UC Riverside

This essay will examine the contemporary issue of the television broadcasting of the sacred Gurbani from the Darbar Sahib to set the stage for understanding the historical context of the musical sessions (chauṅkīs) of devotional singing, followed by the process of decolonizing the musical performances in modern times, including religious aesthetics and sacred time and the processional chauṅkīs in the Darbar Sahib Complex. The continuous singing of the Guru’s hymns (Gurbani kirtan) resounds inside the Darbar Sahib (“the Divine Court”), popularly known as the Golden Temple of Amritsar. This special mode of worship consists of singing and listening to the hymns of the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred scripture of the Sikhs. The heart of Sikh devotional experience lies in the performance of scriptural hymns in a congregational setting. Notably, different sessions of devotional singing go on day and night from 2.45 a.m. to 10.45 p.m. at the Golden Temple, following a celebrated tradition established more than four centuries ago by the Fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjan. Even during the four-hour period of cleaning the sanctum sanctorum at midnight, the devotees recite hymns from memory, thereby making the Darbar Sahib a unique place where vibrations of sacred sound reverberate continuously for twenty-four hours a day.