Singing

Carmella Baynie doing kirtan at Atma Yoga, Brisbane, Australia.

Here is Mother Devaki showing me how to play my new favorite tune.

I'll try to get a recording of it at Sacred Chant this Friday, or the Sunday feast on Sunday.

On the 27th of October the month of Damodara begins. This month is the time of the festival of Kartika, and Vaisnavas sing the song Damodarastakam each day, along with offering a lamp to baby Krishna.

Dama means "bound" and udara means "abdomen". Together they form Damodara, and this is a name of Krishna that refers to his pastime of being bound by his mother Yasoda to prevent his running away after having been naughty and threatened with punishment. It refers to the ties of the devotees' love that bind the Lord to them.

The word astakam refers to a poetic form with eight stanzas or verses (from asta - "eight"). The Damodarastakam is spoken by Satyavrata Muni in the Padma Purana.

This prayer is sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments such as harmonium, mrdanga, cartals and guitar. There are two main melodies that are used to sing it - one is in 3/4 time ("waltz"-time), also known colloquially in ISKCON as "2-beat", and the other is in 4/4 time - known colloquially and misleadingly as "3-beat".

I have been requested by a number of devotees to provide them with guidance on the musical accompaniment for this song, so in the days leading up to Kartika I will post videos here showing how to play the mrdanga and cartals for these two different melodies and time signatures, and also a number of different chords that can accompany these melodies on harmonium and guitar.

If Krishna Dharma prabhu publishes an english rendition before then I will endeavour to record a version of that for the pleasure of the Vaisnavas.

I'll start soon so that you have time to practise before Kartika arrives.

From my recent visit to Melbourne's Mahaprabhu Mandir, here is Bhakta Adam, previously trained in opera singing, giving a few pointers on singing.

Again, because I had the camera settings wrong the frame is clipped. However, Google Video's conversion settings are better and it's not dropping frames like Vijay's mrdanga video.

Visit the Google Video page to download a version for viewing offline, or check back here soon and I'll upload the unconverted one here.