We really wish we had had this song for our road trip to Bhakti Fest Midwest.  The 1,000 miles would have gone by so much faster…

Just released by Count Shakti and the Shakettes, the “Shakti Shindig” hits the airwaves just in time — okay, not quite in time — for the summer bhakti festival season.  Channeling Elvis and the Beach Boys — and maybe every rock guru in between — Count Shakti’s debut track will get your asana moving, mantra-rock style.  If this doesn’t make your chakras chuckle, enlighten up!

What? Never heard of Count Shakti and the Shakettes?  Well, we confess, we hadn’t either.  So we asked, who is this mysterious band? Here’s the response we got:

The Count was born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month of the Tibetan year of the Hyena to an Albanian aristocrat and a Nepalese sorceress. At the age of three he demonstrated a miraculous ability to make it rain Milk Duds and could recite the entire Bhagavad Gita in both Cockney rhyming slang and Murray the K “Me-a-Surrey” language. The Shakettes are his tantric consorts and possess all the major and minor siddhis, plus the psychic power to communicate with ants. The Count would like to make a video of “Shakti Shindig,” but like most aristocrats, he’s a bit strapped for cash.

Well, okay then…mystery solved.  NOT. 

Turns out Count Shakti is also known as Alan di Perna, music writer extraordinaire and sometime P.R. flack for the likes of the GuruGanesha Band — and, apparently, a lyrical genius with his tongue in his cheek.  And the Shakettes? That would be DiPerna’s wife and “multi-tracked muse” Robin di Perna. 

The brainstorm (brain cramp??) for this little gem came when GuruGanesha’s marketing team was trying to come up with a name for the band’s upcoming mega-tour with Deva Premal and Miten.  Shakti Shindig was di Perna’s suggestion…but it didn’t fly.  “Too ‘out there,’ I guess,” di Perna told The Bhakti Beat. 

GuruGanesha, gettin' down at Bhakti Fest Midwest

Too “out there” for GuruGanesha?? Have you seen that long-beard hippie-Sikh on stage?

Never mind.  By the time his moniker was axed, di Perna said he had already written the lyrics.  For that we thank Krishna, Buddha, Allah and Jesus too.  Not to mention dakinis in bikinis, swamis hidin’ salamis and tantrikas chasin’ chicas.

“Get your rocks off, bhakti-style.”  Om my.

Here are the full lyrics, because you don’t want to miss a bhakti beat…

Do you have any of these symptoms? 

1. You wake up humming the Hanuman Chalisa.

2. You’ve exceeded your internet data allowance watching kirtan livestreams.

3. You have at least one pet — or possibly a child — named after a Hindu deity.

4. Your family whispers behind your back because every time they see you you’re quietly singing Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.

5. When the Jehovah’s Witness comes to your door, you try to convince them that Jesus and Krishna are the same…because, you know, Maharaji said so. 

Photo by Balramdass, from ImageEvents.com

6. You know who Maharaji is.

7. You secretly fantasize about becoming a roadie for Krishna Das. Or Dave Stringer.  Or Girish…

8. You’ve ever been stopped for speeding with a kirtan CD blasting in your car.

9.  You dumped your boyfriend/girlfriend because they kept complaining that the only “music” you ever play is kirtan.

10. You’ve emptied your savings account buying plane tickets and weekend passes to Bhakti Fest, Omega Chant, and any other kirtan festival, retreat or event you can get to.

If any of these signs describe you, you might be a kirtan addict.  There is no cure, but don’t despair:  the treatment is simple… 

Chant more.

Whatever you do, just…

And follow The Bhakti Beat, of course!

Omega’s annual Ecstatic Chant weekend would not exist without Ram Dass.  The legendary Labor Day retreat for chantaholics in the heart of New York’s Bhajan Belt has its roots in Ram Dass’ own epic gatherings at Omega dating back to the mid-1990’s.  In those days, Omega co-founder Stephan Rechtschaffen recounted to The Bhakti Beat, Ram Dass would invite Krishna Das and others to come and chant with retreatants during evening concerts as kind of an entertainment extra.  Over time, the chanting became an integral part of the weekend, occupying more and more of the retreat schedule.

When Ram Dass suffered a stroke and chose to discontinue most of his travel, the retreats continued…eventually morphing into Ecstatic Chant: The Yoga of Voice, now one of Omega’s most popular programs (among a catalog of hundreds).

