Home » Blog 7 » Padda Blog 7

Padda Blog 7

A religion that uses music I’d like to discuss is Sikhism. It is a monotheistic religion that I personally follow and have family that follow it as well. Music plays a major role in our religion, during times of prayer at Gurduwaras (the house of prayer for Sikhs), we often play “Kirtan”. Kirtan is a major part of Sikhi and many different gurus (people who have devoted their lives to Sikhism) learn to play it. As Ajit Singh Paintal describes it in his document ” Sikh Devotional Music – Its Main Traditions”, “Kirtan is music which overflows with devotion for God, and sings his glory” ( Paintal 19).

A certain Kirtan I would like to talk about is the “Rehras Sahib”. It is an evening prayer for Sikhs and worships our god. It is actually not a Kirtan but many different gurus have converted it into Kirtans and often use different musical elements. For example, in this video I have linked below, you can hear tablas and harmoniums being used. The voice of the guru goes through many different pitches and changes timbre quite frequently throughout the composition. It expresses religious belief through building a greater connection with god during the evening time.

Library OneSearch

Enter your search term and click Search to find an item in the CUNY catalog.

March 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

This course includes Open Educational Resources (OER), which are entirely cost-free and accessible online. Developed in the Open Knowledge Fellowship at The Graduate Center's Mina Rees Library, this work is made possible by state grant funding through the Office of Library Services.



Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.