Across the country and around the world, people are chanting the names of God in foreign tongues including Sanskrit and Hindi. And they’re taking kirtan out of the temples and the yoga studios, and into dance halls, universities, cathedrals, and other unexpected places.
In the last decade, India’s ancient call-and-response form of chanting has been reinvented by modern devotional artists who are blending traditional kirtan with modern music genres such as rock, R&B, hip hop, and electronica—breathing new life (and new devotion) into yoga’s sacred chants. But what, exactly, are these chants about?
According to kirtan artist and bhakti yoga educator David Newman, kirtan means “to praise that which is exalted”—aka, the divine. The word “kirtan” also stems from a Sanskrit root that means “to cut through,” he says, so kirtan is also “a practice for cutting through the idea of separation, for connecting to our hearts and connecting to the moment through sound.”
read on at kripalu.org
SitaRam SitaRam
Hans(uman)
www.kirtan.nu
www.ecstaticchant.nl
www.ecstaticchant.eu
www.stemyoga.nl
