Prabhu Nam Kaur and Snatam Kaur

Prabhu Nam Kaur has been teaching yoga for 30 years, is able to listen with deep compassion, and has a profound mastery of the sound current. She is able to evoke a deeply sacred space with her devotional music. She has been studying the language Gurmukhi for more than 30 years and takes great joy in her ongoing studies of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text of the Sikhs. She is one of the leading Ragis (musicians) in the Sikh community of the West, and is a well-know teacher of teh Gurmukhi language, and its musical form, Gurbani. One of her most precious students is her daugher, Snatam Kaur.
Snatam Kaur was introduced to music and spiritual practice at an early age. Schooled in kirtan, meditation, and Gurmukhi, the Sanskrit-based language of Sikh scriptures from Northern India, the young Snatam Kaur began to develop the devotion and skills that have grown and blossomed into a compelling, profound talent.

Snatam Kaur's parents brought her up in the Sikh tradition as taught by Yogi Bhajan. From an early age, she practiced yoga and meditation daily and her mother taught her Gurmukhi. "My mother taught me the alphabet on my way to school every morning," recalls Snatam. Her Sikh community augmented these lessons with instruction in kirtan (devotional chanting). "Through these experiences, I learned the pronunciation," she says, "but also I learned the passion for what I was singing because these gatherings were so spiritual."

As a child, Snatam also had training in voice, violin, guitar, and percussion. She obtained a solid foundation in Western classical music while playing violin in an orchestra and giving solo performances. Her many opportunities to use and expand her musical talent in a spiritual setting emphasized for her the connection between her music and spirituality. "I learned about the importance of sound currents from Yogi Bhajan," she says, "but I also had the personal experience of how the energy of these sacred words can have a very real, positive effect."