Caroline hosts Kirtan artist Krishna Das, devotional, longtime student of Tibetan dzogchen.
“Hailed as yoga’s “rock star,” Krishna Das put sacred Sanskrit mantras on the music map.”
Alan Di Perna, Grammy.com
(and seguing at the end of show to “Lilt” performing “Waterbound” as homage to the Louisiana floods)
“Hailed as yoga’s ‘rock star,” Krishna Das put sacred Sanskrit mantras on the music map.”
Fascinating and beautifully quirky program today!
In terms of the Sanskrit-Hindu nature of Krishna Das’ name and fame, I guess, if we’re gonna think of him in these terms (and not also the student of “Tibetan dzogchen”), then would it be too much to say (since Krishna Das says we owes everything to his Hindu guru), at least culturally (or pop-culturally), that the venerable (and playful) Neem Karoli Baba himself has brought us much-in-need-of-spiritual-guidance Westerners a new musical genre? A new innovative genre suited to our particular tastes in our cross-cultural mixing “world music” realm: “Bhajan-Country” (a kind of, say, Hindu-bhakti with a twang!). Who knew?
Yup, who knew that something like this quirky innovation in the world of popular music would be from a young, rock-star bound musician who liked both blues and country music? (But to be perfectly candid, being a blues man myself, I would have preferred to hear the low-down down-beat passion of, if you will, the “Hanuman Blues.” And you must have heard what one blues musician paradoxically said when asked why she would play sad/depressing songs all the time: “Well, the blues makes you feel good!”)
Yet, in one sense, guess I should have seen it coming! I mean to say that it seems almost inevitable that we now have “Bhajan-Country” when, during the peak of the immigration to the US in the 80-90s by East Indians (a majority from North India), you could find small enclaves of Indian immigrant communities, not just in the Silicon Valley and San Rafael, but in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas. Hey, after this, I’ll bet that the old Hanuman-bhakti ashrams will never be the same! It would give a new meaning to what the orthodox purists there who (like those that took issue with letting the Beatles popularize the high-art of “Indian Classical Music”) might object: “Hey, just hold on there Sri Yogi Rock Star–I don’t think that Guruji would try to make monkeys out of all of us!”