Dr Harjinder Lallie is a Birmingham-based academic who has been teaching kirtan, devotional Sikh music, for many years and practices regularly with his 13-year-old daughter Nanaki. She, along with several other students of music, now have the option to formalise their training after Sikh Sacred Music was recognised as part of the eight-grade musical examination system.
Music Teachers’ Board (MTB), one of the main UK exam boards, launched the curriculum for this form of spiritual music last week along with a recognition of five Indian string instruments – dilruba, taus, esraj, sarangi and saranda. MTB Managing Director David Kesel welcomed this as part of a wider drive towards diversifying the music syllabus, which would also offer students the opportunity to earn UCAS points towards university admissions.
Here, Dr Lallie offers some insights into this global milestone for kirtan, his mission to preserve this musical heritage and future plans involving other Indian instruments.
How has the journey been towards Sikh Sacred Music achieving this milestone?
It is deeply humbling and fills me with pride to see 10 years of hard work paid off with the curriculum being launched. A Western audience can now fully appreciate that Sikh kirtan is no less than other Western contemporary music genre.
I want to do the same with other South Asian music genres too. I want the tabla, sarangi, sitar etc all to have that same place on the platform. We are working on developing that and will have some really exciting news to share soon.
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What is the kind of interest you have had from schools around the world?
The curriculum is being launched in a few music schools in the Punjab. As more and more people are finding out, they are asking us if there is a teacher near them that they can recommend. In addition, we are getting queries from tutors who want to teach it and want to understand it better, so we are going to run teacher training courses.
There are several schools in the UK that are launching the curriculum, which is also being launched in Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, Vancouver and Toronto.
But we have even bigger plans. We will be launching the accredited tabla exam in January 2025. That will be followed by more – such as the sitar, sarod and other traditional South Asian music instruments.Our goal throughout all this is to ensure that we preserve our heritage for generations to come.
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How would you explain kirtan to those less familiar with Sikh Sacred Music?
Kirtan is the singing of shabads/scriptures from the ‘Guru Granth Sahib’. This is a fundamental method of devotion and praise in the Sikh faith.
Almost 550 years ago, kirtan was performed on tanti saaz (stringed instruments) and in the last 25 years, there has been a huge drive pioneered by groups such as the Gurmat Sangeet Academy in the UK to bring back the traditional instruments.
This new examination system requires the candidate to do kirtan on traditional stringed instruments and not the harmonium. By doing this, we will be encouraging more children to connect back with their roots and heritage.
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Finally, when did your own journey with kirtan begin?
My own journey began when I was six years old. I learned the tabla and then the harmonium. At the time, I was not aware of how stringed instruments such as the dilruba, sarangi, and esraj should be used in kirtan. I only discovered that in or around 1997. In that year, I began to learn stringed instruments in the school of the esteemed and legendary Pandit Ramnarayan through one of his students. I began to apply that to kirtan and in the same year opened a music academy in the UK to teach this style of music.
We are currently the largest South Asian music academy outside of India and operate dozens of classes in the UK, with dozens of tutors. I am so confident that our future generations will now value this wonderful art and pass on to their children too.