Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Jiਭਾਈ ਧਰਮ ਸਿੰਘ ਜ਼ਖਮੀ ਜੀ

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, few Sikh musicians joined deep classical training to deep religious learning the way Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji did. A renowned ragi of the 1960s and 1970s, he was also a scholar of Gurbani whose katha, the spoken exposition of the scriptures, drew educated listeners wherever his jatha travelled. His singing followed the rules of raga and tala strictly, yet those who heard the jatha remembered one thing above all: the words of the shabad were always crystal clear, and the music never overpowered them.

From Manko village, near Shamchaurasi

Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji was born and brought up in Manko, a small village near Adampur in Jalandhar district. The village stands close to Sham Chaurasi, the town famous across the subcontinent as the home of the khayal singers Salamat Ali Khan and Nazakat Ali Khan, and he was often called Shamchaurasiwale, the one from Shamchaurasi. Music came to him from his forefathers, and in 1947 he became an Amritdhari Sikh, taking the vows of the Khalsa. From then on, his family never looked back, and his life was given to Gurbani and its music.

His learning matched his music. At school he had studied Urdu and Persian, and through the old Persian and Urdu books he built a deep knowledge of the Sikh faith, its history and its philosophy. His pronunciation of Urdu words was exact to the smallest detail, something educated audiences in the congregations especially appreciated. He knew the bani of the Dasam Granth particularly well, and the Persian ghazals of Bhai Nand Lal, which his jatha would sing along with the translations of Bhai Megh Raj Garib.

Training under Professor Darshan Singh Komal

His first training in classical music came within the family. For intensive training he then became the student of Professor Darshan Singh Komal of Hoshiarpur, the blind maestro who trained scores of Sikh religious musicians. Among Komal's most promising students, the Gurmat Sangeet Project's profile lists Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi alongside Bhai Didar Singh, Bhai Beant Singh Bijli and Bhai Gian Singh Surjeet. The discipline of that training stayed with the jatha all its life: sophisticated, raga bound singing in which the shabad always remained supreme.

A jatha of brothers and sons

Where most ragi jathas of the time performed as three musicians, two on harmoniums and one on tabla, Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji's party had four, and it carried a string instrument as well. His younger brother, Bhai Shamsher Singh Zakhmi, sang beside him: a musician who had worked even harder on classical music, blessed with a sweet, flexible voice of very wide range, who in the later years of the jatha virtually led the singing. Tabla accompaniment came from his son Bhai Hariqbal Singh, who also gave strong vocal support, above all in the Asa Di Vaar. His other son, Bhai Amrik Singh, played the dilruba and sang, and recited the parmans, the supporting verses of Gurbani sung as commentary on the main shabad, a hallmark of the jatha's art.

Bhai Dharam Singh Ji himself was the leader of the jatha and its intellectual centre. Between the shabads he gave elegant, focused commentary in Punjabi and Urdu, quoting Gurbani with delight, and enjoying especially the poetry of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Even Bhai Samund Singh Ji, the most revered ragi of the age, loved to hear some of the shabads sung by this jatha in their choicest traditional tunes. After Bhai Samund Singh, Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi came to be recognised as the most respected Sikh religious musician of All India Radio Jalandhar, and as a scholar and leading orator he became a popular kathakar pracharak as well, a preacher whose katha carried the same weight as his kirtan.

No master's service, and tours across the world

Remarkably, he never entered the service of any gurdwara or institution in his lifetime. He and his jatha travelled extensively instead, delighting Sikh sangats across India and abroad. His party was among the first Sikh musicians to travel overseas: they visited Kenya, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore several times, and during one British tour the audiences liked their kirtan so much that a two month trip stretched to more than six months. In Singapore, the foresight of the local gurdwara managers in the 1960s meant his singing was extensively recorded on professional tape, and those recordings, preserved today by the Gurmat Sangeet Project and on keertan sites, remain the surest way to hear the jatha in its glory days. A photograph of the jatha in Kenya in 1976 shows the four of them together near the end of his life.

His final years and the family after him

Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji died around the end of the 1970s: the Gurmat Sangeet Project's profile gives around 1978, while SikhiWiki gives 1980. A few months after his death the jatha was taken over by his younger brother, Bhai Shamsher Singh, who formed a new party with Bhai Mohanpal Singh and toured as far as the United States in 1985, before he too passed away in the mid 1980s. Bhai Amrik Singh formed his own jatha and kept the family's singing alive for decades, travelling to gurdwaras and sangats all over the world, until his death on 10 November 2013. Bhai Hariqbal Singh moved to Mumbai and later turned to katha, and the family's next generations, down to Amrik Singh's son Harjot Singh, have continued as kirtaniyas, so the Zakhmi family's music has now sounded for well over a century of unbroken singing.

What made Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji's kirtan distinctive?

Three things met in his jatha: strict raga and tala discipline learned from Professor Darshan Singh Komal, crystal clear enunciation so the shabad was never overpowered by the music, and a scholar's katha woven between the shabads, drawing on the Dasam Granth and on the Persian ghazals of Bhai Nand Lal, sung with Bhai Megh Raj Garib's translations. His four-man jatha, with his son's dilruba alongside the harmoniums and tabla, also sounded different from the standard three-man parties of the day.

Did Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi Ji serve at a gurdwara?

No. SikhiWiki records that he never entered the service of any gurdwara or institution in his lifetime. Instead he and his jatha travelled from sangat to sangat, in India and overseas, and he was recognised through All India Radio Jalandhar, where after Bhai Samund Singh he was regarded as the most respected Sikh religious musician of the station.