Professor Surinder Singh

Yogi of Sound

Professor Surinder Singh is one of the world's leading authorities on sound, listening, and human experience. Conferred a Professorship in Musicology by the University of West London in 2006, he is the founder of Raj Academy, a three-decade-old institution devoted to the study of sound and emotional well-being. He is the author of An Alchemy of Sound: A Treatise on Music of the Gurmat Kirtan Tradition, published by the Smithsonian Institution and Roli Publications scheduled to release in Fall 2026.

A Life in Sound

Professor Singh's training began at the age of nine, when he was inducted into the Guru-Shishya Parampara — the centuries-old master-to-student lineage through which the classical music traditions of India have been transmitted across generations. Over the decades that followed, he became a leading exponent of Gurmat Kirtan, one of the world's oldest continuous traditions of applied sound science — a living body of knowledge concerned with how sound shapes attention, emotion, and the inner life of the human being.

In 2006, the University of West London conferred on him a Professorship in Musicology, in recognition of his pioneering scholarship on the revival, preservation, and academic study of this tradition. It was a rare honor: not for teaching about sound, but for restoring a serious, university-grade field of study where one did not exist.

The turning point

In the middle of his career, Professor Singh suffered a traumatic injury that left him in a coma. Medically, he was unresponsive. Inwardly, he was fully conscious — aware of every conversation in the room, including the conversation in which his medical team advised his family to withdraw life support.

He could not move. He could not speak. What he could do was apply, inwardly, the sound practices he had spent a lifetime studying.

He recovered. What he learned in that period — about the relationship between sound, attention, and the human nervous system under extreme conditions — became the foundation of the teaching he has offered ever since. It is the reason his research is not only academic. He has tested it at the edge of human experience.

An Alchemy of Sound

A Treatise on Music of the Gurmat Kirtan Tradition Published by the Smithsonian Institution and Roli Publications · Fall 2026 

Professor Singh's forthcoming book is the distillation of four decades of research into a single, definitive volume. A richly detailed exploration of the sound traditions of ancient India and their influence on human behaviour and psychology, An Alchemy of Sound weaves together ethnomusicology, the philosophy of sound, and emotional intelligence to illuminate how musical practice shapes the human experience.

Drawing on traditional and pre-colonial sources, and grounded firmly in the Gurmat perspective, it offers rigorous insight into the art of kirtan as a field of applied sound science — an essential read for anyone seeking meaningful, holistic approaches to mental well-being, and for those interested in the transformative power of sound.