Sikhism is meant to be a universal way of life and a universal way of life needs a Universal language so that it is approachable to all Humanity as such the Sikh Guru’s adopted the most universal language known to man to speak about God & Life and this language is MUSIC.
Our Guru’s as you have heard were not only saintly teachers, warriors, poets and scholars but also ingenius musicians. The Sikh Gurus have bestowed upon us a unique and effective technology to help us be attached to God at every moment of our lives, to pick us up when we are down, to give us strength when we are weak, during times of happiness (like marriage and when a new born baby enters the family) and to help us train our minds to shy away from sin.
This powerful technology is what we call today ‘Sikh Music’ or ‘Gurmat Sangeet’ which essentially is a detailed and scientific structure of Musicology to help us harness the power of our emotions such as sadness, happiness, longing, excitement,etc and channel these emotions to unite our minds with the Ultimate Reality, God.
All the hymns that have been written in the SGGS are meant to be sung in prescribed musical measures which are essentially meant to convey a specific emotion to the human psyche that is consistent with the theme of the hymn being sung. These Musical Measures can be called ‘moods’ in English (so there are happy musical measures, sad musical measures, musical measures that stir the mood of intense longing for reunion, etc). In our language we call these musical measures/moods, ‘Raag’.
In the SGGS on the title line of each hymn, there is written, the Name of the Hymn, the writers name and the musical measure it is meant to be sung in.
How important are these Raags or Musical Measures to Sikh Scripture?
Well there are so important that the SGGS has been compiled and indexed not according to chronological order or by author but are categorized by Musical Meaures. As such the 1st musical measure can be understood as Chapter 1 of the SGGS.
We have 31 Raags in the SGGS and 31 sub-Raags ( which is when 2 or 3 musical measures are combined to form a new form of expression or mood). All in all there are 62 Musical Meaures in the SGGS (and the SGGS is indexed according to these 31) Musical Measures.
Part 2- The SIKH MUSIC INSTRUMENTS
To sing these very sensitive, intricate and expressive hymns in the prescribed musical measures that gives emotion and understanding to the words being sung, Our Guru’s have gifted to us 7 unique instruments
The 1st instrument is the ‘Rebab’ which was played by the companion of our 1st Guru. This is a plucking instrument. The original size of this instrument is 3 times the size you see here.
The 2nd instrument which was created and played by our 3rd Guru is called the ‘Saranda’ which means ‘that which gives 100 flavors’. This is a bow instrument.
The 3rd instrument which is somewhat similar but smaller in size than the Dilruba and it is called the ‘Esraj’ which is bow instrument. This was created & played by the 5th Guru.
The 4th instrument which was created and played by the 6th Guru is called the ‘TAUS’ which means ‘peacock’. This is a bow instrument.
The 5th instrument which was created and played by the 9th Guru is called ‘Jori’ which is a set of drums meant to give the beats or tempo to the hymn being sung.
The 6th instrument which was created and played by the 10th Guru is called the ‘Dilruba’ which means ‘heart stealer’. This is a bow instrument similar to the Taus & Esraj where there are 4 main strings and around 16 reverb strings that vibrate when u play the main string creating harp like sounds.
The 7th instrument is the ‘Tanpura’ which was created and played by the 10th Guru. The Tanpura is a bass instrument meant for the vocalist.
Part 3
Although we have a rich Musical heritage and structure, Sikh Music has been a dying art & technology till the 1990’s but today we have numerous academies throughout the world which promote SIKH MUSIC and are trying to revive it. At the Sikh centre in Singapore we have such an academy and we have distributed pamphalets
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