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Kirtan: on Indian Devotional Chanting

Dave Stringer
©Yoga People, LLC 2017

Kirtan

"If you can't teach me to fly, teach me to sing"
--- Peter Pan (Sir James Barrie)


Mantras still the mind, and music frees the heart. Exuberant, poignant and transcendent at different turns, Kirtan marries the mysticism of traditional Indian instruments with the devotional intensity of gospel and the energy of a rock band. A natural extension of yoga practice, ecstasy is both the process and the product.

What is Kirtan? Kirtan (from the Sanskrit word for singing) is easily learned and instantly memorable. The mantras are projected overhead, making them simple to follow. The
form is simple: a lead group calls out the melodies. The crowd responds, clapping and dancing as the rhythms of tablas, finger cymbals, harmonium, tamboura, electric bass and guitar build and accelerate.

Sanskrit, the language of ancient India, is also the mother tongue of many modern languages. But the true meaning of its sounds are in the effect they create. As everyone's breathing becomes synchronous, a feeling of unity and timelessness arises. Sing with complete abandon, and meditation follows effortlessly.
 
 About the author Dave Stringer:

I'd had a brief professional involvement with someone who had lived in this ashram, and one day I received a phone call from her asking if I would be interested in a project that would take me to India. Her contacts had asked her if she knew anyone who would be right for this job, so she sat down to meditate on it. She said that she knew this would sound strange to me, but I had appeared in her meditation as being the person who was meant to go.At the ashram, I didn't understand the Sanskrit they were chanting, but the sound of it had a powerful effect on me.
Because I was an employee and not a devotee, at first I didn't participate directly in the chants. I would sit and listen to people chant from across the road.

After I while, I started to absorb the sounds of the mantras… they were easy for me to learn, as if they had been in me all along. For many years I had been making sounds that were like mantras in my own music, sounds that spoke of some state that mere words couldn't really convey. It's as if I could tell the truth on one level, but that would obscure the truth on another level. I could speak emotionally with truth, but that would obscure the intellectual meaning, and vice versa. In India, I found that there was a long tradition of singers like me.

I had some experiences so astonishing and transformative that it shifted the course of my life.

I chose to stay on in India when the film editing work was done, and since I had already been volunteering my time at the local grade school, the ashram sent me to assist and eventually teach there. There were traditional Indian instruments there for me to practice on, and we would chant every day. Athough I did receive formal instruction in eastern music from teachers at the ashram, I really learned more about the heart and soul of chanting by singing with the kids. Basically, a bunch of schoolchildren taught me to chant!

I started recording a CD of songs I had written while I was in India, and continued supporting myself as an editor. I became involved in a volunteer organization that taught meditation and and chanting and yoga to prison inmates, and for a number of years I conducted weekly programs at different correctional institutions. I had no intention or idea that chanting would ever be more than an avocation.

Then one day someone from Yoga Works, a yoga center in Santa Monica, CA, asked me If I'd be interested in leading regular call-and-response kirtan nights that would be open to the public. I got a little band together, and put out a flyer. At first not many people came, but eventually word spread, and I started chanting at yoga centers all over Los Angeles. An invitation came to chant in New York at Jivamukti, and I started travelling with yoga teacher friends to chant for their workshops in places like Detroit and Phoenix and Chicago. Gradually, as invitations from other cities came, I started travelling more and more and chanting became a full time occupation.

See Dave's site at www.Davestringer.com and learn more. Thanks to Dave for sharing his story and the small article on Kirtan! We love sharing the stories of real yoga people like Dave. Contact shannon@yoga.com if you have a story.