Karatalas: Weapons of mass inspiration!
The Sanskrit word “kara” means hand and “tala” - a rhythmic pattern. Literally, karatalas - a hand tool to maintain the rhythm. However, this instrument is considered to be a divine instrument. Cymbals sound can be compared with the bell ringing - so big is its cleansing effect. This clears the sound and the one who plays the kartalas, and those who hear it said that God himself death Yamaraja and his servants yamadutas can not go to the one who plays the kartalas.
Patron Saint of cymbals is the gopi Sudevi. She needed to pray to learn to play this wonderful instrument. Before start playing them, favorably pronounced this pranama mantra:
“I will defeat death, I will defeat Yamaraja, and I happily will win over all his servants (yamadutas). Hearing the sound of cymbals from afar neither death, nor any of his servants of Yamaraja, certainly will get close to someone who engages in kirtan. ”
Prabhupada stressed that for the devotees there is no need to learn any oter musical instruments to lead kirtan. Lord Chaitanya gave us the easiest method, and all you need for chanting.
“I think that we have no need to use different musical talents to spread Krishna Consciousness. It is better that people strictly follow the path of Lord Caitanya and His sankirtana devotees. We use mrdanga and karatalas, and that’s enough. We are not musicians. We are Krishna bhaktas. Therefore, we are not interested about all these different musical talents. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is God Himself. If He believed that it would be better to spread the Krishna Consciousness in an other way, He would have done it. No, our process - it’s just play on mrdanga and kartalas, travel and chant Hare Krishna and ask everyone to chant Hare Krsna and just preach the philosophy of "Srimad Bhagavatam”. We do not need to try to add anything to this simple method.“
Srila Prabhupada, letter to Jagadisha, 28.12.1974
(Translated automatically from Russian) http://goo.gl/hDrJFH