Tag Archives: music

Any sound that moves you to dance

Chant and meditation in DC for a greater cause

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The Heart of Peace: An Evening of Chant and Med­i­ta­tion with Krishna Das and Sharon Salzberg, at Sixth & I on at 7:30 pm, Sun­day, July 10. Tick­ets are $35 each pur­chased online or $40 at the door. They are mak­ing a spe­cial joint appear­ance in honor of the Kalachakra for World Peace.  Their chance meet­ing in 1971 in Bod­hgaya, India, where the Bud­dha found enlight­en­ment, was the begin­ning of their indi­vid­ual spir­i­tual jour­neys and their life-​​long friend­ship.  Krisha Das is a lead­ing prac­ti­tioner of kir­tan. Salzberg is a promi­nent voice that brought mind­ful­ness, med­i­ta­tion and Bud­dhism into the Amer­i­can mainstream.

This event hon­ors the Kalachakra for World Peace Empow­er­ment in Wash­ing­ton, DC offered by His Holi­ness the Dalai Lama, July 6 – 16, 2011. Kalachakra is a Tibetan Bud­dhist cer­e­mony that stretches over 11 days. “The Kalachakra, open to all who wish to par­tic­i­pate, has the power to ben­e­fit all beings on this planet. The Cap­i­tal Area Tibetan Asso­ci­a­tion wel­comes you to join in this his­toric event, offered with the heart­felt moti­va­tion to inspire har­mo­nious rela­tion­ships and abid­ing peace in our hearts and in our world.”

Kirtan fusion invades the American soundscape

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New York Times Chant­ing Is an Exer­cise in Body and Spirit is about the ris­ing tide that kir­tan is rid­ing on.

“It has left the churches and the yoga stu­dios because it’s such a sim­ple prac­tice,” said Krishna Das, 61, who grew up on Long Island as Jeff Kagel and trav­eled to India in the early 1970s. “It’s not about belief in any reli­gions, so peo­ple are com­ing from all walks of life. You give it a try and if it works, you’re in fat city. If not, you do some­thing else.”

Although kir­tan is rooted in India’s devo­tional reli­gions and involves chant­ing the names of God, Krishna Das says the prac­tice requires no alle­giance to any deity or set of beliefs, and he is dis­mayed that many asso­ciate the chant “Hare Krishna” with peo­ple who begged on the streets and danced in air­ports in the 1970s.

As I’ve said before here, Krishna Das is the sound­track of my yoga expe­ri­ence. What is really inter­est­ing is the fusion that’s hap­pen­ing in the United States as musi­cians and yogis take the Hindi core and com­bine it with pop, gospel, reg­gae, hip-​​hop and rap­ping, plus all the other world music influ­ences, to pro­duce a unique, inno­v­a­tive sound, nur­tured in the small venues of yoga stu­dios and churches. It’s part of the main­stream­ing of yoga in Amer­ica. Purists prob­a­bly hate it and it will never achieve broad pop­u­lar­ity, but that’s not the point. It’s what is hap­pen­ing to yoga itself, start­ing out with the “pure” Indian prac­tice (which may be a rel­a­tively mod­ern appli­ca­tion of ancient rites) and then lay­er­ing on mul­ti­ple riffs and licks of Pilates, mar­i­tal arts, gym­nas­tics and dance. The mar­ket and soci­ety are bend­ing it in new ways that make it more rel­e­vant and “mar­ketable” in our society.

Explaining the stillness that nurtures Leonard Cohen’s songs

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New York Times Leonard Cohen Returns to the Road, for Rea­sons Both Prac­ti­cal and Spir­i­tual is about a musi­cian whose songs have influ­enced me deeply, espe­cially “Suzanne” and “Hal­lelu­jah.” Now I learn that he is deeply grounded in Zen Bud­dhism to the point of spend­ing five years in a monastery.

Roscoe Beck, Mr. Cohen’ s musi­cal direc­tor, says that even on the longest flights Mr. Cohen sits cross-​​legged and straight-​​backed in his seat, in a monk’s pos­ture. Asked whether he also does yoga to build strength and agility for his stage shows, Mr. Cohen, his demeanor courtly but reserved, smiled and replied, “That is my yoga.”

So now I have a rea­son to explore the music archives for Cohen songs, and to lis­ten for the inten­tion that inspired them and moved him towards Zen dis­ci­pline in the lat­ter years of his life.

By the way, the Times jour­nal­ist Larry Rohter, author of this pro­file, is an old Latin Amer­ica hand whom I met in my days in Peru. That goes back 30 years.

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Kirtan for the Obama inaurugal

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Graphic: poster of the inauguration event Chant4Change

Poster for the event

CHANT 4 CHANGE, Jan­u­ary 19, 6:30 pm – 11:30 pm, at Church of the Holy City:

 

Cel­e­brate the Inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Obama on Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Day with sacred activist Shiva Rea, world-​​renowned kirtan/​chant artists Jai Uttal, Dave Stringer, Gaura Vani & As Kin­dred Spir­its and 400 other con­scious revolutionaries.

I sus­pect that this event is going to sell out very quickly. It’s a rel­a­tively small venue. You can buy tick­ets at Brown Paper Tick­ets at $70 a piece. It’s for a good cause.

Coming yoga events in the DC area

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Beryl Ben­der Birch, the mas­ter instruc­tor of Hard and Soft Power Yoga (within the Ash­tanga school), is giv­ing a week­end work­shop at George­town Yoga on Fri­day, June 6 and Sat­ur­day, June 7. As noted here and here before, I par­tic­i­pated in a Ben­der Birch work­shop at Thrive Yoga. I really enjoyed the oppor­tu­nity to ben­e­fit from her insight and inspi­ra­tion and would rec­om­mend her to any seri­ous yoga student.

At Thrive Yoga, there are a cou­ple of great work­shops com­ing up:

  • Govin­das & Radha – Waves of Love Week­end on June 13-​​14. Govin­das is a Rockville native who now lives in Cal­i­for­nia and leads work­shops that com­bine asana with kir­tan, music, rhythm and joy. You can buy his CD at CD Baby. The Fri­day evening event is going to be a fam­ily affair in which you can bring off­spring and friends for a sin­gle price.
  • Anusara Yoga with Desiree Rum­baugh will take place on the July 11-​​13 week­end. Desiree is an excep­tion teacher and asso­ciate of John Friend. She has mul­ti­ple two DVDs that deal with body issues through yoga. These ses­sions are going to be 2-​​3 hours long so that will really reveal a lot about Anusara’s approach to the body .

There is noth­ing like take an inten­sive work­shop (just one ses­sion or mul­ti­ple days), to break through bar­ri­ers in your practice.

A Missed Opportunity

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I was check­ing out Spirit Voy­age Music, a dis­trib­u­tor of sacred music (some would call it New Age), and I real­ized that they are located in north­ern Vir­ginia, in Pur­cel­lville. They are strong on Kun­dalini, but have lots of other world music styles. They also have a ticket out­let for con­certs.

I fol­lowed a link to the blog of one of the employ­ees, Har­gob­ind, and dis­cov­ered that I had just missed a con­cert of Dave Stringer, one of my favorite kir­tan musi­cians, at Wil­low Street Yoga on Sep­tem­ber 15. I will have to add this to my blog roll and ping it fre­quently because he will prob­a­bly be in the know of other con­certs in the DC area.