--- url: 'https://kalasudha.com/en-de/vocal/hindustani-classical/bhajan' title: 'Bhajan: devotional song in Indian music' author: name: Anonymous updated: '2026-10-31T16:34:44+00:00' type: website summary: "Bhajan is devotional song, usually Hindu, sung in temples and in khayal singers' recitals. A short opening line, the tek, returns as a refrain after each line." tags: - 'Hindustani Classical' image: 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' published: true og: site_name: KalaSudha 'image:url': 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' 'image:secure_url': 'https://kalasudha.com/themes/custom/music_agency/assets/icon/logo.svg' 'image:type': image/svg+xml 'image:alt': KalaSudha --- Specific Discipline # Bhajan भजन Learn to sing devotional song through its words, melody and rhythm. Devotional song Vocal practice Bhajan is devotional song, usually Hindu, sung in personal worship, group gatherings, temples and concerts. Learn one song at a time with a teacher or a reference recording. [ Explore Courses ](/en-de/courses?discipline=68) [ Show interest ](/en-de/vocal/hindustani-classical/bhajan/show-interest) [Sign in to follow](/en-de/user/login?flag_anon=follow_term-68&destination=/en-de/markdownify/taxonomy/term/68) [ Share ](/en-de/share/term/68) ## Overview **Bhajan** is devotional song, usually Hindu, whose words address or reflect on the divine. The devotional character of the words makes a song a bhajan; no single musical style does. The Sanskrit word bhajana means reverence, worship and adoration. It comes from the root bhaj, whose senses run from sharing and partaking to revering and adoring, and **bhakti**, devotion, grows from the same root. People sing bhajans in personal worship, group gatherings, temples, festivals and ashram prayer. Bhajans belong to the concert and recorded repertoire of [Hindustani classical vocal music](/en-de/vocal/hindustani-classical), and khayal singers include them in their recitals. The repertoire draws on regional languages across the subcontinent. Diaspora communities, such as Trinidad's, keep the practice alive. In the bhajans Takako Tanaka recorded, a short opening line, the **tek**, works as a refrain and returns to close each full line. Before you join a class, ask the teacher what singing experience it expects, which songs and languages it covers, and how it introduces **raga**, the melodic framework that some settings follow. The five stages below work through a single song, from what its words mean to a complete run-through. Part of **Hindustani Classical**: Hindustani classical vocal music is the singing tradition of North Indian art music. Singers develop a raga through composition and improvisation in khayal and dhrupad. ### Quick Facts Text languages Hindi dialects, Gujarati, Marathi and others Musical form No single fixed form Transmission Mainly oral, with printed anthologies Devotional context Mainly Hindu worship ## History & Evolution Bhajan repertoire draws on **bhakti** poetry that poet-saints composed in regional languages for singing, and singers handed it down mainly by oral transmission. Songs carry the names of **Mirabai**, **Kabir**, **Surdas** and **Tulsidas**. Surdas wrote in Braj, Tulsidas in Awadhi. A poet's name inside a song does not prove authorship. The scholar John Stratton Hawley argues that many legends about Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir arose long after their deaths, and writers on Kabir note that many songs now sung under his name are missing from the oldest manuscripts. The usual account places the first bhakti poetry in South India, with the Alvars and Nayanars of the seventh to ninth centuries, and a later wave in North India; Hawley treats a single "bhakti movement" as a later construction. Medieval Hindi devotional poetry falls into **saguna** (sagun) devotion to God with attributes such as Rama or Krishna, and **nirguna** (nirgun) devotion to the formless divine, which is Kabir's line. Kumar Gandharva brought nirgun bhajans of Kabir to the classical stage, drawing on the folk music of Malwa. Sixteenth century ### Songs associated with Mirabai Mirabai (also Meera) was a Rajput princess married into the royal family of Mewar and devoted to Krishna. Songs carrying her name became popular in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and singers reshaped them as they passed them on. Early twentieth century ### Prayer at Sabarmati Ashram Prayers at Sabarmati Ashram, where Gandhi lived from 1917 to 1930, drew hymns from several faiths and languages. Narayan Moreshwar Khare, a disciple of Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, set them to music and compiled the Ashram Bhajanavali. 1983 ### Lucknow performance recordings Two 1983 recordings at Lucknow's Bhatkhande College of Music capture a teacher and a student singing one bhajan attributed to Kabir. Takako Tanaka reports that their two versions differed entirely in melody and rhythm, and the teacher's rendering changed from lesson to lesson. 