Krishna Das is an American. His practice is kirtan - the chanting of the names of God, a part of Bhakti Yoga - the yoga of devotion. After traveling with Ram Das in the late sixties, he lived in India with the guru Maharaj-ji. Then he returned here to serve him - and minister to us - through his singing.
I had the pleasure this month of hearing Krishna Das chant, at Town Hall, a lovely New York venue, not oversize. There were 23 people behind him on stage, including someone at a drum set behind a transparent screen (why the screen?), two guitars, a violin, traditional drums, and several other singers. Krishna Das himself played a small keyboard instrument that he pumped, with the droning sound of an organ or an accordion. They all sat on a carpet on a raised platform.
He opened with a chant called Prayer to Grace. The chant is "Shree Ram Jaya Raam Jaya Jaya Raam / Seetaraamm Seetaraamm". The audience repeated each line after him, as we did for most of the chants that evening. "You can't know what seetaraam means," he told us. "You can only become it".
We heard some familiar names of God that evening: "Hare Krishna" (although not the familiar chant) and "Om Namaha Shivaaya." Some of the chants, Krishna Das told us, are mantras. The only real formalistic variety of the evening was in a sort of bluegrass number about accessing God on a cell phone: "Jesus has a main line / Tell him what you need."
Chant is a magical form, using repetition to take us to an altered state. In the Mass, the Kyrie does the same thing. Krishna Das' call-and-response form is a particularly marvelous variation, separating him from us but including us. He gives structure and progression to these Hindu chants. Mid-way, the drums come in and the tempo picks up. And so he first caresses his audience, and then excites us. Each song was followed by a reverential pause, instead of applause. It was extraordinary!
He closed by saying "As we say in India, Take it easy". That closing summed up Krishna Das' work. This music stems from the Hindu tradition, but here, it's very westernized. Some is influenced by Bible music, and there are moments on the electric guitar influenced by rock. Art should make the familiar seem foreign. In making Indian chant accessible to us, Krishna Das takes the foreign and makes it familiar, domestic... safe. Perhaps his work best is best considered an introduction to traditional sacred music.
Steve Capra