DHADI, one who sings vars or ballads to the accompaniment of a musical instrument called dhad, a drumlet held in the palm of one hand and played with the fingers of the other. A concomitant of dhad is the sarangi, a stringed instrument. Dhadis, patronized by chiefs and princes, eulogized

PHUNHK, plural of phunha, a word derived from the Sanskrit punha meaning `again`, is the name of a poetic metre in which a particular term or phrase occurs repeatedly in each chhand or may be in each verse of a poem; in the Guru Granth Sahib it is the title

DHUNI, from Skt. dhvani meaning sound, echo, noise, voice, tone, tune, thunder, stands in Punjabi generally for sound and tune. In the Guru Granth Sahib, the term appears in the sense of tune at the head of 9 of the 22 vars (odes) under different ragas or musical measures. Directions

SADDU and his brother Maddu were rebeck players in attendance on Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) at Anandpur. They performed kirtan for the Guru.

GAJJA SINGH, MAHANT (c. 1850-1914), maestro of Sikh classical devotional music, was born in a Jatt Sikh family of Vandar, a village in Faridkot district of the Punjab. He had a sensitive ear for music from his early childhood. His father, a pious Sikh himself, apprenticed him for religious

SAMUND SINGH, BHAI (1901-1972), a leading Sikh musicologist of the twentieth century, trained in music under leading maestros of the art, Sikhs as well as Muslims, was born on 3 March 1901, at the village of Mulla Hamza, in Montgomery district, now in Pakistan. He started his training so young

GHARU, pronounced ghar, is a term used in the titles of many of the hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib. The final "u" is only of grammatical significance indicating masculine gender and singular number. Gharu appears after the name of the rdga (musical measure) and the indication with regard

SATTA, also called Satta Dum because he was a du/n or miraslby birth, a rababior rebeckplayer to Guru Arjan, and co-composer, with Rai Balvand, of Ramkall ki Var, included in the Guru Granth Sahib in the Ramkali musical measure.

GURMAT SANGIT or sacred music of the Sikhs. The founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak (1469-1539), composed his religious verse to settings of Indian ragas mostly from the classical tradition. Successive Gurus followed his example and considered divine worship through music the best means of attaining that state which

SHABAD (Sanskrit sabda, of obscure etymology) is generally rendered as sound, voice or tone. Another series of meanings includes word, utterance, speech. In distinctive Sikli usage shabad means a hymn or sacred work from the Guru Granth Sahib. In the theological sense, it stands for the `Word` revealed by

HIRA SINGH RAGI, BHAI (1879-1926), eminent exponent of Sikh devotional music, was born in 1879 at Faruka, in Shahpur district, now in Pakistan. His father`s name was Bhai Bhag Singh and mother`s Satbharai. Bhag Singh was well versed in classical music and played string instruments such as sdraizgi and

SUNDAR SINGH, RAGI (1892-1937), head musician at Sri Harimandar at Amritsar, was born at Amritsar in 1892, the son of Bahi Amar Singh Arora, himself a musician of considerable standing. Sundar Singh served his apprenticeship with Bhai Atra, a well known rababi (rebeckplayer), who was a disciple of Bhai Moti,