Conversation with Bibi Jaswant Kaur, 22nd April, 2008

(photo courtesy of www.gurmatsangeetproject.com)

On my last day in India, after a harrowing trip with too much luggage (another story) from Amritsar to Delhi, to Ajmer, and back to Delhi, I visited a place called Guru Gobind Sadan (www.gobindsadan.org). This multi-faith retreat in the suburbs of Delhi is rooted in Sikhism, but includes a mosque, several Hindu temples, a Buddha pavilion, a sanctuary bearing the Sh’ma Yisroel and yes, even a 7-foot high Jesus wearing Indian-style robes in whose hands the devotees could bury their heads. I was guided by a wonderful New England-raised woman named Mary, but I was there to meet and speak with Bibi Jaswant Kaur.


The actual environment of the interview was difficult. First, there was the presence of a Russian lady, another guest at the ashram doing a translation of the Sikh scripture, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, from English into Russian while studying the Indian classical dance bharatnatyam. Since the Russian gal had lived there several years, this led Bibiji to speak more than half the time in Punjabi. I had difficulty following, and even when I could follow the outline of what she was saying by context, the details I was grappling for, from someone of her stature, eluded me. Moreover, it would not have been possible even to record the conversation for later translation because the giant cooling fan/apparatus was droning on so loudly (it had been 105 that day in Delhi) that we all had to lean in even to hear eachother.

Sidenote: at the end of the conversation I put into practice my theory that “Indian music is just like when you harmonize with the vacuum cleaner” by taking the drone of the fan and singing a raga around it – Bibiji was pleasantly surprised!

Earlier, I had listened to Bibiji sing her kirtan at a 5:30pm session before Rehras Sahib (the evening prayer in Sikhism). In addition to the other complexes at Guru Gobind Sadan, there was a main gurdwara with an outside langgar hall, etc. Bibiji’s voice came over the loudspeaker with another man who repeated her lines in the same octave (her voice is so low, I could have sung in the same octave as well). This fair-skinned Punjabi, who they called simply Bhagatji, accompanied on dhol with very simple beats, not classical taals.

I was a little disappointed once we had first settled into listen to this kirtan. However, I do credit Bibiji that I could understand the words of the shabads she sang perhaps better than in any setting with other singers, including my ragi in lessons with me. It’s hard to articulate how often during my research I was listening to kirtan and had no idea even the general shape of the words that were being sung; those that weren’t deformed by the singer were swallowed by the empty spaces of the hall. Gobind Sadan did have a good sound system, which made it feel more intimate than in many gurdwaras - these ashrams tend to have wealthy contributors overseas that can outfit them with luxuries they take for granted but are not common in the rest of India. I also acknowledge that, since it was the end of my time in India, my improved ability for listening to words in Punjabi, combined with her pronunciation, enabled me to differentiate the words.

In spite of this, the kirtan did not satisfy what I knew to be classical style. There was no tabla (drum), and Bhagatji was not playing in taals (classical meters). Also, in spite of my initial excitement that Bibji was a “classical singer’s singer”, since I knew she had learned ragas from the most famous family of singers in the history or Sikhism (more on that later), after some time I began to doubt whether she was really singing in ragas at all. There seemed to be no improvisation - she repeated each asthai and antra the same, with no alaap or taan - and her accompaniment on the harmonium was square. Still, despite lacking musical interest, I resigned myself to the fact that perhaps the impact of her kirtan lay in something else, for example the clarity of the words (what my ragi called “shabad ang”). This was somewhat highlighted when Mary turned to me to ask, ‘do you understand the words’, and translated for me the refrain “with every breath I remember your name, o God”. She seemed to be very moved by the kirtan, and once I knew the translation I appreciated that the ‘breathing’ of the musical line had a mesmerizing quality, even though it was not in the high-classical style I expected.

At the conclusion of the twenty minutes of kirtan, I was introduced to Bibiji and Bhagatji, and we fixed an appointment for after Rehras at 7pm. I was left at the gurdwara, and there followed a confusing sequence of rites, similar to what would happen in a gurdwara, but much more opaque to me as an outsider to this community – how quickly people in these closed-in ashram settings must internalize the timings of a daily rite and forget that the proportions might feel unfamiliar to an outsider, even one who had observed Rehras in the Golden Temple on many occasions. Some hukamnama was taken (reading from a random page of the scripture), but it struck me as much longer than normal, and at times the reader left the page and went from memory. Rehras Sahib wasn’t chanted in the usual tones, and instead it led into a long aarti prayer, where volunteers gathered in front of all the shrines in the complex waving elaborate candelabras – not just in front of Sri Guru Granth Sahib but also at a well devoted to Guru Nanak’s son and a brick chimney bearing many plaques.

Just before seven, when the Russian was supposed to take me to Bibi’s residence, Bhagatji came over to me in the gurdwara hall and asked if I still wanted to meet Bibiji. He then assigned one of the volunteers (clearly not a resident of the place, I knew in that way that I began to distinguish these things without any specific observations) to take me. He walked me over to her condo in the ashram, where it was somewhat impressive she lived on her own at 88 years old. She had put together a little plate of biscuits and when the Russian arrived a few minutes later she offered us some coca-cola.

