California Yankee

Dasvinder Singh was born and raised in California, but from childhood his heart was in the Kirtan: the devotional music that forms the spiritual backbone of Sikh practice. He developed his skill from a young age, and as he grew older, the pull of that music became something he couldn't ignore. He eventually made the decision to leave California and move to Amritsar, to the Golden Temple, where Kirtan is performed around the clock and a life devoted entirely to that practice became possible.

The film captures the particular tension of that choice: leaving a comfortable life in the United States for something that most people around him couldn't quite understand. It's a story about vocation, about what happens when you take a calling seriously enough to reorganize your entire life around it. Dasvinder is neither tormented nor sentimental about the decision. He simply followed the music, and the film follows him doing it.