Event Date
DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
NOTES FROM THE FIELD | WINTER '24
"Crossing the Terrifying World Ocean"
Punjabi Sikh Women's Role in Creating Communities in California Through Performing Shabad Kirtan, 1950s-1980s
PROF. NICOLE RANGANATH
Assistant Professor, Middle East & South Asia Studies
TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2024
12:10-1:00 PM
126 VOORHIES
This talk charts women's interior journeys through their singing of devotional hymns amidst their initial experiences of isolation and displacement in rural California, Using Ocean as Method, this chapter analyzes women's performance of hymns and their critical role in creating sacred spaces in monthly prayer gatherings beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, in Gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship), as well as in the Amrit initiation ceremonies in the 1970s. It also examines women's public performance of the Sikh faith and identity in Yuba City's Nagar Kirtan (traveling court of divine music) starting in 1980. The ocean, and water in numerous forms, figured prominently in the sacred songs performed by women. Particular attention is paid to women's performance of the Bārah Mah (Song of the Twelve Months) composition by Guru Arjan from the Gurd Granth Sahib in which the blessed bride navigates the faithful towards union with the Divine One through women's collective singing. It also emphasizes the powerful role of female affinities and devotional singing as crucial forms of support in the lives of the first generation of Sikh women after settling in California between the late 1940s and the 1960s, These supports were envisioned by women as the Boat that carries the soul across the Terrifying World-Ocean" (bhaojal) in Sikh metaphysics and music
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC I| LUNCH SERVED
