Listening With The Heart

My experience with Kirtan Music

Music has had the unique role in our human history as being both a vehicle for spiritual experience and a part of our celebrations of daily life.  In history books, this dual role is categorized as Secular and Sacred, creating a social divide between the two camps as far back as the Middle Ages.  Sacred music was for religious worship while Secular music was for entertainment.  Unfortunately, this separatism has been ingrained in many minds.  By and large, the religious purists view Secular music as lower quality and even sinful ("the devil's music"), and equally sad, the proponents of Secular music view Sacred music as "just for those religious people."

My own perceptions have been affected, although I have been loath to admit it.  I have never been particularly religious, but I have always been a spiritual person.  However, for me, Sacred music always seemed too limiting and tied to a particular religious belief system.  As a classical and jazz musician, I also suffered from a mild bit of snobbery.  Although I could enjoy the atmosphere created by a sing-along at church, or chanting at a meditation group, I was turned off by the simple structures and repetitive nature of the music.

So all my usual issues came up when I was invited to see a performance by Deva Premal, a musician  specializing in what is known as Kirtan music.  Put simply, Kirtan music is chanting, usually in Sanskrit, accompanied by traditional Eastern instruments.  The tradition is ancient, but was first popularized in the West by certain gurus early in this  20th Century.

Paramahansa Yogananda chanted Kirtan music along with 3,000 people at Carnegie Hall in 1923, and the chanting style was further popularized in the 1960s with the Krishna Consciousness movement.  There are now many contemporary Kirtan performers who blend old and new traditions, often infusing traditional instruments like the harmonium and tablas with the instruments of rock and roll such as guitar, bass and drums. Among the more well know proponents of this are Krishna Das, Jai Uttal and Deva Premal.  But progressive elements aside, Kirtan music is still essentially Sacred music; after all, the name Kirtan essentially means "hymns sung in the praise of God."

Although I had been aware of these musical styles, I had no firsthand experience with Kirtan music and unfortunately put it in the "religious music" box in my mind. Not that I had any judgments about it either way; I just had no interest in actively seeking it out.

"Deva Premal huh?" I said during a drive with my newfound Kirtan coach to a Kirtan music event,, as Premal's music playied on the stereo.  It was soothing and repetitive, just as I had expected.  As the chants went around and around, part of me wondered how I was going to tolerate three hours of this!

The opening act was a duo with a wonderful female vocalist and guitarist who sang like an angel and mesmerized the crowd.  But what fascinated me was her partner on stage.  He was a tall, thin man in white, with long white hair.  I couldn't help thinking he looked like Gandolph.  He came out after her first song and sat cross-legged next to her chair.  After she finished and the applause died down, he spoke a few words about how he was honored to be here and asked us all to join him for some breathing exercises.

I was mildly surprised when the entire audience of 1,500 followed along.  I had been to yoga workshops before and done group breathing, but never like this.  The sound of an entire auditorium breathing together in unison was intense and somehow removed my sense of separate self.  We had become one enormous breathing body: in together; hold; and out together, all as one.  Over and over.  After about the 15th breath I was feeling distinctly altered and had a slight sense of relief when it was over.

The singer then played several more songs, but the man in white simply sat cross-legged next to her, silent the entire time.  At first my logical mind thought "Now that's silly, he's not going to participate in her music?" But then like a bolt it hit me.  He was participating, in the most sublime, unattached and selfless way.  He was consciously giving all the energy back to the music and his very presence was reminding the audience to do the same.  He was the perfect model of attentiveness, eyes closed, hands in his lap, the slightest hint of a smile on his lips.

Maybe it was the lengthy deep breathing I had just participated in, but I definitely felt high. The revelation I just had about the possibility of silence being the ultimate participation in music had floored me.  It was only a few songs into the concert and suddenly I was seeing things in ways I had never thought of before.  I took another deep breath and held it, eyes closed.

I heard a sniffing to my right.  Peeping out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman next to me wiping her cheek.  She was quietly crying.  I felt a sudden rush of emotion and the urge to hold her and tell her it was all OK.  I shut my eyes and concentrated on my breath, letting the music wash over me.  After a minute I peeked at her again, and she had the most radiant smile I have ever seen.  It was like the sun emerging from a brief spring rainstorm.  Suddenly I was having déjà vu of the rock concerts I had been to in the past, where the audience would be going through all sorts of emotional experiences all around me, from good to bad.  The difference was, the majority of those folks were on drugs.

