WHEN GURBANI SINGS A HEALTHY HAPPY HOLY SONG

Abstract

This article examines 3HO Kirtan (devotional music of the international Kundalini Yoga Sikh community aka Healthy Happy Holy Organization) whose innovative musical styles and practices reconstruct and deconstruct particular notions of 3HO Sikh identity and orthopraxy. 3HO Kirtan also includes the singing of Sikh devotional hymns (Gurbani Kirtan) which maintain specific performative parameters. Thus, normative Sikh ideology views 3HO Kirtan as transgressive when Gurbani is sung in various musical styles, in translation, and when incorporated with Celestial Communication movement within Gurdwaras (Sikh temples) as well as Kundalini Yoga and dancing at 3HO Kirtan concerts. Through deconstructing the nature of Gurbani itself, this article questions whether embodied practices of the 3HO Sikh community are indeed proscribed acts or if they can be understood as entraining the spiritual intentionality necessary to sing and thus embody the Bani as Guru. Today, New-Age spirituality markets ‘kirtaan’ music through yoga studios, concerts, and kirtan festivals. How does 3HO Kirtan negotiate its increasing commercial popularity while maintaining its devotional intentionality with links to Gurbani Kirtan and the Sikh self? While there is a trend toward innovation, there are now a growing number of 3HO Sikh musicians who study classically traditional forms of Gurbani Kirtan. Does traditional Gurbani Kirtan pedagogy limit the scope of 3HO Kirtan or create an openness toward innovative practices? By ethnographically exploring the multiple musical voices of 3HO Kirtan, we can clarify the intentionality of musical innovation, embodied movement, and the use of traditional pedagogy to point us toward future possibilities and the ‘kirtaan generation’.

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