New In September: Sage Warrior
Sonny Singh releases his new album, “Sage Warrior,” on Sept. 6.
NEW YORK — Blending Punjabi, cumbia, and reggae elements together, Sikh activist and artist Sonny Singh releases his new album, “Sage Warrior,” on Sept. 6.
The music video clip of “Jaano Jot,” song nine on the 12-song album, was captured inside the community kitchen of a gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, and an institution created over 500 years ago as a direct challenge to caste hierarchies insidious in South Asian society. The clip may be found on YouTube.
The refrain of Jaano Jot, a Sikh devotional poem penned by Guru Nanak in the early 16th century, translates to: Know the light within all, ask not of caste / there are no hierarchies in the world beyond.
Valarie Kaur describes the advent of langar in her forthcoming book Sage Warrior:
“Eating together with people of all castes and creeds meant rejecting with your body and breath adherence to hierarchy. High caste people ate from the hands of low-¬ caste “untouchables,” and vice versa. They were training their bodies into a new way of being, undoing millennia of conditioning. They became new in the act: equal, and equally beloved…Langar was more than a rebellion: It was a practice for an alternative world of solidarity, dignity, and humility.”
Singh is a member of pioneering global band Red Baraat since 2008. Sage Warrior is his second solo album, and will be released alongside a book by the same name by activist and writer Valarie Kaur. They will tour nationally together September-October 2024.