"Kalra breaks new grounds in both religious and musicological studies. He critically engages with a wide range of colonial scholarship in diverse disciplines to call attention to its limitations in understanding Punjabi musics . More than its postcolonial approach, Kalra's study is remarkable for the insight that it provides into the demotic practices of Punjabi musicians through the range and depth of the interviews, which include practically every genre and musician on both sides of Punjab." -- Popular Music " Sacred and Secular Musics offers a new approach to an often understudied academic subject . [It] fills the void in the musicology field . and opens up a new range of perspectives as well as a theoretical background for further studies." -- The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture "Makes important interventions that will impact fields from popular culture studies to musicology to cultural history, with implications for our understanding of the ongoing cultural present in both the Pakistani Punjab and its Indian counterpart . [The extensive online resources] enhance the work tremendously, and ground it in the world of which it speaks.

" -- South Asian Popular Culture "In Sacred and Secular Musics , Virinder Kalra presents a remarkable abundance of original data on Sikh music, qawwali, and other genres in Pakistani and Indian Punjab, offering astute interpretive perspectives on these understudied genres and regional dynamics." --Peter Manuel, Professor, Music Department of the Graduate Center, City University, New York, USA.