Krishna Das
Encyclopedia
Krishna Das is a U.S.
vocalist known for his performances of Indian devotional music called kirtan
(chanting the names of God). With eight albums released since 1996, Das is perhaps the best known U.S. singer of kirtan-style music.
in the 1960s where, along with Ram Dass
, he studied with a Hindu
guru
named Neem Karoli Baba
(Maharaj-ji). Krishna Das has studied ancient Indian meditation practices, Bhakti Yoga
- in Hinduism this is the yoga of devotion, and is now devoted to singing and teaching. He has released several CD
s, and he travels around the world
giving performances and teaching, sometimes with Ram Dass
. In recent years he also has often led workshops in combination with leading meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg
. He has also offered workshops with yoga teacher Dharma Mittra
.
Krishna Das is arguably the best known U.S. singer of Indian kirtan-style devotional music. Other artists working within this genre include Bhagavan Das, Jai Uttal
, Ragani, Eddy Nataraj, Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band, Shyamdas, Lokah Music
, Wah!, Deva Premal
, Girish and Snatam Kaur
.
Krishna Das has recorded numerous variations of Hanuman Chalisa
, a 40 stanza Hindi devotional poem to Hanuman
by Tulsidas
(c.1600). In recent years, he has also performed and recorded the traditional gospel song, "Jesus is on the Mainline". He has commented that he read the Gospels while in India and, "they sound a lot different at 10,000 feet". He also remarked that there has been some criticism about an "ex-jewish boy" chanting the name of Jesus. He responds to this by saying that his guru, Neem Karoli Baba
, once said "Jesus is Love," and singing about Jesus is just singing about love. Other heterodoxies are found on his album Door of Faith (2003), which includes a setting of the Hanuman Chalisa that interpolates the Buddhist "Gate of Sweet Nectar" and a setting of the Gospel tune "God is Real" which blends in "Hare Ram".
Krishna Das's harmonium
bears an image of Hanuman, and he generally wears red T-shirts when he performs (a coloring associated with Hanuman).
Krishna Das's musical style is distinctly Western, using chord progressions typical of Western popular music. The kirtans he leads often build from a slow, meditative tempo to a high paced catharsis. It is common for his audiences to stand up and dance during some of his Hare Krishna chants. The ensembles with which Krishna Das performs changes frequently. He is usually accompanied by a tabla player (Arjun Bruggeman), other percussions (including cymbals, drum kits, and occasionally cowbell and triangle), strings (cello or violin—Genevieve Walker), or electric bass guitar (Mark Gorman, Mark Egan or Patrick Hammond), or guitar (David Nichtern). Often, he is accompanied on kartals (small wooden percussion instruments from Indian) by Nina Rao.
Krishna Das has been associated with many other artists. Two of his albums have featured Hans Christian
as a guest multi-instrumentalist, and Sting appears on the album "Pilgrim Heart". He has also appeared on an album with Baird Hersey & Prana entitled "Gathering In The Light".
Krishna Das has written about how his Guru put him onto the path of Kirtan, and a quotation follows :
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
vocalist known for his performances of Indian devotional music called kirtan
Kirtan
Kirtan or Kirtana is call-and-response chanting or "responsory" performed in India's devotional traditions. A person performing kirtan is known as a kirtankar. Kirtan practice involves chanting hymns or mantras to the accompaniment of instruments such as the harmonium, tablas, the two-headed...
(chanting the names of God). With eight albums released since 1996, Das is perhaps the best known U.S. singer of kirtan-style music.
Biography
Krishna Das traveled to IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in the 1960s where, along with Ram Dass
Ram Dass
Ram Dass is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem...
, he studied with a Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
guru
Guru
A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
named Neem Karoli Baba
Neem Karoli Baba
Shri Neem Karoli Baba or Shri Neeb Karori Baba , also known to followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman...
(Maharaj-ji). Krishna Das has studied ancient Indian meditation practices, Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti yoga
Bhakti yoga is one of the types of yoga mentioned in Hindu philosophies which denotes the spiritual practice of fostering loving devotion to a personal form of God....
- in Hinduism this is the yoga of devotion, and is now devoted to singing and teaching. He has released several CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
s, and he travels around the world
World
World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
giving performances and teaching, sometimes with Ram Dass
Ram Dass
Ram Dass is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem...
. In recent years he also has often led workshops in combination with leading meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg is a New York Times Best selling author and influential teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in West. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, in 1974...
. He has also offered workshops with yoga teacher Dharma Mittra
Dharma Mittra
Sri Dharma Mittra is a Yoga teacher, and a student of Sri Swami Kailashananda Maharaj. Best known for creating the Master Yoga Chart of 908 Postures, his "influence on the yoga world extends far beyond the nearly 50,000 copies of that poster that have been printed since Mittra completed the...
.
Krishna Das is arguably the best known U.S. singer of Indian kirtan-style devotional music. Other artists working within this genre include Bhagavan Das, Jai Uttal
Jai Uttal
Jai Uttal is an American musician and singer-songwriter born in New York City. Often performing with his "Pagan Love Orchestra," Jai's music is influenced by his R&B roots of the 1960s and '70s and by traditional Indian music, which he first became familiar with at age 19.When he was 19, Jai moved...
, Ragani, Eddy Nataraj, Sean Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band, Shyamdas, Lokah Music
Lokah Music
Lokah Music is an American pop band from Miami, Florida which was formed in the summer of 2007.The band consists of two lead vocalists, Sri Michael Shlofmitz and Uma Nanda Saraswati. The band's debut album, The Ivy Ceiling, features the vocal Stylings of Sting and a spoken word introduction by...
, Wah!, Deva Premal
Deva Premal
Deva Premal , is a musician known for her meditative spiritual New Age music, which puts ancient Sanskrit mantras into atmospheric, contemporary settings....
