Music

Chant Ram

Kirtan is the chanting of sacred mantras.
It’s like prayer. It’s like rock and roll.
You can listen. You can sing. You can dance.

At its heart, kirtan is a form of worship-
celebratory, devotional, ecstatic.
At one level, it is the chanting of Hindu names for God.
At another level, it is the sounding of mantras
that activate the highest energies within us--
love, courage, connection, faith, spiritual vision.

Much of kirtan is call-and-response:
The lead singer chants a phrase,
and the participants sing the reply.
It is a sharing between performers and participants
that allows pleasure and joy to guide us to
beauty and inner stillness.
The point is not musical perfection,
it is immersion in a community of song.

Kirtan can be a refuge in times of trouble.
In the Ramayana, it is said,
“When all is in ruins, chant Ram.”
I take that to mean that when we are broken,
the vibrations of these chants can return us
to the rhythms of love.
-Kenneth Robinson