Admin

Krishna Kaur Khalsa is a Black American Sikh. In known times, she is the first woman to have performed Kirtan within the confines of Sri Harimandir Sahib. Khalsa performed the kirtan in 1980 for the Prakash Utsav of Guru Ram Das Ji. Krishna Kaur Khalsa was born Thelma Oliver in Los Angeles, California on May […]

Krishna Kaur Khalsa is a Black American Sikh. In known times, she is the first woman to have performed Kirtan within the confines of Sri Harimandir Sahib. Khalsa performed the kirtan in 1980 for the Prakash Utsav of Guru Ram Das Ji.

Krishna Kaur Khalsa was born Thelma Oliver in Los Angeles, California on May 6, 1941.

While a 1966 Ebony Magazine profile mentions Oliver’s study of “yoga philosophy and breathing,” yoga became her life’s calling four years later when she met Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan renamed her “Krishna Kaur” – meaning Divine Princess. Under his direction, she became a yoga teacher with a special dispensation to serve the Black community. Krishna Kaur established a yoga community in the Black Watts, Los Angeles neighbourhood with a live-in center, children’s school, day care, twice weekly free kitchen and “Sat Nam Street Players” dedicated to bringing music and inspiration to the troubled streets of the ghetto.

Krishna Kaur’s journey into Kundalini Yoga and the Sikh tradition of Yogi Bhajan took her to the spiritual capital of Amritsar and the “Golden Temple” or Harimandir Sahib in December 1970 and again thereafter. In August 1980 she made history when, through a combination of circumstances she became the first and only woman to have ever sung Sikh hymns within the strictly patriarchal precincts of the Golden Temple.

Known for her musical talent, Krishna Kaur never gave up performing. In the 1970s, she toured and recorded with a group called “Sat Nam West.” In 2014, she released an album, One Creator

~ Source: Sikhiwiki