, Girish and Snatam Kaur
Snatam Kaur
Snatam Kaur Khalsa , is an American singer and songwriter. She lives in Española, New Mexico. Kaur performs Indian devotional music, kirtan, and tours the world as a peace activist. The name "Kaur", meaning "princess", is shared by all female Sikhs....
.
Krishna Das has recorded numerous variations of Hanuman Chalisa
Hanuman Chalisa
Hanuman Chalisa |Forty chaupai]]s on Hanuman") is a devotional song based on Lord Hanuman as the model devotee. It is a poem written by Tulsidas in the Awadhi language, and is his best known Hindu text apart from the Ramcharitmanas...
, a 40 stanza Hindi devotional poem to Hanuman
Hanuman
Hanuman , is a Hindu deity, who is an ardent devotee of Rama, a central character in the Indian epic Ramayana and one of the dearest devotees of lord Rama. A general among the vanaras, an ape-like race of forest-dwellers, Hanuman is an incarnation of the divine and a disciple of Lord Rama in the...
by Tulsidas
Tulsidas
Tulsidas , was a Hindu poet-saint, reformer and philosopher renowned for his devotion for the god Rama...
(c.1600). In recent years, he has also performed and recorded the traditional gospel song, "Jesus is on the Mainline". He has commented that he read the Gospels while in India and, "they sound a lot different at 10,000 feet". He also remarked that there has been some criticism about an "ex-jewish boy" chanting the name of Jesus. He responds to this by saying that his guru, Neem Karoli Baba
Neem Karoli Baba
Shri Neem Karoli Baba or Shri Neeb Karori Baba , also known to followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman...
, once said "Jesus is Love," and singing about Jesus is just singing about love. Other heterodoxies are found on his album Door of Faith (2003), which includes a setting of the Hanuman Chalisa that interpolates the Buddhist "Gate of Sweet Nectar" and a setting of the Gospel tune "God is Real" which blends in "Hare Ram".
Krishna Das's harmonium
Harmonium
A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...
bears an image of Hanuman, and he generally wears red T-shirts when he performs (a coloring associated with Hanuman).
Krishna Das's musical style is distinctly Western, using chord progressions typical of Western popular music. The kirtans he leads often build from a slow, meditative tempo to a high paced catharsis. It is common for his audiences to stand up and dance during some of his Hare Krishna chants. The ensembles with which Krishna Das performs changes frequently. He is usually accompanied by a tabla player (Arjun Bruggeman), other percussions (including cymbals, drum kits, and occasionally cowbell and triangle), strings (cello or violin—Genevieve Walker), or electric bass guitar (Mark Gorman, Mark Egan or Patrick Hammond), or guitar (David Nichtern). Often, he is accompanied on kartals (small wooden percussion instruments from Indian) by Nina Rao.
Krishna Das has been associated with many other artists. Two of his albums have featured Hans Christian
Hans Christian
Hans Christian is a German-born musician and producer now based in the U.S. in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Christian is a multi-instrumentalist usually associated with Indian world music, ethnic fusion, chamber jazz, and sometimes New Age music, but who also plays classical music...
as a guest multi-instrumentalist, and Sting appears on the album "Pilgrim Heart". He has also appeared on an album with Baird Hersey & Prana entitled "Gathering In The Light".
Krishna Das has written about how his Guru put him onto the path of Kirtan, and a quotation follows :
'At what would turn out to be my last darshan of Maharaj-ji's physical body, I was petrified with fear about returning to the U.S. after so many years. I hadn't worn a pair of jeans or shoes for such a long time that I couldn't imagine what it would be like. I didn't want to ask Maharaj-ji what I should do in America, but all of a sudden I blurted out in anguish, 'Maharaj-ji! How can I serve you in America?'
'He looked at me with mock disgust and said, 'What is this? If you ask how you should serve then it is no longer service. Do what you want.' I couldn't believe my ears. How could doing what I wanted to do be of service to him? I didn't have that kind of faith. I just sat there, stunned. Then after a minute or so he looked over at me, smiling sweetly, and asked, 'So, how will you serve me?'
'My mind was blank. It was time for me to leave for Delhi, to catch the plane back to the States. He was looking at me and laughing. I bent down and touched his feet for the last time and when I looked up he, he was beaming at me, 'So, how will you serve me in America?' I felt like I was moving in a dream. I floated across the courtyard and bowed to him one more time from a distance. As I did, the words came to me, 'I will sing to you in America.'
'Soon afterwards, during the full moon in September, Neem Karoli Baba left his body. Now he had to be found within. The chanting, the meditation, the puja and all the wonderful time spent with Maharaj-ji turned out to be seeds that he himself had planted in my heart... seeds that would keep growing and blossom by his Grace.
Anusara Yoga Invocation
Krishna Das composed the melody for the Anusara Yoga invocation, "Om Nama Shivaya Gurave," at the request of John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga. Friend describes this composition as occurring during a summer night at a secluded mountain retreat center in Utah in 1998.Discography
- 1996: One Track Heart
- 1998: Pilgrim Heart
- 2000: Live... on Earth
- 2001: Breath of the Heart
- 2003: Door of Faith
- 2005: All One
- 2006 Gathering in the Light with Baird Hersey & Prana
- 2007: Flow of Grace: Chanting the Hanuman Chalisa, Sounds TrueSounds TrueSounds True is a multimedia publishing company based near Boulder, Colorado. It was created in 1985 by Tami Simon. The company has published approximately 1,000 titles, including spoken-word audio recordings, books, music, filmed events, multimedia packages and online educational programs from...
- 2008: Heart Full of Soul
- 2010: Heart as Wide as the World
External links
- Krishna Das.com – official website
- "If music be the food of love, play on" an interview with Ascent magazine.