KIRTAN and KIRTANA

I would explain, but It would involve writing personal history about how I was thrust into the community of yogis and chanters. I simply can't. I just haven't got the energy. It's too long a tale and would require too many words, coherent sentences, time-line details to reconstruct for accuracy and it was too important to me to just toss it off. Suffice it to say, I arrived in psychic despair one day a few decades ago. Now, I just plug back in when they're in town and I can attend. Saturday night, suitably dressed for thirty degree temperatures, I left my apartment and walked uptown, caught this shot of the Empire State  building lit red white and blue for Veterans day...Oh, weary, weary wars we are exhausted...

 ...then walked East to the 'speed-bus' at 26th street on 1st Avenue. Once boarded,  I watched this elder Chinese man read about eight different Chinese newspapers, carefully unfolding and refolding them throughout the whole trip to 86th Street.

Another bus took me across 86th Street and I arrived around 8 O'clock to a full house in various stages of ecstasy at the Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew.

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Kirtan is a Sanskrit word that means "narrating, reciting, telling, describing" of an idea or story. It also refers to a genre of religious performance arts, connoting a musical form of narration or shared recitation. With roots in the Vedic anukirtana tradition, a Kirtana is a call-and-response style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite or describe a legend, or express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas. It may include dancing or direct expression of bhavas (emotive states) by the singer. Many Kirtana performances are structured to engage the audience where they either repeat the chant, or reply to the call of the singer.

 "How good it is when Brother and Sisters

dwell together in harmony"

Sometime around 10 O'clock we broke up, mulled about meeting and greeting while the band packed equipment. It was a loving 'family' gathering, as it is all over the world at like events. Friend Wendy Daly and I left together and made our way, she to a new night shift job and me, back to my apartment where I uploaded the fuzzy and clear photos to my computer, downed some fine soup and fell into bed feeling loved and loving, fortunate and grateful.

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2015 
Live Stream: Heart of Devotion Workshop with Krishna Das
A smaller more intimate venue with more talk and some chanting
(3 hours)

https://youtu.be/ggmnpCK4uXU
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Web Site
https://www.facebook.com/KrishnaDasMusic/