1999 ### Trinidad bhajan recordings released Indentured labourers, recruited mainly from present-day Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, carried bhajan singing to Trinidad. Laxmi Tewari recorded it there in 1994 at religious festivals, pujas and temple gatherings, and the UNESCO Collection released the recordings in 1999. ## Technical Aspects ### Melodic settings A bhajan has **no single fixed musical form**, and one text can take several melodies. Singers may use a tune popular among other singers, compose their own or improvise one. Settings run from chanted mantra to classical treatments in [dhrupad](/vocal/hindustani-classical/dhrupad) and the Carnatic [kriti](/vocal/carnatic-classical/kriti), which work within a raga and tala. Deepak Raja's glossary, as Cynthia Snodgrass reports it, describes bhajans set to folk tunes or to a few classical ragas. The printed anthologies in Takako Tanaka's study give at most a raga and tala name for each text, with no record of who added it. A 1950 Navajivan anthology heads one Kabir text with raga **Bhairavi** and the eight-beat kaharva tala, yet two singers recorded in Lucknow sang it to entirely different melodies. Aneesh Pradhan notes several moments when Hindustani vocalists, interpreting devotional texts, borrow from neighbouring forms such as [thumri](/vocal/hindustani-classical/thumri), dadra and tappa. Accompaniment varies. A **tanpura** drone, tabla and harmonium are typical in North Indian performance; bhajan groups in Trinidad play dholak, manjira (hand cymbals) and harmonium. ### Refrain, song structure and kirtan In Tanaka's analysis of her recordings, the short opening line of a bhajan, called the **tek** or dhruva, works as its refrain. It carries the theme on a melody that is easy to remember, makes up for lines that fall short of the metre, and returns to close each full line. A single singer performed most of the bhajans she studied, in **strophic form**: two or three melodic lines repeat many times, in patterns such as A A A or A B A C A, with no fixed rules. Writers use the words bhajan and **kirtan** inconsistently. Cynthia Snodgrass notes that common speech often treats them as one, while finer usage separates two genres. In Edward Henry's fieldwork in Bhojpuri-speaking villages, as she reports it, kirtan meant chant-like, participatory group singing, and the local harikirtan counted as a kind of bhajan. Mendicant singers there performed longer Kabir bhajans alone for listeners. ### Rhythmic treatment The same words can sit in different talas, and the number of syllable-units (**matras**) in a sung line does not map one-to-one onto the beats. Singers keep most of the long and short syllable weights of the verse and stress its rhymes in melody and rhythm. When a line has fewer syllable-units than the cycle needs, they repeat words or fill the rhythm. In Tanaka's recording collection the commonest talas were **kaharva** (also keherwa), eight beats as 4+4; **dadra**, six beats as 3+3; and **tintal** (also teentaal), sixteen beats as 4+4+4+4. Some songs used free rhythm. A commentary on D. V. Paluskar's recorded bhajans finds the same three cycle lengths. ## Journey to Mastery Follow this structured journey to master this discipline 1. 1 ### Understand the words Learn what the words of one chosen bhajan mean before you shape how you sing them. Note unfamiliar words and ask a teacher or a trusted language reference to explain them, including how each word sounds and where one word ends and the next begins. Keep the meaning beside your practice notes so each sung line connects with what it says. 2. 2 ### Establish the tune Learn the tune of one chosen version line by line. Listen for where each line begins and ends, then sing along with your teacher or reference recording at a pace you can follow. If that version works within a raga, ask which notes and movements it uses. Note the source so you can return to the same melodic outline. 3. 3 ### Practise short phrases Start with the tek, the short opening line that works as the refrain and returns to close each full line. Learn it phrase by phrase from the version you have chosen, then add the remaining lines one at a time, singing the tek again after each. Mark any phrase that needs another listening pass or a teacher's correction. 4. 4 ### Fit words to rhythm If your version keeps a tala, such as kaharva or dadra, fit its words to that cycle. Start from the tek and notice where its syllables meet the beats, then move through the remaining lines the same way. Work on any word that blurs or any phrase that drifts off the beat, then return to the full line. Where a song runs in free rhythm, follow the singer's phrasing instead. 5. 5 ### Review a complete version Sing the chosen bhajan from beginning to end, keeping to the version you have studied. Check that the tek returns cleanly at the close of each line and that the words stay clear at your tempo. Ask your teacher to name one passage to improve, work on it, then sing the whole song again. ## Frequently Asked Questions Where can I learn bhajan singing online with a live teacher? KalaSudha's vetted teachers give live one-to-one [bhajan](/en-de/vocal/hindustani-classical/bhajan) singing lessons online. A bhajan is devotional song, usually Hindu: its devotional words make a song a bhajan, whatever its musical style. So you begin with the words. At **Foundation** you learn what each line of one chosen bhajan means, and how each word sounds, before you shape the melody. Bhajans also belong to the concert repertoire of Hindustani classical singing. The material of our [courses](/en-de/courses) reads in English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Malayalam, French or German, and where enough learners sign up, we hold workshops and summer camps. Have more questions? Contact our support team and we'll be happy to help! Stay close ## Keep KalaSudha close. 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