Raga and the Architecture of the Guru Granth Sahib

The Guru Granth Sahib is organized into thirty one major sections defined by raga, the melodic frameworks of North Indian classical music, so that hymns intended to be sung in a given raga are grouped together regardless of which Guru or devotional poet composed them. This organization means a ragi performing shabad kirtan is expected to have working knowledge of the specific ragas associated with the passage being sung, and institutions dedicated to preserving this repertoire, along with the traditional performance practice that goes with it, have worked to keep the specific raga assignments alive as musical scholarship and performance practice change over time in the wider North Indian classical tradition from which the ragas are drawn.

Some ragas within the Guru Granth Sahib carry prescribed times of day or season considered appropriate for their performance, echoing a broader classical Indian association between particular ragas and particular times, though practical performance in gurdwaras today does not always hold strictly to this scheme. Instrumentation has also evolved: the harmonium, a reed organ introduced from Europe in the colonial period, became a standard accompaniment for shabad kirtan alongside the tabla, a pairing now considered traditional despite being a comparatively recent addition to a practice whose scriptural core dates to the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.