is given a dhunī (tune) associated with a specific folk melody — reflect this classical-folk interface directly.

Devotional Music Across Cultures

Devotional music — music made for and in the context of religious worship — is a universal human phenomenon. Every major religious tradition has developed musical forms for communal worship, individual contemplation, and the narration and celebration of sacred history. Comparing Sikh kirtan with devotional music from other traditions can illuminate both what kirtan shares with this universal human phenomenon and what is specific to its Sikh theological context.

Useful comparative cases include: the Gregorian chant tradition of Latin Christianity (a monophonic modal tradition with elaborate rules governing which modes are appropriate for which liturgical occasions — structurally parallel to the raag-time associations of classical Indian music); the qawwali tradition of South Asian Sufi Islam (a devotional music tradition with direct historical connections to the musical world of the Sikh Gurus); and the cantillation traditions of Jewish liturgical music (another example of the relationship between sacred text and modal melodic frameworks).

Structural Universals and Cultural Specifics

Comparative analysis of devotional music traditions reveals both structural universals — the tendency to use sustained, non-percussive tones for solemn occasions; the widespread use of call-and-response structures; the universality of using music to mark temporal boundaries between sacred and ordinary time — and culture-specific features that reflect distinct theological and aesthetic traditions. The challenge for the comparative musicologist is to distinguish genuine universals (features that reflect deep structures of human musical cognition and social behavior) from apparent universals that reflect convergent cultural developments in response to similar functional requirements.

Three Modal Traditions

The concept of a "mode" — a melodic framework that specifies a characteristic set of pitches and their hierarchical relationships — is widespread across the world's musical traditions. Three of the most sophisticated modal systems are the Indian raag, the Arabic-Persian maqam, and the Western ecclesiastical modes (which underlie both medieval church music and much of Western folk and popular music). Comparing these three systems reveals both striking structural parallels and significant theoretical divergences that illuminate each tradition's distinctive musical logic.

All three systems define modes primarily in terms of their pitch content — which notes are used and which are avoided. But they differ significantly in the additional properties they ascribe to modes. The raag system, as we have seen, specifies characteristic phrases, ornamental patterns, time associations, emotional qualities, and rules governing the treatment of specific pitches. The maqam system specifies characteristic melodic movements and associations, but its system of time and emotional associations is less elaborately developed than the raag system. The Western modal system specifies the intervallic structure of scales but has historically been less concerned with the emotional associations and performance-specific properties of individual modes.

The Question of Historical Connection

Given the structural parallels between these three modal systems, historians of music have long debated the question of historical connection: did the Indian raag system influence the maqam system, or vice versa? Did medieval European modal theory derive from the Arab-Persian tradition that was transmitted through Islamic Spain? These questions are contested and the evidence is complex, but engaging with them seriously provides important context for understanding the raag system's place in the global history of modal music.

Rhythm in Comparative Perspective

Rhythmic organization is as culturally variable as modal organization, and the comparison of rhythmic systems across traditions is as revealing as the comparison of modal systems. The Indian taal system, with its complex cycles of varying lengths and its elaborate theoretical apparatus for describing internal articulations, is one of the world's most sophisticated rhythmic systems. Comparing it with the Arabic rhythmic pattern system (īqāʿ) and with Western metric theory illuminates both what these systems share and where they diverge.

All three systems share the basic principle of organizing rhythmic time into recurring cycles. But they differ in: the lengths of cycles they typically employ (Western meters tend to be short — 2, 3, or 4 beats — while Indian taals can be much longer); the degree of subdivision and internal articulation specified by the system; and the terminology and theoretical framework used to describe rhythmic patterns. For the student of Sikh kirtan, understanding the Indian taal system in comparative perspective helps clarify both its specific features and its place in the global history of rhythmic organization.

Rhythm and the Sacred

The relationship between rhythmic organization and sacred experience deserves specific attention. Rhythmic patterns can induce altered states of consciousness through entrainment (the synchronization of brainwaves and physiological rhythms with external rhythmic stimuli). The use of specific rhythmic patterns in devotional contexts — the dhikr circles of Sufi orders, the drumming traditions of West African sacred music, the tabla patterns of kirtan — reflects an implicit understanding of rhythm's potential to facilitate spiritual experience. Whether this effect is universal or culturally specific, and what the implications are for understanding kirtan's rhythmic practice, are questions that connect musicology, neuroscience, and theology.