In recent years, Ram Dass has joined the program live via Skype from Hawaii, his face projected onto a huge screen in Omega’s darkened, packed-to-capacity Main Hall.  Krishna Das, Radhanath Swami, Shyamdas, Jai Uttal and Rechtschaffen have taken turns leading the chat with the man many credit with jump-starting the Western fascination with India generally and the Indian saint Neem Karoli Baba (“Maharaji”) in particular.

This is an excerpt from the Skype chat with Ram Dass that was jointly led by Shyamdas and Jai Uttal at last fall’s Ecstatic Chant.  (Shyamdas did most of the asking…)

Shyamdas:  What’s it like to be loved by so many thousands of people?

Ram Dass: It’s like being with Maharaji.  He gave unconditional love.  No matter how rotten you were he gave unconditional love.  YumYumYumYumYum.

SD:  What should we be doing with our lives?

RD: Remember Maharaji.  People come to me for advice, but they’re not really coming to me.  They’re coming to Maharaji…When they experience that love, they flower.  That gives me great happiness and fills my heart.  YumYumYumYumYum.

SD:  Great job you have.

RD:  Yes, yes it is.  I am a gardener.

SD:  How did you get that job?

RD:  I didn’t ask for it.  He [Maharaji] laid it on me.  The first time I was in India, he said: “Arshivad (blessings) for your book.” I said, “What’s Arshivad, and what book?”

SD:  Thank you for your seva and your priceless gifts.  We can only bow; we cannot repay you, but we can try…

RD:  We are all the same.  We’ve all found it; we’ve seen what it is.  Now it’s up to us…

Shyamdas wouldn’t let his friend say goodbye without a proper send-off, and he and Uttal were promptly leading the capacity crowd in a sweet little transcontinental kirtan. A thousand voices harmonized in an exuberant Radhe Govinda, flowing from the packed room in New York’s Hudson Valley straight to the heart of Ram Dass in his bungelow in Hawaii.  Short and sweet:

YumYumYumYumYum

It started with Ahh.  A long, rolling round of Ahhs to open our throats and wake up our vocal chords.

That was the first thing we did on the first full day of Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band’s 8-Day BHAKTImmersion, and every morning thereafter. Open your mouth and sing Aaaaaahhhhh.  Stretch your face, stick out your tongue, make like a lion, and sing it again.  Keep singing it.  Breathe.

That was the appetizer. Now it was time for sargam.

No, it’s not some New Agey breakfast food.  More like breakfast for the soul, a daily tune-up, and we don’t mean just for the vocal chords.

Sargam is essentially scales, the Indian classical equivalent of Do Re Me Fa So La Te Do.  Except it goes: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. Sean Johnson learned it from Russill Paul, a renowned Carnatic and Indian classical vocalist (coming to Omega Spring Chant for the first time this year).  Now he does it every day, at his altar, as part of his devotional practice.  “To tune my body to the universe for that day,” he said.

“It’s a way to charge our voice,” Johnson said.  And so much more.  “It’s a prayer, an attunement.”

Each of the individual notes in the sargam scale carries different feelings, he said, as if charged with a different energy.  Each note is also associated with a particular chakra, or energy center in the body.  A descending series of notes can ground you; an ascending sound can make you feel high.  Put a particular sequence of ascending and descending notes together and you’ve got a raga, each one of which is constructed to create a particular mood, or bhav.

“It’s like opening the sonic medicine cabinet,” Johnson said.  “If you’re feeling a little sluggish, lazy, bored, an E sound can help.”  He sang a long perfect E note to demonstrate.  We all bathed in it, taking it in, inhaling the note deeply.

“Wanna’ another hit, man?” he said afterward, with a Big Lebowsky grin.  Yes please.

Leading us through a series of sargam exercises, he invited us to “explore how music opens your heart and creates a certain mood.”  We repeated the Carnatic notes in various sequences, first slowly, then a little faster, then faster, forward, backward, call and response…you can see how the mood changes over the course of the practice in the video from Day Three (below).  Each round was an achievement, punctuated with little hoots and woots from the Immersionites.

It was a mantra practice wrapped inside a vocal tune-up, or a vocal tune-up inside a mantra practice. Either way, it was potent.

