Asa di Var belongs to the amrit vela, the ambrosial hours before dawn that Sikh tradition holds apt for remembrance, and its singing is among the oldest fixed customs of Sikh worship. In gurdwaras across the world, ragis, the musicians of the tradition, perform it in the early morning, and at the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar its daily singing is part of the sanctuary's unbroken round.
Performance practice enriches the text. By long custom the ragis interleave the pauris and saloks with chhants of Guru Ram Das, the fourth Guru, so that the sung Asa di Var is a woven fabric of three Gurus' compositions, and the congregation hears the ballad expanded from within, a liturgical arrangement the tradition itself created and preserves. The music moves between recitation and full kirtan, the saloks often delivered in a plainer style and the pauris carried on the melodies of Asa raga, with the sangat joining refrains. Attending Asa di Var is a devotional discipline in its own right, families rising in darkness to be present, and the custom travels wherever Sikhs settle, so that the ballad Guru Nanak composed for a Punjabi dawn is now sung before sunrise on every continent. Few scriptures assign their social conscience so prominent an hour, the day opened, before business or breakfast, with verses against hypocrisy and for the dignity of women.