All articles by Jayadvaita Swami

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 40 Another kīrtana innovation is the “double clap.” Instead of clapping hands to the standard 1-2-3 beat, at set intervals you clap hands twice in quick succession.1 This fancy maneuver may work well as part of a choreographed cultural presentation. But for normal kīrtana, where do we want to have our minds—on fancy clapping or on the sound of the holy name? In a Vyāsa-pūjā offering to Śrīla Prabhupāda, Jaya Gaurāṅga Dāsa wrote: So many times you corrected me while doing different things. Like the time I was sitting at … [Read more...] about The “double clap”

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 39 In ISKCON kīrtanas in recent years, particularly at large events, one feature that has come into vogue is long musical breaks, in which a musician, with a saxophone or what have you, plays a few bars of the melody and improvises on them while everyone else looks on in appreciation. Perhaps because this might make some devotees feel uncomfortable (Where is Kṛṣṇa? Where is the mantra?), the devotees in the kīrtana often provide an explicitly divine overlay by calling out “Rādhe! Rādhe!” and then, in response, “Śyām! Śyām!” for as … [Read more...] about Long musical breaks

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 38 In accordance with śāstra and Vaiṣṇava tradition, Śrīla Prabhupāda had us chant the Dāmodaraṣṭaka every day during the month of Karttika. Some decades after Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disappearance, the chanting of the Gopī-gītā—the songs sung by the gopīs—was somehow introduced at ISKCON Vrindāvan as an additional daily Karttika function. During Śrīla Prabhupāda’s presence, this was never done. These most sacred and intimate songs are of course entirely authorized, but the Bhāgavatam offers so many prayers we could chant—prayers … [Read more...] about Gopī-gītā for Karttika

What we chant in ISKCON’s daily program (continued) Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 37 In my seminar on kīrtana standards, devotees have sometimes asked about ākharas. Bhakti Vikāsa Swami explains: Ākharas are lines added to songs for poetical effect. They are commonly used in Bengali kirtana to repeat or explain a point already made. They sometimes take the form of long poetical digressions. There are many standard ākharas for well-known Bengali songs. In ISKCON, only two simple ākharas are common: the lines gaurangera arotika sobha jaga jana mana lobha … [Read more...] about Ākharas (Added lines of elaboration)

What we chant in ISKCON’s daily program (continued) Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 36 The Prema-Dhvani (“Sounds of love”) are glorifications typically called out (in Hindi, by the way) at the end of a kīrtana. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura includes one version of the Prema-dhvani in his Gītāvalī.1 And here is the way Śrīla Prabhupāda nearly always recited the Prema-dhvani:2 jaya oṁ viṣṇu-pāda paramahaṁsa parivrājakācārya aṣṭottara-śata śrī śrīmad bhaktisiddhānta sarasvatī gosvāmī prabhupāda kī jaya ananta-koṭi vaiṣṇava-vṛnda kī jaya nāmācārya śrīla … [Read more...] about Prema-dhvani

What we chant in ISKCON’s daily program (continued) Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 35 In the tulasī praṇāma, in the line vṛndāyai tulasī-devyai, the right word is devyai, not devī or devai. And the often-heard nivedena is a mispronunciation of nivedana, which denotes a request or appeal. Similarly, adhikoro is an attempted Bengali pronunciation that gets things only half right. What we want is adhikāro. And should we say kṛṣṇa-bhakti or viṣṇu-bhakti? The way Śrīla Prabhupāda gave us the mantra (in a letter to Govinda Dāsī dated April 7, 1970), it’s … [Read more...] about Tulasī Worship

What we chant in ISKCON’s daily program (continued) “Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 29 In 1976 Śrutadeva Dāsa, when Temple President in London, wrote to Śrīla Prabhupāda asking if it was acceptable to chant in kīrtana “Jaya Rādhā London-īśvara. . . Prabhupādera prāṇa-dhana he” (adapted from the song Rādhā Kṛṣṇa Gīti).1 Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, “Yes you have my permission to sing as you have requested.”2 New Vrindaban, I’ve somewhere heard, received similar approval. But what Śrīla Prabhupāda permitted has now become de rigueur. You’ve got to do it, or … [Read more...] about The “Deity mantras”

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 28 Here let’s look at some specific features of what we chant every day. (We’ll have more in coming installments.) More about the morning tune As mentioned before, there is a particular tune Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted us to chant for the maṅgala-ārātrika. One can hear Śrīla Prabhupāda sing this tune on the recording here, where he says, “This is the morning tune.” The tune appears in Western musical notation in The Hare Krishna Music Book by Joan Wilder, published by the BBT, and in Bhakti Gauravani Goswami’s Sacred Song … [Read more...] about What we chant in ISKCON’s daily program

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 23 As mentioned above (under “The real point: Strictly follow”), Śrīla Prabhupāda instructed that we should chant “only what the ācāryas have given,” that “the ācāryas only chant all five names of the Pañca-tattva,” and that we should not “chant our own made-up mantras.” And yet we hear: Jaya Pañca-tattva! Jaya Pañca-tattva!Jaya Pañca-tattva! Jaya Pañca-tattva! This is not something the ācāryas have given. It doesn’t include any of the five names. It wasn’t chanted by Śrīla Prabhupāda. And we don’t hear it even in the … [Read more...] about Jaya Pañca-tattva, Jaya Pañca-tattva