“Sound is powerful medicine,” Johnson said. “It’s like medicinal surgery for a broken heart. It can break down energy forms held in our body. It can be used to change states of consciousness.”

Um, yeah.  After an hour of sargam, I was high.  But not in a Big Lebowsky way; more like energized, exhilarated, recharged like a battery.  Definitely buzzed.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sargam was torture and ecstacy rolled into one.  Torture to a tone-challenged nonmusician with a very antagonistic relationship with her voice.  Ecstatic because of the sheer beauty of the other harmonized voices in the room (from “real” musicians who actually seemed to know a C note from a G flat) .

I panicked a little on the second morning we did sargam, when I realized this was going to be a daily thing and not something I just had to suffer through once.  A few minutes into it, I was so bombarded by voices in my head that I had to write them down: When will this end?? I can’t sing in tune! They all sound so celestial, so beautiful.  I should just listen. It sounds so much better when I shut up! Maybe I’ll get some video.  Yeah, yeah, get some video.

This little “vocal exercise” called sargam was bringing up all sorts of stuff, at least for this tone-challenged nonmusician…

I know I wasn’t the only one who found this practice memorable.  For one young Immersionite, Molly (who came with her mom Cynthia from California), Sa Re Ga Ma Ma Ga Ni Sa was running through her mind when she woke up, even after a night out soaking up the music along Nola’s famous Frenchman Street.  Someone else noted that “suddenly, singing loud and out of key feels right.”  That struck a chord.

I eventually made my peace with sargam practice – and to a far lesser degree with my voice, warts and all.  By Day Four I was actually  looking forward to it, and by the end of the week I was in love with this little daily tune-up.  I even kind of miss it…

That’s why this is really good to have:

BHAKTImmersion 2014 dates have just been announced: March 15-22. See www.seanjohnsonkirtan.com for details.

Stay tuned to TheBhaktiBeat.com for more on BHAKTImmersion 2013.

The Southern Bhav rose again on Day 2 of Chantlanta on the altar-cum-stage of the Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta, the backdrop for a line-up of regional bands that showed the depth and diversity of the “unknown” bhakti bands in the Southeast.  (We use the quotes on “unknown” because they’re only unknown to those not in the know, you know what we mean?)  And we want all y’all to be in the know, because these bhaktas really deserve to be known…you know?  

So here’s Part 2 of our series on Chantlanta’s “Unknown” Bhakti Bands.  Read Part 1 here.  (More Chantlanta coverage linked at the bottom.) 

Chris Korb on sitar, Kirtan Bandits

Kirtan Bandits

This was an unexpected treat. First up on Day 2 of Chantlanta, the Kirtan Bandits stole hearts with a mix of Sufi prayers and Sanskrit mantras set to trancey tabla-driven rhythms. The Bandits were new to us, but the Chantlanta crowd sure seemed to know this sextet of multi-instrumentalists from Rome, Ga.  Jeffrey Lidke, a go-to tablist for the region who gets the prize for most stage time at Chantlanta, led the troupe, with Jen Corry sharing lead vocals.  

Jeffrey Lidke

Even against the vocal finesse and seasoned musicality of Lidke (tabla and harmonium) and Corry (flute and keyboarding) — both of whom are professors at Rome’s Berry College — young bassist Chris Korb shone on the 25-stringed sitar in a Maha Devi chant punctuated by scat-like call-and-response vocal exchanges between Lidke and Corry (watch it here). With John Graham and Jesse Burnette on guitar, and Hari Siddhadas on clarinet and cymbals.

Kirtan Bandits just released five songs recorded at Chantlanta 2013; check ’em out here.

 Sunmoon Pie

Bonnie Puckett & Michael Levine, Sunmoon Pie

Soon-to-be-newlyweds Michael Levine and Bonnie Puckett, aka Sunmoon Pie, have been bringing Hebrew chants into the Chantlanta mix since the the first fest in 2010. (At one point Levine cheekily pointed out the irony of singing Jewish prayers at a kirtan festival in a Baptist Church.) 

Victor Johnson

He on guitar and she on the keys, they led us through a stirring sequence of chants based loosely on the prayers recited in a traditional Jewish Shabbath celebration. Each was layered over the band’s own original melodies…or in the case of the last prayer, borrowed melodies: Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence” provided the musical score. (Video coming soon.) Larry Blewitt laid the drum beat, and Victor Johnson wailed on the electric fiddle.

