Over the past few decades, the Indian devotional singing tradition known as Kirtan has become a global phenomenon, encompassing many new forms and styles, and utilizing a variety of musical instruments. As both a scholar and practitioner, Gustavo Moura, in Sacred Sound and the Transcultural Practice of Kirtan, has provided a descriptive map of the types of Kirtan across several continents, as well as a ‘sound’ theological and historical foundation for understanding what more and more appears to be a major transformational sacred practice around the world.

Guy Beck, Tulane University

Gustavo Moura’s Sacred Sound and the Transcultural Practice of Kirtan presents a fascinating overview of the various social and historical influences that inform the practice of kirtan today, focusing on kirtan in North and South America. This book illustrates how the ways that kirtan is practiced and given meaning in these new contexts result from a variety of complex and transcultural influences that can be traced to both South Asia and the West. Moura’s study also tackles several key issues in the study of kirtan outside of South Asia, including the authenticity of musical style, appropriation, and kirtan’s imbrication with economic exchange. This study represents an important contribution to the study of music and the transplantation of religious thought and practice.

Eben Graves, author of The Politics of Musical Time: Expanding Songs and Shrinking Markets in Bengali Devotional Performance