“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 48
There’s much to be said for sticking to one tune throughout a kīrtana, rather than switching from tune to tune.
Back when I was a kid there was a television show called “The Original Amateur Hour.” Amateur performers would come on stage to sing, tap dance, do magic tricks, or what have you, each for perhaps two or three minutes. And this sometimes seems what kīrtana has become: two minutes for a tune, or three minutes, because we don’t want the chanters to get bored. We’ve got to keep changing the tune, and changing it again, the result often being that if anyone had hoped to get absorbed in the mantra, that hope will be lost, because as soon as one starts to get focused the leader will change the tune again so we don’t get bored.
In contrast, Śrīla Prabhupāda in his kīrtanas at Tompkins Square Park would sing only one tune—the familiar melody from the first “Hare Kṛṣṇa” album—for a full hour. Then Śrīla Prabhupāda would give a ten-minute talk, and then chant for another half an hour—again, with that same tune the whole time.1 If you hear his kīrtanas at 26 Second Avenue—one tune. And in fact whenever we hear him lead kīrtana, nearly always we hear only one tune throughout.
The much-appreciated kīrtana leader Mādhava Dāsa sticks with one tune for an hour or more, and people don’t seem to get bored.
When we stick to one simple tune, even after the kirtana is over that tune may stick in our heads—and the heads of those who hear us—along with the words of the mantra: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare.
Some influential kīrtana leaders seem to have made frequent changes of tune a part of their standard. I’m sure they have their reasons. And we want kīrtana leaders to have freedom to lead kīrtana in a way that involves and inspires and not expect them to be bound by stringent rules. In any case, though: Śrīla Prabhupāda’s standard was to stick with one tune.2
In a note about the virtues of sticking to a simple popular melody, my godbrother Rudradeva Dāsa has written me:
To me this is especially important away from the temple, when we’re chanting congregationally on the streets, in public. I’ve witnessed many times, and it’s such a shame, when the kirtan is rolling along, all the devotees are participating with some degree of enthusiasm, and even a portion of the nondevotee public are joining in. Then suddenly the leader (perhaps feeling he needs to diversify) switches to an unfamiliar tune that 95% of devotees present never heard before. Needless to say, the “bottom drops out” of the kirtan, and the chanting loses so much of the heart everyone had worked so hard to build. What generally ensues is confusion, stumbling, hesitation, and diminishing of the spirit of the kirtan. It takes a while to get it back, usually only when the leader realizes his mistake and once again “grounds” the chanting in the popular, recognizable tune. I personally see no shame in repetition of one or two good tunes that all love and can join in with.3
Again not a rule—but an observation with much to be said for it.
Even at maṅgala-ārātrika, some leaders seem to think they have to do something to “keep people going.” So: this tune and that tune, this trick and that trick. And the result is that we’re left hungry. We don’t get what we most need, which is to hear the mahā-mantra and absorb our minds in the sound of Kṛṣṇa’s holy name. Instead we get all these tricks, and we starve.
Kīrtana is not “all about the tunes.” What we need is to hear the mahā-mantra and absorb our minds in the sound of Kṛṣṇa’s holy name.
Notes:
1 Personal interview with Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami, September 15, 2021.
2 This was his standard for kīrtana. Though for bhajanas too we most often hear Śrīla Prabhupāda chanting one tune throughout, Annadā Dāsī tells this anecdote: “Towards the end of the darshan at the Delhi temple, he sat next to his harmonium and played a few melodies of the Hare Krishna mantra and chanted. And then he pushed the harmonium away and he said, ‘This is the way to please Krishna—to chant the Hare Krishna mantra in different melodies.’ ” Following Srila Prabhupada: Remembrances, DVD-08: April‒May 1975.
3 Personal communication, April 10, 2022.
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