“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 45
When devotees came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged them to use their skills and talents for Kṛṣṇa. For example, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Murāri Dāsa (August 3, 1967):
I am so glad you are playing music for Krishna. It is a great service of your talent. Anyone’s special talent should be engaged in the service of the Lord, and thereby [he] becomes successful in his life. I think that you can go on playing on your guitar and make it successful for Krishna kirtana.
Śrīla Prabhupāda continued, however:
You do not require to learn freshly about sitar. We are not meant for learning something new for the service of the Lord; but we have to engage whatever talents we have already got. Our life is short but any type of education is great and long; so the best part of valor is to utilize properly whatever qualifications we have got for the service of the Lord.1
Similarly, Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged a new candidate named Ivan Levine (soon to be initiated as Īśana Dāsa):
I am so pleased to read your letter of January 21, 1969 and to learn of your sincere eagerness to serve Krsna in the best capacity of your talents. There is a Sanskrit proverb that says that there is not any better knowledge than to become a musician. Our Krishna Consciousness movement is practically based upon music and dancing. If by your exceptional qualities you can help in this movement, I think you have been sent by Krishna Himself to help me in this connection.2
A few months later Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Īśana Dāsa:
You have expressed a fear of becoming attached to your musical activities, but attachment for Krishna’s service is not bad. If you can engage your talent for Krishna’s service, then this attachment will increase your Krishna Consciousness status.3
And of course Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged the professional musician George Harrison to use his talents for Kṛṣṇa.4
As Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Śukadeva Dāsa in a letter about engaging “the high class of men”:
The secret will be to engage them as they like to be engaged, that is, supposing I have got some education, I am business student, or I have got some skill or talent, I am typist or musician or something like that, so I will like to utilize these things for Krishna only if I am encouraged in a certain way, very tactfully, and I must not be discouraged by too much forcing me at first to accept everything of shaving the head, rising very early, going for street sankirtana, like that. No, let me come gradually, let me study also Krishna Consciousness and see how it is practical and sublime. Gradually I may get some taste for these other things and agree to do them voluntarily and intelligently.5
We see that Śrīla Prabhupāda engaged artists and musicians in this way. He encouraged them to use their talents for Kṛṣṇa. But glorification of Kṛṣṇa was the main thing, not the musical talent. As Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Mahātmā Dāsa:
So if you have talent for musical achievement, that is nice; but if you nourish some idea of becoming famous by playing some music, that will be a source of frustration—the end. So it is better if you play your music for Krishna by having very ecstatic kirtanas in your center in Vancouver, and in this way, as I have introduced it, all of the devotees and also the general public as well will be able to join together cooperatively in the glorification of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. . .6
In the Foreword to Songs of the Vaiṣṇava Ācāryas, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote appreciatively of Acyutānanda Swami, “He has learned how to sing in Bengali and play mṛdanga like an expert professional.” Yet for kīrtana Śrīla Prabhupāda didn’t seem to think we needed to pursue a high standard of professionalism. In May of 1969 he wrote to Brahmānanda:
Regarding your request for a kirtana musician, we don’t require anyone who is very musically talented. Here in New Vrindaban Hayagriva has organized very nice kirtana party, and they are singing and chanting thrice daily very, very nicely. So I think you are the best mrdanga player,7 and similarly you have Rsi Kumar, Madhusudana, Uddhava, as well as others, so if you think all of you are deficient, I can send you a tape recording teaching playing techniques, and you will learn from this. You have got another devotee, Mohini Mohan, Purusottama’s friend, and Purusottama says he is a musical master, so utilize the talent you have got and surely your propaganda will be successful and more men will come.8
And a few days later, to Baradarāj:
I understand that you are also very musically talented, but this talent is not so much required on Sankirtana Party because for chanting Hare Krishna it is not necessary that all instrumentation be so much polished or complicated.9
In 1974 Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to his disciple Jagadīśa Paṇḍita Dāsa:
My opinion is that it is not necessary for us to utilize these different musical talents for spreading Krsna Consciousness. I would rather see people follow strictly the path of Lord Caitanya and His Sankirtana devotees. We are using mrdanga, karatala, that is enough. We are not musicians. We are Krsna bhaktas. Therefore we do not stress so much importance on these different musical talents. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is God Himself. Had He thought it would have been better to spread Krsna Consciousness by another way He would have done so. But no, simply with mrdanga and karatala, traveling and chanting Hare Krsna, asking everyone to chant Hare Krsna, preaching simply Srimad-Bhagavatam philosophy, this is the process. There is no need for us to try and add anything to this simple method. It will only be a distraction. Therefore I request you to follow the simple path of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu and help me spread this wonderful mission all over the world. Keep yourself pure and fixed up in Krsna Consciousness by following the basic principles that I have given; chanting 16 rounds daily, following the four regulative principles, rising early, attending mangala arati and classes etc. This is of the utmost importance.10
In sum: Much as Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged his fine-art painters to paint for Kṛṣṇa but discouraged them from trying to become “great artists,”11 he encouraged devotee musicians to use their musical talents for Kṛṣṇa but did not encourage them to go deep into musical art. What mattered most was devotion and the power and purity of the holy name.
Notes:
1 Śrīla Prabhupāda ended his letter, however, with a concession: “If you think still that you want a sitar, I will request you to make correspondence with Messrs Dwarkin and Sons, Esplanade Calcutta.”
2 Letter to Mr. Levine, January 25, 1969. In a letter to Mukunda the same day, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote that he understood that Mr. Levine was “an expert trumpeteer.”
3 May 13, 1969.
4 See for example Śrīla Prabhupāda’s letter to Syamasundara of February 25, 1970, and to Gurudasa, March 15, 1970.
5 Letter, December 13, 1972.
6 Letter to Mahatma, April 10, 1972.
7 Brahmānanda barely knew some rudimentary mṛdaṅga beats. —js
8 May 26, 1969.
9 June 2, 1969.
10 Letter, December 28, 1974.
11 See his letter to Jadurani of April 8, 1968.
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