Sunmoon Pie has a 5-track digital EP out, recorded at Chantlanta 2012. Personal favorite: Modim Anachnu.

Phil McWilliams

Phil McWilliams

Phil McWilliams brought us back to India on the wings of a bluesy/folksy singer/songwriter and the guitar that never left his lap. We’re already on record as loving everything we’ve heard from McWilliams and his Journey of Sound, so you might know where this is going. And we can’t seem to stop ourselves from using the warm-blanket metaphor to describe the feeeel of this music. But we’ll try, for your sake, dear reader.

The vibe was soft, deep and warm (oops) — but not in a way that made you want to lie down and go to sleep. You wanted to capture every word, every chord, and wrap yourself up in the rhythms (sorry!). There’s an authenticity to McWilliams’ music, a yearning in the voice that borders on melancholy yet feels soothing, not sad. And just when you thought you might drift away on a prayer of a melody, McWilliams & Co. kicked it up a notch, punctuating the set with a sublime, slow-build Mahamantra whose ecstatic peak seemed to shake the rafters in the soaring Druid Hills sanctuary. It was all holy.

Journey of Sound

The Journey of Sound featured Amanda Feinstein on vocals; Susan Stephan and Nakini Groom sang back-up.  With Rob Kuhlman on bass, Michael Levine on electric guitar, Larry Blewitt on drum kit and Brihaspati Ishaya on percussion.  Phil McWilliams’ first solo album is Signs of Peace, and yes, we’re in love with it. (Personal favorite song: “Holy Now”) Okay I give up: it’s like goose-down for the soul. Snuggle in.

Blue Spirit Wheel

Stephanie Kohler & Ian Boccio, Blue Spirit Wheel

More than any other, this was the band we wanted to experience live at Chantlanta. By the time Blue Spirit Wheel came on to close out the afternoon, the crowd was primed. Ian Boccio (vocals and bass) and Stephanie Kohler (vocals and harmonium) are kind of the hometown heroes, and have each been instrumental in making Chantlanta happen. The Atlanta kirtan community was out in force — and they were pumped. The forestage was packed, dancers weaved at the edge of the altar, children played limbo under saris…

My notes on the scene read: “Rockin’ it! Joyful chaos. Dancing at edges. Kids everywhere.”

Stephanie Kohler

Chaos in the church be damned, this pair of mantra mavens took us deep, orchestrating a trance-inducing mash-up of overlayered mantras drawn from their debut CD, adi.  They “wanted to do something different” for their hometown followers, Kohler told us afterward, so she devised this long thread interweaving the individual chants they’ve been leading for the last year or so.  The mantra mash-up.  Judging from the response they got, we’d say the homeys liked it.  The post-chant silence was eventually broken by a single “Wow,” giving us all the permission we needed to applaud.  Loudly.  And that was just the first chant.

Jeffrey Lidke, tapped again

Grounded by Jeffrey Lidke and Brihaspati Ishaya on percussion and Lindsey Mann on back-up vocals, Blue Spirit Wheel proved why they’ve become one of metro Atlanta’s favorite mantra bands.  But you don’t have to be in Atlanta to experience their bhav live; the duo starts a six-week most-of-the-US tour May 30, including Bhakti Fest Midwest in Madison, Wisc. July 5-7. If they’re coming anywhere near you, check ’em out.  And don’t miss the magical mantra trip that is adi.

Whew! And that was all just a warm-up to Krishna Das…

Ahhh Chantlanta. How we love thee.  Let us count the ways…

1. Your goal is to spread the bhav.
2. You put on a two-day festival with seven great regional bands, all for FREE.
3. You topped it off with KRISHNA DAS on the schedule, concert + workshop.  Nice.
4. You raised more than $3,000 to send an impoverished young woman in India to college.
5. You brought the community together and opened up kirtan to people who would otherwise be clueless.
6. You did it all in a Baptist Church that practically donated its space.
7. You came up with a killer name to boot.

Thank you.

We finally got to Chantlanta this year, its fourth year running.  It was worth the trip.  In fact, we’d say it’s officially a “destination kirtan” — can we use that term?  As in, not just for the locals.  Maybe you won’t fly in from California — yet — but if you’re East Coast or Midwest, hey, Atlanta’s a hub airport…

Kirtan Bandits, “unknowns” from Rome, Ga., stole hearts.

