A European Parlor Instrument Becomes a Devotional Fixture

The harmonium has no roots in South Asian religious tradition at all; it was developed in nineteenth century Europe as a compact substitute for a pipe organ, suited to a parlor rather than a place of worship, and reached India through colonial era trade and missionary use. Within a few decades of its arrival, though, it had been adopted so thoroughly into Sikh and Sufi devotional practice that many worshippers today experience it as though it had always belonged there.

Sikh kirtan, the singing of hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib that forms the devotional core of gurdwara worship, took up the harmonium as its primary melodic instrument, typically paired with tabla, and it now appears at nearly every gurdwara performing kirtan worldwide. Qawwali, the devotional singing tradition associated with Sufi shrines, particularly in the lineage connected to the thirteenth century mystic and musician Amir Khusrau, adopted the harmonium in much the same way, where it now sits at the center of the ensemble alongside hand claps and the tabla or dholak. The instrument's rapid, near total adoption into traditions with no prior connection to it is itself a case study in how devotional music absorbs new technology when the technology solves a real problem, in this case the difficulty of sustaining pitch and providing accompaniment without a large or specialized ensemble.