What does focusing on the listener’s role, on hearing, tell us about agency? When is hearing the ‘feminine’ culturally determined? How do women’s voices embody religious minorities – their struggles and historical traumas? What is the relationship between the sacred and secular in music performed by female singers? What is the function of women’s voices and women’s bodies at the intersection of religion and national politics? What does it mean to silence the feminine? Discussion will be followed by a question and answer session with the audience, and a concert of Gurbānīkīrtan, a particular example of Hearing the Feminine from the Sikh tradition, performed by Francesca Cassio with Parminder Singh Bhamra and Nirvair Kaur Khalsa.
The panel discussion will address a series of questions related to the idea of Hearing the Feminine, with reference to a variety of examples and genres of music.
This event is free and open to all. Registration is required. Please register now at this link, or by emailing jl3880@columbia.edu.
The panel will feature:
Melissa Bilal, Columbia University
Alessandra Ciucci, Columbia University
Francesca Cassio, Hofstra University
Jane Huber, Union Theological Seminary
Followed by a performance of Sikh kirtan by:
Francesca Cassio, Hofstra University
With:
Parminder Singh Bhamra, Anād Conservatory
Nirvair Kaur Khalsa, The Anād Foundation
Sikh Music concert notes
The performance of Gurbānī kīrtan was established by Gurū Nānak, the founder of Sikhism, in northwest India during the late fifteenth century. Since then, kīrtan has been a core practice of the Sikh faith, based on the singing of spiritual hymns. Set to rāgas and tālas, the chants are performed throughout the day at the Srī Darbār Sāhib (Lord’s court), the holy shrine in Amritsar. More than 5,000 hymns have been collected in the Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, the Sikh holy book indexed according to thirty-one rāgas and their thirty-one varieties. This volume includes compositions by the Sikh masters, and poems attributed to Hindu and Sufi medieval mystics, such as Bhagat Namdev, Bhagat Kabir, and Sheikh Farid. The Sikh tradition flourished at the crossroads of the Hindu and Muslim milieus, while maintaining the integrity of its own critically inclusive but unique vision. This is reflected in a rich corpus of ancient compositions passed on by professional temple musicians, called rāgīs.
Today’s concert will showcase, in particular, the repertoire transmitted by the lineage of Bhāī Jwālā Singh (1879–1952), a legendary rāgī of the Srī Darbār Sāhib. As established in 1968 by a special committee of the Punjabi University of Patiala, this repertoire includes original dhrupad and partāl compositions from the Sikh Gurus’ time (late fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries). In comparison with other dhrupad traditions, Gurbānī reveals its distinctive identity, not only for its array of rare rāgas and tālas, but also for being shaped by the sounds of unique instruments, such as the taūs and the jorī-pakhāwaj, whose creation is attributed to the Sikh Gurūs.
Francesca Cassio, Associate Professor and Chair of Sikh Musicology at Hofstra University (NY), has conducted extensive research in India. She was trained in classical vocal music by Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Khan Dagar and Vidushi Girija Devi, and in the Gurbānī kīrtan repertoire by Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh. An accomplished scholar, Dr. Cassio is the author of several publications, including a monograph on dhrupad. In 2015 she was awarded the Stessin Prize for outstanding scholarly publication, with the article “Female Voices in Gurbānī Sangīt and the Role of the Media in promoting Female Kīrtanīe.”
Parminder Singh Bhamra, assistant professor of percussion at Anad Conservatory and visiting scholar at Hofstra University, is an exponent of the Amritsari style of Indian percussion. He is a senior disciple of Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh.
Nirvair Kaur Khalsa, founder and director of Khalsa Montessori School in Tucson, Arizona, is currently president of Anad USA, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of Gurbānī kīrtan and other heritage treasures. She has studied Gurbānī kīrtan and taūs under the guidance of Ustad Bhai Baldeep Singh.