This year, Krishna Das was the headliner at Chantlanta, and he showed up fully. (Read that story here.) That said, it was Chantlanta’s line-up of regional bands that really got us excited.  That, and the Chantlanta organizers’ formula for eking out success from a notoriously unprofitable venture like a regional chant fest.  Did we mention that there were 12 hours of great kirtan from seven regional bands, all for free?  Topped off by Krishna Das, in concert and workshop?  And that Chantlanta still managed to raise over 3 grand for a small charity in India (The Learning Tea)?

Chantlanta proved that you can have your bhav and serve too.

Stan Holt (L) and Ian Boccio, Chantlanta co-organizers

Not that it came easy.  Chantlanta founder Ian Boccio, who started the fest in 2010 to “raise the profile of kirtan in Atlanta,” freely admits that he and the all-volunteer team that pull this thing together are learning as they go.  The first two years were all local bands, all offering their music to the community for free.  About 250 people showed up the first time — more than they dreamed — and the numbers have grown consistently. Last year, Chantlanta brought in three “national” kirtan artists — David Newman, Wah!, and Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band — to sweeten the pot and boost attendance.  This year, Boccio aimed even higher, successfully bringing Krishna Das back to Atlanta for the first time in at least four years.

The results, Boccio said, “exceeded my expectations in every way.”  We don’t think he was just blowing smoke.

The catch 22 of any chant festival, large or small, is that the “big names” that bring in more people also increase the expenses, making it more challenging to break even, never mind have some left over for charity, or (gasp!) a little profit for the folks who are making these things happen.  The key for Chantlanta, Boccio said, has been to line up sponsors — local yoga studios, merchants, artists, and natural-living businesses — who buy space in the festival program and in the “merch hall” at the festival.  This year, sponsorships effectively covered the overhead for the event.

Volunteer Team

Volunteers do the bulk of the work, people like yogi-musician Stephanie Kohler (co-leader, with Boccio, of Blue Spirit Wheel) and yoga teacher Karen Dorfman — both of whom have taken lead organizational roles since the first Chantlanta.  And like Stan Holt of Swaha Productions, a co-sponsor of the weekend fest and host of the post-fest workshop with Krishna Das.

This formula enables organizers to offer the bulk of the festival at no charge (this year, everything but the KD events were free), and donate any at-the-door donations to the chosen charity.  It builds the community and turns new people on to chanting by not giving anyone an excuse NOT to come — it’s free!  The “Big Headliner” draws the crowd (Krishna Das packed the place), and everyone else — all those “unknown” local bands who are putting out great kirtan regularly for those in the know — tags along on the coattails of the Rock Star, playing for bigger crowds than they might normally get and opening up new audiences to their devotional art.  What’s not to love?

Chaitanya, from Asheville, NC, whips up the bhav.

More than anything else, Chantlanta proved just how many great local bhakti bands are out there doing their thing and spreading the bhav in their own little (or not-so-little) communities, just kinda’ waiting for people to wake up to this thing called kirtan.

Stay tuned to this site for more about Chantlanta’s “unknown” bands.

No doubt there’s a Chantlanta waiting to happen in every nook of the nation, drawing together all the locals, maybe bringing in a big name or two, and growing the bhakti community in their little — or not-so-little — corner of the world.  It’s already happening, of course, in Denver, in Houston, in Minneapolis and Montreal, in Oregon and Ojai…hell, even in Vermont.  We can only hope it continues.

Bravo, Chantlanta, for showing how it’s done.

Yoga Texas Style (Dana Shamas)

What did we love about the Texas Yoga Conference?  The bhakti, baby!

No surprise there, but seriously: these folks “get” that yoga is more than asana.  TYC founder Jennifer Buergermeister told us the integration of practitioners from a wide array of yogic and healing arts was by design, a nod to the Eight Limbs of Yoga.  Bhakti was weaved seamlessly into the weekend, the way we dream about it being weaved into every yoga conference out there.

NOLA’s Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band

For starters, there was Saturday’s Bhakti Bash with Sean Johnson And The Wild Lotus Band, the New Orleans-based trio who are pioneering the integration of kirtan and asana.  Johnson told of his own yogic journey, first to hatha yoga, then to bhakti, and finally to a fusion of the two.  When he first started teaching yoga 16 years ago, Johnson said, his “physical practice” and his devotional practice were very separate.  “Even to ‘Om’ in class was scary for me then,” he shared.  But after years of this separation, he said his yoga practice “felt a little dried up.”  For the last several years, he has been “experimenting with how to bring these two paths together.”

