ABOUT KIRTAN

KIRTAN is a folk form that arose from the devotional Bhakti yoga movement of 15th century India.

The primary musical feature of kirtan is the use of call and response, a figure that also deeply informs

Western bluegrass, gospel music and jazz. The form is simple: a lead group calls out the melodies and

the mantras. The crowd responds, clapping and dancing as the rhythms build and accelerate.

The Bhaktis had no use for orthodoxy. They wrote ecstatic love poems, and went around singing all the time.

They saw the expression and form of the divine in every direction they looked. Their message was simple:

Cultivate joy. See the divine in one another. They taught Sanskrit mantras to common people using simple

melodies, accompanied by handclaps and finger cymbals and drums.

The intention of Kirtan is consciousness-transformative, directing the singers to vanish into the song as drops merge

into the ocean. Sanskrit is the mother tongue of many modern languages, and a kind of periodic table of elemental

sound-meaning. The mantras are primarily recitations of names given to the divine. But perhaps the true understanding of

the mantras can be found in the sense of unity, well-being and timelessness that they elicit. The mantras quiet the mind,

and the music frees the heart. Ecstasy is both the process and the product.

ABOUT DAVE STRINGER

DAVE STRINGER has been profiled in Time, Billboard, In Style, and Yoga Journal as a leader of the new

American kirtan movement. Kirtan (from the Sanskrit word meaning “to sing”) is an ancient practice of mantra

chanting that has become popular as a participatory live music experience in hundreds of yoga studios across

the U.S. As Dave says, at a kirtan “You’re not just listening to the music, you are the music.“

Dave’s sound marries the transcendent mysticism of traditional Indian instruments with the exuberant, groove-

oriented sound of American gospel music. A spontaneous and articulate public speaker, he probes the dilemmas

of the spirit with a sly and unorthodox sense of humor. His work translates the ancient traditions of kirtan and yoga into

inspiring and thoroughly modern participatory theatre, open to a multiplicity of interpretations, and accessible to all.

Initially trained as a visual artist and jazz musician, Dave started chanting in the early 1990’s when a film editing

project brought him to the ashram of Swami Muktananda in India. When the editing project ended, he remained in

India to teach school in a rural village, and continued studying the traditions of yoga with Swami Chidvilasananda.

After returning to the US, Dave taught meditation and chanting to prison inmates, and began leading kirtans at

yoga studios in Los Angeles and Chicago.

In the past four years Dave and his band have toured all over the United States, Canada and Europe, giving more than

400 performances. He has collaborated on recordings with Vas, Rasa, Donna De Lory, Axiom of Choice, Suzanne Teng,

and Sheila Nicholls, and has performed with other noted kirtan singers Krishna Das and Jai Uttal. His voice can also

be heard on the soundtracks of the film Matrix Revolutions and the video game Myst.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

“India blasted me into billions of spinning particles and then slowly reshaped me, a process that was somehow both

excruciating and ecstatic. I can’t begin to claim complete knowledge of all of the layers of philosophy represented

by the mantras I learned to chant while I was there, but I can attest to their power.

I once read that Thomas Jefferson took a copy of the Bible and cut out the parts that most resonated with him,

then reassembled his selections into a work that reflected his own way of saying his prayers. I suppose it is fair

to say that as an artist, I am engaged in something of a similar process with yoga. I don’t know exactly where

the journey I am making ends. I’m just trying to report honestly from where I am.

Though Kirtan is rooted in a very old and profoundly joyful Eastern tradition, as a Westerner, I don’t know that it is

possible for me to be traditional. I can’t help but bring my own cultural biases with me. My intention, however, is to be

authentic, in the sense that what I am doing originates in my heart. For me, to align the individual-dissolving Eastern tradition

of kirtan with the individual-affirming Western traditions of gospel and jazz and rock music is no contradiction. Both arise from

the same impulse toward giving form to what is ecstatic and liberating and transcendent. “

Dave's new CD

Divas & Devas is Dave Stringer's amazing new album of East Indian bhajans with contemporary arrangements,

sung as male-female duets, in Sanskrit, Hindi and Marathi. The album is rich with the romantic and intimate interplay of masculine and feminine,

gesturing toward the larger relationship of the human and the divine. The arrangements also echo this dual interplay employing traditional Indian

instruments such as tablas, sarangi and santoor, along with Western instruments such as vibes, cello, trumpet, flute, mandolin and lap steel.

In Dave's Words:
Eight of the songs are a collaboration between me and a different diva ( I use this term with great affection and respect):

Donna Delory, Dasi Karnamrita, C.C. White, Kim Waters, Sat-Kartar, Suzanne Sterling, Wah!, and Joni Allen.

Each singer is evocative of different qualties, with my voice as the through-line.

The opening song is an ensemble piece on which all of the divas sing with me.

I was first exposed to the tradition of Indian devotional song when I lived at Gurudev Siddha Peeth in Ganshpuri,

in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Many notable bhajan and qawaali singers passed through the ashram,

and I was very moved by the ecstasy and the stillness that radiated from them. The words they sang were written

in India centuries ago during the era of the bhakti poet-saints, but they still spoke to me in a voice that seemed clear and modern,

and these words continue to inform my thinking and my practice. In this recording, I have set some of these poems to my own original

musical compositions. Other songs come directly from the rich musical tradition that has been transmitted to me through the lineage of Siddha Yoga.

The English word diva conveys a number of shades of meaning, some complimentary and some pejorative,

ranging from accomplished artist through demanding ego. The origin of the term, however, is the Sanskrit word deva,

which means luminous, shining, god, or heavenly one. And it is toward this original meaning that much artistic expression ultimately points.

For me then, the title of this CD, ‘Divas and Devas’, refers to the relationship of our limited sense of self to the expansive awareness

that we call divine love, as one reaches toward the other.

Dave's Divas:
Top Row: Donna De Lory, Dasi Karnamrita, C.C. White, Kim Waters
Bootom Row: Sat Kartar, Suzanne Sterling, Wah!, Joni Allen