Then another realization hit me.  The man in white had done this on purpose.  He had gotten us all high on our breath, on group pranayama!  Just like the audiences at the concerts and music festivals had gotten high before the show, we also had just gotten high as well.  Except, we were using nothing more than the energy of our breath and focus and a perfectly safe and legal drug called oxygen.

Then Deva Premal came on stage.  The five-piece group was met with instant applause as they walked to their chairs, but then the hall became quiet as the band members sat and meditated.  Once again I was struck by the responsiveness of the audience, as the entire auditorium meditated together on the unspoken cue of the band.  I was jolted back to the present when the music began, a slow and soft chant in Sanskrit.

"Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya"

Instantly the chant became 3D as everyone around me joined in.  The melody was simple, no more than three notes and I began to hear harmony parts drifting back and forth.  The logical part of my musical brain began scrambling to analyze the intervals.  Yes, there's the fifth and now I hear someone on a third.  I hummed along to find my part, and settled on a nice strong third.  I felt comfortable with this interval, as it is very common in pop and folk music.

After I was sure I knew what they were saying, I joined in, quietly at first.  As I carefully mouthed the Sanskrit words, I remembered a conversation I had years ago with someone who was a fan of Sanskrit chants.  She would sing them at her yoga classes.  "Why don't you just translate them into English? That way your students will understand what they're singing," I had asked.  She looked at me funny, like a mother might look at her three year old who just asked why he couldn't fly.

"The mantras aren't designed for your brain, silly," she said.  "You don't need to understand them intellectually to be affected by them.  They speak to your heart."  At the time I had agreed, but it was more just to avoid argument.  I didn't see how I could be affected by something I couldn't understand.  But now, surrounded by an ocean of chanting, I longed to know what she was talking about.  So I stilled my mind and continued.

"Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya"

Before I knew it, I was in a trance and the mantra was saying itself, over and over like a wheel turning in my mouth.  I was comforted by the sound; chanting, swaying people all around me.  And then I knew that I was beginning to understand.  Not with my mind, not in a perceptual sense, but in a whole-body sense.  It was like I was picking up on the meaning that had been saturating these words for thousands of years, from the thousands of other voices, of other humans that had chanted them before me.  And it had nothing to do with me knowing the technical definition of the words.  I was FEELING the meaning.  I had a fleeting image of an enormous stone Buddha head, smiling at me and winking.

"Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya"

With a sudden rush of excitement I leapt up to another harmony note, the fifth, which I was usually too cautious to attempt.  It felt easy and right.  I heard the voices around me dancing from various notes as well and realized that there were now many different harmonies occurring.  It was like a choir, but everyone was improvising their parts.

"Aaaah, I see," I thought.  The simple and repetitive nature of the melodies allowed room for everyone to find their own place, without a lot of mental analysis.  For my musical brain, being so used to navigating the complexities of jazz and classical music, this was alien terrain, but exhilarating.

Suddenly the chant was over, and you could have heard a pin drop.  I was about to clap, but my hands froze midair as I realized no one was applauding.  It was remarkable.  Instead of applauding everyone was breathing deeply together, letting the last vibrations of the chant fade off into nothingness.  This also was a mind-blowingly new experience for the professional musician in me.  In just about any other form of music, finishing a song and having dead silence is decisively NOT a good thing.  And yet now it seemed the perfect response.  It was a full and grateful silence and it conveyed more appreciation than any applause I think I've ever experienced.

Between the frequent deep breathing and the trance inducing chants, I spent the rest of the evening in a fairly altered state of mind.  But unlike other altered states I had experimented with in the past, this felt very light and pure by comparison.  There was no dulling or hyper-expansion of the senses, just a gentle

warm glow and a heightened sense of who and where I was, which was very much in the present moment.

When the lead singer introduced the last song, she commented on the attentiveness of the audience.

"You are an equal channel of energy, just as we are," she said in a soft voice.  "Sometimes I feel like we should be applauding you!"  A ripple of laughter went through the crowd and I nodded and smiled.  How refreshing to hear that from someone on stage!  The very idea of a band applauding the audience is so humbling and powerful, yet sadly, so rare.

I left that evening with a full heart and a swimming mind.  My perception of chanting and Kirtan music was radically changed and I felt both awakened and humbled.  As the tires hummed on the freeway, I could hear echoes of Sanskrit in the sound. I took a deep breath and held it.  Yes, whatever it was that was given at that concert, I was taking some of it home with me.

And it felt good.