“We have to figure out ways to keep bringing juice to our practice,” Johnson said.  “Bringing bhakti to hatha has helped sustain me.”

Bhakti Bash with Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band

Over the next two hours, he brought some juice to the convention center ballroom and proved that his “experimentation” is working.   With a rapt audience of a couple hundred yogis huddled close to the stage, he recounted classic tales from Hindu scriptures and mythology, of Radha and Krishna, of Shiva and Shakti, of Kali and Saraswati.  He told of Durga Ma’s cursed war with the demons, how each time she slayed one, a hundred more would appear from the drops of blood, until she was overwhelmed and could do nothing more but sit down to meditate; how it was only by going within that she found the strength to slay every last demon and return peace to the land.  Then we all joined our voices in praise of Ma, with Gwendolyn Colman’s rich vocals leading the response to Johnson’s call.  Jai Jai Ma, Saraswati Ma. 

An hour or so into the session, Johnson sent us back to our mats for a bhakti-infused yoga flow to the rhythms of Colman’s percussion and Alvin Young’s bass.  It was a side of Sean Johnson we hadn’t experienced before (the yoga teacher) — and one we highly recommend.  Very juicy.

The Bhakti House Band

The Bhakti House Band proved why they are Texas’ favorite kirtaneers with bookend sets in the morning and evening on Saturday.  By the end of their final set, the little crowd gathered in the common area was rockin’ out to the rhythms of Kristin and Randall Brooks and their band of bhaktas, and didn’t want to see them stop.  Particularly when Randall, the self-described “kid from the ‘hood,” tried out a freshly devised conscious hip-hop riff on us — look for that one on the upcoming album from this Fort Worth-based group, a charity effort for their Peace Love Om project, which aims to raise cultural awareness and promote diversity among youth around the world and support suffering children, families, and communities in need through donations and seva.  Remember this bhakti couple — they are the go-to back-up band for Texas-touring artists and are fast making a name for themselves on the national kirtan scene.  Watch this space for videos and more on The Bhakti House Band…

Pratibha Kirtan

On Sunday, we got to experience the sweetness of new-to-us Aaron Lind and Pratibha Kirtan from New Orleans, with Ashley Beach rockin’ the acoustic bass and Jordan Arey on drums.  Lind, whose talents include some pretty impressive acro-yoga, said he was first inspired to lead kirtan thanks to fellow NOLA yogi Sean Johnson.  The bhakti trio is currently touring Texas and in the midst of recording their first CD.

Flight School with ex-punk/monk Raghunath Cappo took off in three sessions over the weekend, a testament to the popularity of Cappo’s practically legendary approach to mastering gravity-defying arm balances, for anyone who dares to fly.

Raghunath Cappo

What we liked was his down-to-earth, New Yorker style and his keeping-it-real vibe.  What we loved was his bhakti; he started each class with satsang and chanting, complete with a little lesson in what kirtan is (“meditation with your voice”) and does (“It’s about uncovering self-knowledge, or ‘atma jnana'”).

“The saints and yogis in India are not performing yoga to get six-pack abs and a nice ass.  They’re practicing it to become transcendent,” Cappo said.

TYC Founder Jennifer Buergermeister

Thank you Texas Yoga Conference founder Jennifer Buergermeister and all the teachers and bhaktas at TYC for bringing the bhav to yoga.   Wouldn’t it be great if EVERY yoga conference did so?

Kick it up Texas!

“Genre unknown.”  Have you ever gotten this message when you download a kirtan CD into iTunes?  We get it a lot.

More often than not, the iTunes database pulls up a blank in the “Genre” category.  Sometimes it pulls up as World Music, sometimes Alternative, sometimes Folk (Shyamdas in particular), and sometimes — get this! — Country (GuruGanesha’s Kundalini Surjhee). Occasionally, the disc is downright  Unclassifiable (Marti Walker’s rEVOLution).  And yes, sometimes it even registers as New Age, which usually elicits a sarcastic snicker from this downloader.

New Age?  Hasn’t that almost become a kind of throwback-to-the-70’s joke?  Something that is spoken of with “air quotes,” maybe with a roll of the eyes thrown in?  Is kirtan New Age?  Does it want to be?

