Concert Review

Lisa Hauer

Keyboard Skills III

September 27, 2009

Concert Review

The concert I went to see was actually in the Sikh temple, otherwise known as a Gurdwara. The group was without a name but they played acoustic guitar, tablas, and electric keyboard. The name of the keyboard player is GuruSangat Singh Khalsa, the Gurdwara is Raj Khalsa Gurdwara, and the date was Sunday the 27^th of September at 1030 AM.

In the arrangement of Gurbani Kirtan, there is what is called American Kirtan or devotional music. It consists of poems written in Gurmuki (a five hundred year old language that the Sikh holy book is written in). In American Kirtan, the players create new musical arrangements for the poems, typically in an ABAB song format. The style is a call and answer form and the music is primarily kept simple and easy to follow in order to encourage the sangat, or congregation, to join in singing.

All three arrangements performed by the players included guitar, tabla and keyboard accompaniment. The accompaniment was very simple and consisted of the left hand playing the base notes followed by the right hand playing arpeggiated broken chords. It was very simple and without a lot of flashiness or solo improvisation. I saw how the skills we are learning in class can be applied to this type of accompaniment, and how the ability to hear a chord progression can easily turn into playing the figured bass and arpeggiated chords.