Kirtan is Life

One humble contribution I would like to make to ISKCON is to promote and facilitate proficiency in kirtan.

"Musical ability is nothing, devotion is everything", as Srila Prabhupada said. At the same time, if we want people to give up their TVs and DVDs and meet and do kirtan every night from 6 pm - 9 pm as he described in the Caitanya-caritamrita, we all need to learn how to do it nicely. That's why he spent six weeks personally training the preachers who went to England before sending them off.

It's just a fact that when people can sing nicely and play instruments nicely, the kirtans do go longer and people are more inspired to participate. Devotion and personal purity must also be there, otherwise it goes from transformative practice to musical performance. So we need both in order to be a progressive preaching movement.

We also need a local industry for instruments. In Australia, Jai Sacinandana in Sydney is importing mrdangas and harmoniums through his business Gauranga.com.au, and we will need to work on getting a local fiberglass mrdanga industry happening.

I am going to post short instructional videos, inspirational stories, kirtans, concerts, and captures of "best practices", videos of people I meet who are good at leading kirtan or playing the instruments.

Remember at the end of the day, it's all about the devotion - "to recite the name of Krishna loudly is bhakti", as Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati put it. Supporting elements that encourage that are anukulyena. Anything else is simply a waste of time.

Here's the catch-all category for these posts: Kirtan.

And the various sub-categories:

• Aarti kirtan - Kirtans in the temple during the aarti ceremony.
• Accordeon - a great addition to harinam to help create a festive atmosphere and engage the public.
• Advanced - for instructional pieces that extend basic skills.
• Best Practice - maestros doing their thing.
• Cartals - for the small hand cymbals.
• Djembe - adds a lot of bottom end to the kirtan when it's played by someone who knows how to mesh with the mrdanga.
• English Renditions - for English language bhajans.
• Guitar - for guitar players.
• Harinam - posts related to street sankirtan.
• Harmonium - a "modern innovation", but traditional for contemporary Gaudiya Vaisnavas from Bhaktivinode Thakura's time.
• Instructional - breaking it down all instructional-like.
• Mrdanga - for the traditional drum which is actually technically called a khol.
• Singing - the voice.
• Whompers - the heavy artillery.