Well, according to the Grammys, it is.  That’s the category for which Krishna Das is in the running for Best Album, marking an historic moment in bhakti history (watch the livestream Sunday, Feb. 10 from 1–3:30 p.m. PT at GRAMMY.com and CBS.com.).  No, he’s not the first kirtan artist to get a Grammy nomination — Jai Uttal earned that honor back in 2002 with his barrier-breaking, genre-bending Mondo Rama.  But this is Krishna Das.  The Yoga Rock Star.  The King of Kirtan.  The Chantmaster.  And Live Ananda, the recording nominated for this year’s Best New Age Album, is pure and traditional unadulterated call-and-response chanting.  In the live.  No apologies for the harmonium.

Will the tux be in plaid?

Still, we have a hard time imagining Krishna Das describing himself as a “New Age artist.”  We could be way off base here, but we’re not seeing it.  You?

Either way, that’s where we are folks.  We don’t know about you, but we’re putting our bets on Krishna Das actually winning this thing.  Why else would he be performing live at the Grammys pre-broadcast livestream? (New Age nominees are never featured on the Grammys live television broadcast, which is reserved for the big “Mainstream” categories.)  We’ll eat crow if we’re wrong.  Whilst brooding.  Heavily.  And chanting along with the Cosmic Kirtan Posse at Ananda Ashram to soothe our pain.

But let’s just say it happens:  Krishna Das wins the Grammy for Best New Age Album.  That would put him in the same Winner’s Circle as Paul Winter (6 times), Enya (4-time winner), Yanni, Pat Metheny, and David Darling, among others you’ve probably never heard of.  Notably, Peter Gabriel won the award for Best New Age Performance in 1990.  KD’s competition for the award this year?  L.A.-based pianist Omar Akram; Michael Brant DiMaria, an integrative psychotherapist who creates music for relaxation and meditation; Celtic artist Loreena McKennitt; renowned cellist David Darling; pianist/composer/producer Peter Kater, and Steven Halpern, whose 1975 release, Spectrum Suite, often gets credit for beginning the whole “New Age Music” movement.

There are a couple interesting kirtan connections among these other nominees.  David Darling collaborated with Canadian kirtan artist Brenda McMorrow on her 2010 album Love Abounds. Peter Kater just last year released Heart of the Universe with Sikh-tradition chantress Snatam Kaur, and his 2012 nomination, Light Body, features vocalist and executive producer Trish Bowden.  We’re clueless, we confess, about the others on the list, but a quick review of their offerings puts them pretty far away on the musical spectrum from call-and-response chanting ala Live Ananda.

Incidentally, in the World Music category, both Ravi Shankar (for The Living Room Sessions, Pt. 1) and his daughter, Anoushka Shankar (for Traveller) are nominated for Best Album.  Which makes us wonder why Krishna Das isn’t in the World Music category.  Live Ananda even comes up on iTunes as World Music.

Indefinable?

New Age music has always been difficult to define, seeming more like a catch-all for downtempo “relaxation music” than anything else.  Early pioneers include the aforementioned Steven Halpern and English composer Brian Eno, who is credited as a principal innovator of so-called ambient music.  New Age  first earned its own Grammy category in 1987 — about the same time New Age bins started showing up in major record stores and big record labels starting paying attention to the genre.

The dawning of the New Age Grammy category was not met with glee by all.  Music critic Steven Rea, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1987, said: “It’s a category of music to which few artists want to be assigned – the winner of the Grammy is likely to accept his award with a bag over his head – and which even fewer can define.”  The same year, Musician magazine predicted that “all new-age artists will claim to be ‘not really new-age.’ ”

My how things have changed.  Or not.

Parsing the Name Game

All of this talk brings up a related issue that is astir throughout the kirtan world: what to call kirtan.  “Kirtan,” some have argued, is just too hard for Westerners to wrap their tongues around, let alone their minds.  A few artists are steadfastly moving toward the use of “mantra music” to define what they do; among them are Gaura Vani, a Krishna devotee who typically practices traditional call-and-response Sanskrit chanting (unless he’s in his role as one-fourth of The Hanumen, in which case all categorization goes right out the window), and GuruGanesha Singh, best known as the long-time touring partner and manager to Snatam Kaur, who infuses sacred Gurmukhi-language chants with funked-up rhythms and soaring electric-guitar riffs. 

