Kirtan
Quick answer: Kirtan is the devotional singing of sacred poetry, from Sikh shabad kirtan to Bhakti sankirtan. Learn its history, forms and lessons for working poets.
Kirtan is the practice of singing sacred poetry aloud, usually in a group and often in call and response, so that a congregation does not merely hear a devotional poem but performs it together. The word comes from the Sanskrit root kirt, to praise, to narrate, to make famous. Across North India and far beyond, kirtan is the main way devotional verse actually lives: the pads of Surdas, the shabads of the Sikh Gurus and the abhangs of Tukaram were all composed for this setting, not for silent reading.
For a poet, kirtan matters because it is a complete delivery system for verse, older and more durable than print. It explains why so much Bhakti era poetry has refrains, short lines, and names repeated like handholds: those features exist so that a crowd of untrained voices can join in by the second stanza. If you have ever wondered why medieval Indian lyrics feel so singable, kirtan is the answer, and studying it will change how you hear that whole body of literature.
One Word, Several Traditions
Kirtan is not one uniform practice. In Sikh worship it means shabad kirtan, the raga-based singing of Gurbani in the gurdwara. In Bengal and Odisha it evokes the ecstatic sankirtan of the Vaishnava movement. In Maharashtra it names something different again: a solo performance art in which a kirtankar preaches, sings and tells stories for an evening. Gujarat, Braj, Assam and the Kannada and Telugu south all have their own versions under related names.
What unites them is the conviction that singing praise is itself a spiritual act, open to anyone with a voice. The Bhakti saints made this a levelling force: you did not need Sanskrit, priesthood or wealth to join a kirtan, only willingness. That openness shaped the poetry composed for it, which prizes clarity and warmth over learned display.
Shabad Kirtan: The Sikh Line
Sikh kirtan begins with Guru Nanak himself, who travelled with the Muslim musician Bhai Mardana, composer of nothing yet indispensable: Mardana played the rabab, a plucked string instrument, while the Guru sang his hymns. That founding pairing of poet and accompanist set the pattern, and for centuries hereditary rababi musicians carried the tradition.
Because the Guru Granth Sahib is organised by raga, Sikh kirtan is tied to its texts with unusual precision: the scripture tells you the melodic frame in which a hymn belongs. Today the harmonium and tabla dominate in most gurdwaras, though there is a serious revival of older string instruments such as the taus and dilruba. The kirtan session, ending in congregational singing, remains the centre of Sikh worship, which means millions of people encounter sixteenth century poetry as live music every single day.
Sankirtan and the Bhakti Flood
In sixteenth century Bengal, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu turned kirtan into a public, processional force. His followers took sankirtan, the collective chanting of the divine names, out of temples and into the streets of Nabadwip, with drums (the khol or mridanga) and brass hand cymbals (kartals). The nagar kirtan, a singing procession through a town, descends from this moment and is now part of Sikh practice too, especially around festivals.
Further west, the Varkari tradition of Maharashtra built its devotion around the abhangs of poets such as Namdev, Jnaneshwar, Eknath and Tukaram, sung by pilgrims walking to Pandharpur. In Gujarat the pads of Narsi Mehta played a similar role. Notice the pattern: in each region, a great body of vernacular poetry survives because a singing community kept performing it. Kirtan is, among other things, the most successful manuscript preservation scheme in Indian literary history.
The Marathi Kirtankar: Poet, Preacher, Performer
Maharashtra developed kirtan into a distinct solo art, often called Naradiya kirtan. A single performer, the kirtankar, stands with musicians behind and holds an audience for an hour or more. The performance has a classic two part structure: the purvaranga, which opens with an abhang and unfolds its philosophical theme, and the uttararanga, which illustrates that theme through a story, usually from the lives of saints or the epics, told with songs, jokes and dramatic flair.
This form is worth study by any poet who performs. The kirtankar's method, stating a theme through a short lyric and then earning it through narrative, is close to what a good poetry reading does when the poet frames a poem with a story. Several major Marathi writers and reformers trained in or borrowed from kirtan, and the form is still taught and performed today.
How Kirtan Shapes the Poems Themselves
Verse written for kirtan carries visible design features. The refrain comes first: a line the whole gathering can seize. Stanzas tend to be short and syntactically complete, because a lead singer must be able to throw a line and have the crowd return it. Divine names and epithets repeat, functioning like a chorus the audience already knows. The metres are matra based and steady, friendly to the drum.
Here is an original micro-example of call and response shape, on an everyday subject rather than a sacred one: the caller sings 'who carried the water up the hill', and the response returns 'my mother did, my mother did', with each new calling line naming another labour and the response line never changing. Build a lyric that way and you will feel how the form generates emotion through accumulation, not argument.
Bringing Kirtan Craft into Your Own Work
Start by writing for two voices even if you will publish for one. Draft a poem where every second line could be spoken by a crowd, then decide whether to keep the structure visible or bury it. Read the result aloud with a friend taking the response line; where they stumble, the line is too clever.
Repetition is the other discipline. Kirtan proves that a repeated line does not bore listeners when each return arrives with new pressure behind it. If you want a live test of whether your refrain builds or merely repeats, enter the piece somewhere it will be judged on structure and emotion; Writory's monthly contest scores both, and a kirtan-shaped lyric plays to exactly those strengths.
What poets can take from this
- Distinguish the traditions in essays: shabad kirtan is Sikh and raga bound, sankirtan is Vaishnava and processional, Naradiya kirtan is a Marathi solo art.
- Write the response line first when drafting call and response: it must survive dozens of returns.
- Keep crowd lines to one breath; a response longer than eight or nine syllables falls apart in a group.
- Listen to recordings of both gurdwara kirtan and Bengali sankirtan to hear how differently one word can sound.
- Remember Bhai Mardana and the rabab when writing about Sikh kirtan; the musical partnership is part of the poetry's history.
- Use repeated names and epithets deliberately, as anchors, not as filler.
Try it yourself
Write a call and response poem about a person who raised you. The caller's lines change every time, each naming one concrete thing that person did; the response line never changes. Perform it aloud with someone before you revise, and cut every calling line the responder could not answer instantly.
Questions
What is the difference between kirtan and bhajan?
A bhajan is a devotional song, typically performed by a singer for listeners, while kirtan is a participatory practice, usually call and response, where the congregation sings back. The line blurs in practice, but the test is participation: kirtan wants your voice, a bhajan is content with your ears.
What instruments are used in kirtan?
It varies by tradition. Sikh shabad kirtan today typically uses harmonium and tabla, with a revival of older strings like the rabab, taus and dilruba. Bengali sankirtan relies on the khol drum and kartal cymbals, and Marathi kirtan commonly uses tal, mridanga and a drone.
Is kirtan only a Hindu or Sikh practice?
The word belongs to Indian devotional traditions broadly, including Sikh, Vaishnava, Varkari and other Bhakti communities. In recent decades kirtan-style chanting has also spread worldwide through yoga culture, though the deep poetic traditions behind it remain rooted in South Asian languages.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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