Sat Kartar Khalsa has been teaching , recording, and performing chant and devotional kirtan (music sung in call and response style) for over 30 years. Her personal journey with these potent spiritual tools was initiated in 1971 when she stumbled upon Kundalini Yoga and Sikhism, and became a student of her spiritual teacher, Yogi Bhajan.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Ga., her childhood was full of music. Both parents played piano and her father frequently performed at parties and restaurants. There was music around of every kind--musicals, standards, and classical music. Sat Kartar played piano at 5, guitar at 14, sang in an Episcopal choir at 9,and had a keen ear for picking out tunes on piano and guitar, from the Beatles to
the Spanish Malaguena. She trained in ballet, and other dance forms. In college, she was doing cover gigs of singer-songwriters and folk artists. One big influence was Joni Mitchell, whose open tunings and unusual melodies were a doorway and vicarious permission to explore uncharted territory, musically. Trying to find her lyric voice, in 1971, to express the rising spiritual revolution she felt, she tried a Kundalini Yoga class, hoping for some kind of release from songwriter's block.“I thought the yoga would relax me enough to just let the songs come, or discipline me enough to just work at it.”
Actually, yoga re-routed her journey from becoming a folk-rock musician, and brought her awareness to the inner peace, focus, expansion, and clarity that the practice of yoga, breathing, and the sound current of chant bring . Sat Kartar recalls, " My first experience of chant was being mesmerized by the sound of my first yoga teacher, Livtar Singh, who sang the same words over and over, while playing a drone instrument called a tamboura. I thought I had opened Pandora's Box on some mysterious unknown world of sound. At a retreat 4 months later, I had a heart awakening, while chanting, that I have never known with any other music.” She began chanting with Livtar in yoga classes, and various events in Atlanta, and they went on to sing in two early chant bands, Sat Nam East, and the Khalsa String Band, which, in the’70s, toured internationally in India, Canada and the U.S.
During her first trip to India, in 1974, while on tour, Sat Kartar began what would be a life long study of North Indian Classical kirtan (call and response devotional singing) with numerous Sikh ragis ( who sing in Eastern mystic scales).”My first real vocal training was with my kirtan teacher, Amarjit Kaur, who schooled me in voice practice, tabla rhythms, and Eastern raga scales and the exquisite subleties of singing Sikh hymns.” After the Khalsa String Band went into a dormant phase, Sat Kartar began performing, recording, and teaching Gurbani (Sikh) kirtan and continues to this day. In 1981, she also began to evolve a unique style of playing the guitar suited to raga scales, which is called modal counterpoint accompaniment.
Sat Kartar's ongoing quest for spiritual musical expression, in the ‘90s, teamed her with Hare Krishna based techno musician-producers Akinchina Das and Lalita Dasi, and Sat Kartar had the opportunity to chant and improvise free form, over the electronica groove of the international dance music scene. “It was my first intro to the experience of Bhakti Hindu kirtan.” While she resided in Los Angeles, the chant music genre was rapidly growing through several touring bhaki kirtan artists, and she sang on more kirtan albums by Krishna Das and Wah!, and began leading chant herself, in yoga centers in Los Angeles, in 2001.
That year, Sat Kartar returned to Phoenix, AZ, formed her band, Sat Kartar & Friends, and began touring the Southwest U. S., playing conferences, book stores, yoga centers, churches, and other venues, in support of her chant CD, Daily Practice and garnered a regional following. She became involved in the Arizona Interfaith Movement, which further diversified her performance range with televised interfaith events, performing the Star Spangled Banner at an AZ DiamondBacks baseball game, to multi-faith chanting at a planning conference in Spain, for the World Parliament of Religions gathering.
With her new CD FLOW, plans are underway for a worldwide tour, retreats, sound and yoga workshops, a new product line, and much more.