Text and Music Across Traditions

The relationship between sacred text and musical setting is one of the most fundamental questions in the comparative study of religious music. Different traditions have developed radically different approaches: from the strict prohibition on musical accompaniment in certain Islamic traditions to the elaborate polyphonic settings of sacred texts in the Western choral tradition; from the cantillation tropes that indicate specific melodic patterns for Hebrew scripture to the free improvisation within modal frameworks that characterizes Sufi devotional performance.

The Sikh approach to the text-music relationship is distinctive in several important ways. The SGGS is itself a musical document: its compositions were written as songs, to be performed in specific raags, and their musical settings are not additions to a primarily textual scripture but integral to the compositions themselves. This is fundamentally different from, for example, the use of Gregorian chant to set biblical texts, where the relationship between text and musical setting is externally imposed rather than intrinsically determined.

Primacy of the Text in Sikh Musical Theology

Within the Sikh theological framework, the text retains primacy over the musical setting: the purpose of music is to serve the Word, not to transcend it. This distinguishes Sikh musical theology from certain Sufi musical theologies in which music itself (even without text) can be a vehicle of divine encounter. The prohibition on singing Gurbani to inappropriate or popular tunes reflects this principle: the musical setting must serve the text, and settings that distort or trivialize the text's theological meaning are inappropriate regardless of their musical quality.

The Universals Debate

The question of whether there are musical universals — features of music that appear in all human cultures and reflect deep structures of human musical cognition — has been hotly debated in comparative musicology and music psychology. Some researchers have argued for the existence of universal features of tonality, rhythm, and emotional expression in music; others have argued that the apparent universals reflect Western cultural bias in the design and interpretation of cross-cultural research.

Samuel Mehr and colleagues' recent cross-cultural study of music across 60 cultures found evidence for universal features of form in music associated with specific social functions (dance, soothing infants, healing, love) — features that are recognizable to listeners from unrelated cultures (Mehr et al., "Universality and Diversity in Human Song," Science, 2019). This research suggests that while specific musical content (specific scales, rhythms, timbres) is highly culturally variable, certain functional and formal features of music may be genuinely universal.

Sikh Music in the Universals Debate

Sikh kirtan provides interesting evidence for the universals debate. The consistent association of specific raags with specific emotional qualities (a feature of the rasa theory) is a candidate for a musical universal: if listeners across cultures respond similarly to specific musical features, this would support the claim that the rasa associations of raags are grounded in universal human musical cognition rather than purely in cultural convention. Empirical research on cross-cultural responses to Indian raags has produced mixed results, with some evidence for universal emotional associations and some evidence for cultural specificity.

What Comparison Has Revealed

The comparative analyses conducted across this seminar have illuminated several dimensions of Sikh music that are less visible when studying it in isolation. The raag system of the SGGS belongs to the Hindustani classical tradition, shares broad modal concepts with the Islamic maqam and the Western ecclesiastical mode systems, and connects to the broader bhakti and Sufi devotional music traditions that shaped the musical world of sixteenth-century Punjab. The taal system reflects the same sophisticated rhythmic intelligence that characterizes classical Indian music more broadly. The text-music relationship in kirtan reflects a distinctive theological framework that prioritizes the Word while understanding music as its essential vehicle.

At the same time, comparison has highlighted what is distinctive about Sikh music. The organization of the SGGS by raag as a theological principle, not merely a practical convenience, gives the Sikh musical tradition a unique character: the scripture and the musical tradition are not separate domains that happen to intersect, but a single unified reality in which text and music are inseparable. This integration of scripture and music is, as far as can be determined, without parallel in any other major world religious tradition.

Open Questions and Research Frontiers

Comparative Sikh music studies faces significant methodological challenges and open questions. The historical questions — about the specific musical influences on the Gurus' compositions, about the relationship between SGGS raags and their classical counterparts, about the early history of the kirtan performance tradition — require both detailed musicological analysis and careful historical scholarship. The theoretical questions — about how Sikh musical theology relates to broader theories of music's sacred power — require sustained engagement with philosophy of religion and music psychology. The empirical questions — about how the same compositions are performed differently across traditions, instruments, and cultural contexts — require ethnomusicological fieldwork.