Despite the difficulties mentioned above, I learned many interested facts through the course of the conversation with Bibiji. Since the Russian girl didn’t know much (anything) about kirtan history, I persuaded Bibiji to talk a little about the rababis who had trained her. I have to interject a little history here, much of it gleamed due to the work of my friend Sarbpreet at www.gurmatsangeetproject.com. The whole tradition of Sikh kirtan goes back to the first Guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, in the late 15th century. Kirtan itself, or devotional singing to God, was nothing new, and in fact had swept back into style in the preceding centuries by a massive Hindu revival movement called ‘bhakti’. However, Nanak’s kirtan was distinct enough to launch his own movement, which became Sikhism, because he had a strong reformist message and a folk-friendly style that appealed to non-learned Hindus and Muslims alike. As he traveled and sang his messages, so the stories go, his companion Mardana went with him, accompanying his poetry and songs on an instrument called the rabab. Mardana belonged to a lineage (caste) called ‘mirasis’, who are traditionally Muslims and to this day noted for their inherent artistic ability (such that I would hear people in conversation laud their vocal quality). Mardana passed down to his mirasi descendants the playing of the rabab and the association with the Sikh gurus and shabad kirtan. Thus, all the way through the centuries and up to the time of Partition, the hazuri ragis (main singers) at the Golden Temple have been descendants of Mardana, and remained Muslim! At the time of Partition, which was especially violent in Punjab, these ragis moved to Pakistan with most other Muslims, leaving open their preeminent posts at the Golden Temple. The irony, of course, is that most Sikhs moved out of Pakistan, abandoning even the historical gurdwaras there, leaving these trained Rababis (as they came to be called, as identifying caste such as ‘mirasi’ became un-PC in India) with nowhere to sing. This over-simplified history is important because Bibi Jaswant Kaur, as a young girl growing up in Amritsar, learned Sikh kirtan from these same musicians, and is now one of the only remaining links to, and repositories of, their compositions and style.
(rabab, from Rabab Revival Program)
Bibiji didn’t go into detail about names, but from Sarbpreetji I understand her teachers to have been Bhai Lal and Bhai Taba. She was born in Amritsar and grew up there (at that time a fairly major city of Punjab, but overshadowed somewhat by the capital in Lahore). She said that her first performance in the Sri Akal Takht Sahib (in the Golden Temple complex across from the main sanctuary) was at the age of eight (80 years ago!) when she sang a shabad there. She continued studying with the rababis for the next 18 years until Partition.

When I pressed for specifics about performing with the Rababis, she said there were no traditional instruments used in the Golden Temple (though it may be an overstatement to presume this means ‘never’). Thus, despite the name ‘rababi’ (a player of Mardana’s traditional instrument), by and large the group was only two harmoniums and a tabla player. On that score, the Golden Temple today employs a fourth musician in most kirtan on a traditional stringed instrument like dilruba or sarinda (I never saw a rabab in action). So, in certain respects, the current official version of ‘traditional’ kirtan is different than what the rababis were practicing in the 20th century…but I digress. In fact, Bibiji still has on her shelf the first harmonium she ever purchased, in 1956 at a shop in Delhi for 250 rupees (today it’s more like 5,000). As she continued telling her life story, I heard about how after Partition she had moved around with her husband, who worked as an engineer for the government. She continued singing kirtan, but because of the moving, and other expectations for a woman, she never acquired any serious students of her own to whom she could pass on the rababi compositions.

Interestingly, when I mentioned that I had enjoyed her kirtan from earlier in the evening, she dismissed it, saying that it was not at all in serious ragas. I was a bit taken aback by this candor, but she recognized that I knew something about classical style, and bemoaned the fact that she could not do that style at Gobind Sadan. For one, there was no experienced tabla player to accompany her (though she was surely appreciative of Bhagatji’s energy, I guess she didn’t have the energy to teach him). Further, she feels too old to practice all the storied compositions (even that night she had to cut off some of the verses of the shabad because her voice got too tired), and so she forgets them even after 80 years of living with them. Finally, she gave the reason that people just don’t understand the ragas and they would rather hear her sing the simple stuff. I heard this line before from ragis, and it always seems somewhat insufficient as reason to me, but I didn’t want to push her and that’s a subject for another post.

To jog her memory I mentioned a few specific ragas, asking which compositions she knew. For a while until her memory faltered, she obliged me, singing a few lines in a voice that, despite its grating, sounded much more agile than on first impression. I didn’t know the particular shabads, so it was hard for me to appreciate in the moment how these compositions were special, but she tried to impress it upon me in statements that were part determination, part desperation: “Now, [some] ragis come to me and want to learn these compositions, but I am too old to teach them. So I say,” reaching into a bag on the table to pull out a tape, “listen to these cassettes…and you must learn.” I was touched that Bibiji gave me a cassette, entrusting me with the same imperative to learn the compositions and propagate them, despite the fact that I don’t even own a tape player. She said that she is hoping to get them put on CD’s soon, and maybe that’s something with which Sarbpreet or I can help.

In the end, I realized how happy and lucky I was to have met her. It was strange, upon reflection, to visualize an entire history of music with violent political disruption embodied in a sweet old lady who offered me cookies and spent more than half the time talking about her grandchildren. I’m glad to have been taught the lesson that sometimes history speaks like that. To someone like Sarbpreet, she and her music rest on a fine line between present and past. He strongly feels that this is his heritage poised on the brink of murky obscurity. For me, the experience a glimpse of the passion in her faded voice - the long life lived at the height of her artistic powers - and then a heartfelt thank you and a walk out into the sweltering evening…towards my bags, towards the airport, and back to a place where most have never known she existed.