Music as Meditation-the kirtan experience.
Laksmi Nrsimha Das: I’m sure many musicians have had a meditative experience while playing in a band or orchestra or even playing one’s instrument alone. Long ago, in the early 70’s, I was a percussionist for a well-known NYC folksinger named Steve Baron. Steve and I had a music connection that ran deep. We never rehearsed, yet many of our concerts, small and large, would catapult us into an almost meditative trance, free of anxiety or loss of focus. Our audience would similarly get swept up in our sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholy songs. It was this type of performance experience which led me to the conclusion that music can be a profound meditative experience.
Even as a listener or appreciator of music, the act of attentively listening to one’s favorite form of music can cause moments, minutes or hours of rapture. Music is so captivating that it induces pleasant concentration with blissful ease. With that said it comes as no surprise that the ancient yogis developed a form of music that is a powerful meditation; a meditation made easy through melody and rhythm. This form of meditation is known as kirtan.
A dear friend of mine, Swami Dhanurdhara, wrote about kirtan-“The test of any meditational practice is its ability to facilitate focus on the object of one’s mediation, usually a mantra that is heard. As proper melody and rhythm spontaneously allure the mind, mantra couched in music naturally makes mantra meditation easier. And as the focus in kirtan is the very object of the practitioner’s devotion (the divine names of God), extraordinary feelings, such as devotion and joy, naturally arise as one’s meditation deepens.” This in short describes the kirtan meditation. As the setting for a precious jewel enhances the beauty of the jewel, the setting of melody and rhythm in kirtan enhances the captivating beauty and concentrative power of the mantra in focus. through continued experience of kirtan, gradually the participant connects with an inner dimension of simultaneous joy and heightened awareness of the true nature of the self.