Recently there was a 24 hour kirtan organized by Krishna youths, an example of resurgent’s activity(more on the resurgency later). See story here and here and here.

Videos here.

As regular readers of my blog may recall, I don’t like overly loud kirtans. I find them unpleasing, and my question is that if kirtan is supposed to be pleasing, if it isn’t, is it still actually a kirtan?

Unfortunately, a loud, pushy minority seem to have hijacked many kirtans. I have a lot of experience of this in New Vrindaban, but accounts are that it is happening all over the movement.

You all know the type — they lack a truly strong voice, so they amp it up, then sing as loud as they can anyway. To make matters worse, they apparently lack the conceptual ability to play kartalas with “touch”, with nuance, and they make up for what they lack in talent with loudness, apparently feeling that lots of energy directed into the playing compensates.

Then, they lean into the mike, bringing the kartalas so close to the mike you fear they might chop off their own lips.

Nothing like kartalas played too loudly directly into an overamped mike to drive me from the temple. I suspect many casual visitors feel the same.

Based on this criterion, I give the Gosh stamp of approval to the organizers and participants in the NV 24 Hour Kirtan because it didn’t hurt my ears. That gave me opportunity to actually listen to it, and lo and behold, it was PLEASING to my ears. What a great experience, that there is hope for kirtan in ISKCON.

If I must make a critique (it is congenital) it would be that of the several times I checked in, it wasn’t really a kirtan. Everyone was sitting down. To me, that is bhajan, not kirtan. I did hear rumors of dancing, but never saw it.

Maybe for the MyFace generation, that grew up on Game Boys and online chatting, the hands are the primary means of expression. For those of us who came into the movement years ago, we also used our feet in kirtan. It is called “dancing”.

So although I know it was unrealistic to expect today’s youth to dance for the whole 24 hours, atrophied as they are by electronics, just like they scheduled leaders for the kirtans, maybe they could also schedule dancers for next time, so it truly deserves the classification as “kirtan”.

“My Dear Hamsaduta,

“Please accept my blessings. Regarding the Rathayatra procession in London, the procession should be made like this:

“The arrangement is for seven kirtana parties, or if you do not have enough men, four parties. Each party must consist of seven men as follows: two mrdanga, four karatala, and one dancer. One of the karatala players is lead singer, and the dancer dances freely up and down between the two lines of players three on each side as in the drawing. If there are only four parties, the arrangement should be that one party is on each side, and in back and front of the Ratha:

“So the dancer should dance very freely, you may distribute Prasadam and especially distribute our literatures from a table on wheels for the purpose.
Hope this will meet you in good health.

“Your ever well-wisher,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami”

Letter to: Himavati, Hamsaduta — Los Angeles 13 June, 1970