Bhajan and kirtan
The music most Desi households actually make themselves. No training required, no audience, and in many homes it happens every single evening.
The difference
| Bhajan | A devotional song of praise. Can be sung alone or together, at home or at a temple. Melodic, and usually with a fixed text |
| Kirtan | Call-and-response. A leader sings a line, everyone answers it, and it repeats — often speeding up over many minutes. Participatory by definition |
| Aarti | The specific song sung while a lamp is circled before the deity, at the end of a puja. Everyone knows one or two by heart |
| Shabad kirtan | The Sikh practice: hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib, sung in prescribed ragas in a gurdwara, usually by a trio of ragis |
Who wrote the repertoire
Most of it comes from the Bhakti movement, a devotional wave that ran across India roughly between the seventh and seventeenth centuries and deliberately used everyday languages instead of Sanskrit — which is exactly why ordinary people could sing it.
- Meerabai — a Rajput princess whose songs to Krishna are still the most-sung devotional poetry by women.
- Kabir — a weaver, blunt and sceptical, mocking ritual on both the Hindu and Muslim sides. Quoted constantly, often by people who don't know they're quoting him.
- Surdas and Tulsidas — the Krishna devotional tradition, and the Ramcharitmanas that most north Indian Ramayana retellings descend from. See the tales.
What it sounds like
Harmonium, dholak, and manjira — small hand cymbals that anyone can pick up. That's the standard household trio, and the manjira is how children are included. In temples add tabla, and in large satsangs a full ensemble. The instruments are covered in the instruments.
You are expected to. Kirtan is designed so that anyone can participate after one repetition — you'll have the response line within a minute. Clapping on the beat is enough. Nobody is assessing your singing, and sitting silently is the only thing that feels odd to the room.
Where this happens at home is covered in the puja space and daily rhythms.
Traditions vary by region, gharana and teacher — where practice genuinely differs, this page says so rather than presenting one version as the rule.
See also: setting up a puja space · rhythms of a desi household · instruments · festival year
Last updated: 2026-08-12
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