Kirtan at the Grammys

Chants of Hare Rama, Hare Krishna are not exactly the background score you would expect to hear at the Grammys, but this year, the traditional Hindu kirtan will take the stage for the second time in the award’s history through the album Live Ananda, nominated for the Best New Age Album of the Year.

Its creator Krishna Das isn’t Indian, but his journey began in India 40 years back. Das (born Jeffrey Kagel) had been dreaming about visiting India ever since he saw Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. On September 3, 1970, as soon as his feet hit Indian soil, he felt “at home”. “I realised then that I’d never had this feeling of being at home before,” he says.

At the time, Das was a drifting musician who found solace in spiritual teacher Ram Dass. He was visiting India to meet Dass’s own guru, Neem Karoli Baba, or Maharaj-ji. It was Maharaj-ji who introduced Das to chanting, and gave him direction. “I don’t know what he saw in me,” says Das. “I was such a badmaash.”

Das’s chants have since taken him across the globe, from yoga centres to concert halls, from teaching Madonna and singing with Sting and Bob Dylan, to getting an audience with the Dalai Lama. Nicknamed ‘Pavarotti of chant’ and ‘the rockstar of yoga’ by the media, the 65-year-old has released 14 best-selling albums of Hindu chants, and is the subject of a documentary film titled One Track Heart.

Das was born in Long Island, New York, to Jewish parents. For him, religion never held much appeal. “Organised religion just separates people. The religions have their own ways of helping people but the organisations themselves are all about power.”

So the non-religious Das of the ’70s went on to become an extremely spiritual Hanuman bhakt who can recite Sanskrit prayers, who has studied Buddhism, read Rumi, learned Sufi dancing, and is a proud campaigner for the power of chant. “I am not a Hindu,” he says. “I may chant the names of Hindu deities but to me they’re just names.”

For his fans, language has never been a problem. Wherever he goes, people know the chants and soon join in. “I think the fact that people do not understand what they are chanting helps them be free of conceptual thinking thus immerse themselves wholly in the ritual,” says Das. “Chanting forces people to pay attention, let go of everything and be immersed in the present.”

Chanting has, in the past decade, gained tremendous popularity in the West, aided in no small measure by Das and other American singers like Jai Uttal, Wah! and Dave Stringer. Chanting is no longer limited to just yoga studios. Das has had fans email him and talk to him about how his chants have helped people with fatal diseases find a sort of peace.

Besides featuring various chants, his albums have a few of his own compilations in English. “I believe that we Americans are not psychologically wired for happiness. My work in English is an attempt to rewire our thoughts and allow more positive influences to enter our lives,” he says.
Visiting India helps Das stay positive, and this is what has kept him coming “home” year after year for the last four decades. He visited India recently to take a break before the Grammys.

Das’s Live Ananda doesn’t contain a single English song. It is the second kirtan album to be nominated at the Grammys, after Uttal’s Monde Rama in 2003. If Das wins, he will give fillip to a long-standing request by American-Hindu scholars: To include a new category of awards at the Grammys — the kirtan category.