Gauri Madhuri Dhanraj

So when you come to Canada, you might look at those kinds of music and you think, oh, it's, you know, not as classy as the Indian Bollywood music we hear.

But now, like I'm studying in my master's about Indian folk music and how it migrated and I'm starting to see and love it.

the beauty of Indian folk music.

And I'm letting go of that kind of Western privileged bias of looking at folk music as not up to the same standard as classical music.

I think it's more of the latter, because, and this has really come to the fore in the bhajan jamming, because I've seen when I've done it in Canada, there's people there from, of course, Canada, but also all parts of India, like Gujarat, Punjab, North, South.

Then you've got the West Indians, the Guyanese, the Trinidadians.

Then you've got the people from Africa, and you've got Fiji, you've got Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe.

So to have all of these diverse people in one space, what is really uniting them is the lyrics of those songs, the music behind those bhajans.

Songs like Raghupati Raghav or Payoji Meni, no matter where we're from, as Hindus, we've all grown up hearing those songs.

To answer your question, yeah, I believe it's bringing us together and it's bridging those things that we think identify us as unique.

And that's part of the reason why we come to Temple, too, to feel that link to our ancestral home in a foreign country, especially for so many of us who...

have not been to India, or so many generations ago might have come from India.

So we've lost that kind of connection with India over the years, and now that's coming back through bhajans.

I think that's one way.

But I think the most important thing for bhajans is the voice because I love instruments.

I play a bunch, and anytime we do programs, I try to bring in different Western Indian classical.

But those are kind of like the sauce or the spices that you add into the food.

But without salt, there's no taste.

I think the voice is the key to the bhajans because the emotion that a voice can carry...

While I believe in the power of music and instruments to communicate, I don't think there is any instrument that can equal what the voice can carry.