The new Krishna Das channel on Sirius XM radio eschews both these monikers in favor of “Yoga Radio” — a decision that came from Sirius, KD told us in an interview.  Nowhere in the description of the channel will you find the word kirtan, but you will find “Chanting, sacred and spiritual music” in the channel’s subhead.

Kirtan. Mantra music.  Yoga music.  Chant.  Sacred music. Spiritual music.  World music. Alternative, Folk, Country…turns out there are almost as many names out there for this “music genre” as there are artists presenting it.  Which begs the even bigger question: is it a “music genre” at all?   

Or is the Mantra Revolution simply “Unclassifiable”?

What do you call it?

from KrishnaDas.com

“We’re going to end on this,” Shyamdas said, as he launched us into the final powerful crest of an epic Hare Krishna chant that undulated like the waves of an ocean for 45 ecstatic minutes (two-part video below). 

It started as a slow, deep prayer before gradually rising to the inevitable full-on whirling cresendo, then ebbing again to a sweet low longing, barely a whisper, before rising up again… Over and over he led us through the peaks and valleys of the changing melodies and rhythms, inviting us all into the intimate dance with the Divine.  Soon there was no distinction between call and response, “performers” and “audience.”  All merged as one voice, one ocean of sound and devotion flowing with the joyful tears of a thousand streams.

It was, for this writer, one of those peak experiences in kirtan — the kind that just make you go, “Wow.” No exclamation point. Just “Wow.”

When it ended, after that long sweet silence where you get to do nothing other than breathe in all that bhav, he looked out at all of us and simply said: “That’s it.”  Silence broken, the crowd thundered.  Shyamdas’ kirtans always stand out, but this one was beyond outstanding, and the chanters let him know it. 

When the hoots and hollers died down, Shyamdas said this: “It’s amazing to float in the bhav — I don’t know whether I was imagining that, and it doesn’t really matter…But man, to be in such a tidal wave of bhav with everyone is …” He paused for just a moment.  “…is the way I would like to spend the rest of my life.”

“To be in such a tidal wave of bhav with everyone is the way I would like to spend the rest of my life.”

Hear Hear.

After the set, I caught up with Shyam-Ji just off-stage.  I wanted to thank him, to ask him how he did that, what magic did it take to create that experience. Maybe I needed some kind of confirmation that we had all just experienced something truly extraordinary, I don’t know.  I had a hundred questions for him! But when I opened my mouth, all I could muster was, “Wow.”  No exclamation point.  Just, “Wow.”  (And, I imagine, a glazed-eye, stoned-on-the-bhav expression — hey, we’d been chanting day and night for 3 days at this point.)

Despite my bhakti-fried brain-deadness, Shyamdas answered my unspoken question.  I didn’t write down what he said, but it was something along the lines of: “I was just taking it where it needed to go.”  He was reading the room, taking the pulse of the space, feeling the vibe and intuitively guiding us deeper and more completely into that Place That Cannot Be Described, to blissfully drown in a churning sea of ecstatic devotion.

This is Shyamdas as we will remember him, steering the ship on a “tidal wave of bhav” deep into the ocean of devotion, sweeping us all along with him on his boat full of bhakti.

Thank you Shyamdas-Ji. 

A note about the videos: Did I mention this was a 45-minute-long Maha Mantra?  And that I recorded EVERY moment of it?  Now, I know this is the Age of Twitter and 30-second news bites…so I thought about editing this down, cutting and slashing it to a manageable, YouTube-friendly size.  But then something slapped me upside the head (Shyam?) and said, Are you crazy?  This is a work of devotional art.  How dare you mess with it?  So I present it to you as I experienced it, in all its uncut, unedited glory.  In two parts, because the Age of YouTube has a 30-minute attention span (not long enough for kirtan).  Please put aside 45 minutes to watch — really WATCH — because you don’t want to miss a single moment of Shyam-Ji’s in-the-bhav expressionism.  Clear your space because you will want to dance during parts.  Have some tissues because you may cry.  But watch it all.  You will not be sorry. 

Here’s Part 1:

 And Part 2:

 

 Also see:

“Remembering Shyamdas” The Bhakti Beat’s Photo Journal on facebook

Shyamdas Video Playlist on YouTube

www.shyamdas.com