Music

YM: Welcome to Yogamates. You started your yoga practice and study at a very young age.  Please tell us about your yoga roots.
R: My mother used to bring yoga teachers to our home for workshops and seminars in our home town, and she was very much on the leading edge of vegetarian diet, homeopathic remedies, yoga, and meditation. As we know, there is not often a crowd on the leading edge, and most of my friends in school had little idea about our family practices, except for the bean sandwiches they would see in my lunch. I met my guru, Sri Swami Rama, at the East West Bookstore in Chicago when I was eight years old-- my parents had gone to hear his lecture and I met him briefly on his way down to the lecture hall. I remember driving home that night, feeling so much love in my heart, wanting to find a way to study and spend more time with someone like him. Little did I know that years later, as a teenager, I would have the opportunity to live and stay at his ashram in Pennsylvania, where I stayed for 11 consecutive summers, between my school years. Being there with him felt like picking up where I left off in some other lifetime. Those were such special and incredible days-- to be with him and observe the grandeur of the yogic world left a deep impression upon my heart. What surprised me the most was not that these incredible things happened in his life, but that when we were with him, we also felt those things happening in our lives as well.
 
YM: When did you know that singing was a big part of it all for you?
R: I don’t considered myself a singer as such, though I do lead the chants at kirtan. (I suppose sometimes I do actually sing in the shower!)  Years ago, back in the 1980's, when my guru told me that I was going to be traveling around and leading kirtan events, I did not see what was coming for kirtan in the West. The vision of the guru! So I suppose it kind of settled gradually into my mind-- this idea of being a kirtan wali (leader). When I first heard kirtan in the home of a Muktananda devotee, I was in eighth grade, and my heart was stolen. I didn’t know that I would be doing kirtan in my life, but I knew something important was happening in my heart when I first heard the kirtan.
 
YM: What do you sing?
R: The chants we sing are all sacred mantras and names of the divine, and we chant in Sanskrit. I also enjoy working occasionally on commercial productions for film/tv that may include world fusion Sanskrit chants and love songs. Good love songs, not the cheesy kind.
 
YM: Why do you sing?
R: On some level I have to. After my guru dropped his body in 1996, I didn't chant for four years. I was drying up inside during that time. I began to realize that I had to start chanting again, to immerse myself in the experience of kirtan, in order to fill my heart and soul again. That was the time when we started a more serious practice of kirtan in the Milwaukee area. The kirtan serves as a means for me to stay connected to the source-- it is one of the paths that can connect us to the lineage of masters.
 
YM: What trends have you noticed in the world of Kirtan over the past 25 years?
R: Wow, that's a big one. Back in the early '80's, when I first started leading kirtan, we used to have only those cassette tapes from the Sri Rama Foundation kirtan, and all of us at the ashram listened to those tapes over and over again. Thank goodness for them! We also had one kirtan cassette by Vaiyasaki Das—it was lovely! Back then, most of the kirtan that was happening was in ashrams and yoga studios. By the early 2000’s, we started to see a few kirtan events emerging from the yoga studios— following on the heels of the (hatha) yoga trends— and heading towards more mainstream venues. Kirtan is still a ways away from being fully mainstream, but you can see the signs— it's starting to pop up in more and more places outside the yoga studios, and more and more people are participating in and starting their own kirtan events. Initially, I used to want to keep a purity about the kirtan experience-- to keep it the same as what was in India. Over the past decade, however, I've begun to appreciate what is happening here in the West. Here, people do not understand the culture of kirtan, and they do not understand the meanings of the words. They don't need to. The power of kirtan lies in the experience itself, in the feeling that is stirred for us during a live event, in the way it touches our hearts. The fact that so many yoga masters from the East have brought kirtan with them to the West tells me that there is something that kirtan can offer us, specifically for us as westerners. It is not necessary to be a yogi or even a meditator to appreciate the experience of kirtan-- it can speak to each of us, across all cultures and religions. Indeed, as I've often said, “the true language of kirtan is universal, because it is a language of the heart”. There will be many more people who discover the benefits of kirtan as it continues to grow exponentially and expand into mainstream consciousness. We're standing at the beginning of great things to come.
 
YM: What does your daily practice look like?
R: Daily meditation, some hatha yoga and pranayama, and a vegetarian diet. Recently, we've added increased early morning japa practice and for me, a special practice of prayer. I enjoy focusing in on the heart energy as much as possible.
 
YM:  Please talk about Kirtan as a Yogic Science.
R: When we talk about Kirtan, we have to acknowledge that it is not just an ordinary music experience. Yes, it does involve music, but it also involves a process of the subtle energies. Kirtan can help us to untie the knots in our heart and to bathe us in the sacred energies of the heart, which can wash and cleanse us. Kirtan is not something to watch—you must participate in it in order to benefit from it. Just like any good yoga practice! When we do Kirtan, the back-and-forth of the call-and-response format, the rhythms, and the repetitions all create a kind of entrainment for the mind and body. Just like rocking a baby, this rhythmic, back-and-forth vibration soothes us, calms us, relaxes the nerves, and at the same time energizes us at a much deeper level. Kirtan helps us to reset the mind and body, to re-establish balance and greater well-being.
 
Many times participants will have the experience of hearing the chants continuing on the subtle level (in the mind) during their sleep and in the morning following a kirtan experience. These vibrations continue to work even after the event is completed, and while we do not expect a single kirtan event to suddenly change the predominant patterns in one’s life, over time the effects of kirtan can have a growing and transformational impact on the mind and subtle body. Deeper personal transformations take place over time, with repeated efforts and grace, and kirtan can play a role in that process.
 
I've heard Linda Johnsen give some of the best lectures on the benefits of kirtan-- right down to using it as a conditioning routine! No doubt some of the best kirtan experiences have been transformational, and if the letters we receive after a kirtan event are any indication of what goes on for people during these events, there are certainly some powerful energies that we are all tapping into when we participate in kirtan.
 
YM: Where do you see the future of Kirtan?
R: Yeah, that's the million dollar question! I envision Kirtan in stadiums across the nation (and world), with hundreds of thousands of people chanting, and live televised events in the homes of people across the nation. I see Kirtan becoming very mainstream, on the radio, on TV, in movies... It will be on Oprah. Sometimes I will watch the Evangelical stations on TV just to see the halls that they are using, and I imagine the Kirtan being held in those venues. We are still in the earlier days of Kirtan, but the time will come when we will look back at these days and remember having more intimate Kirtan events with just twenty or thirty people in attendance. Kirtan answers a need in so many ways, and it fulfills a mission to help connect us to the heart, to ourselves, to each other. It’s clearly here to stay.
 
YM: What do you love?
R: I love immersing myself in music that opens the heart-- whether kirtan or otherwise. I love the feeling of blessings pouring in, the feeling of timely connections with others. I love the sacred and ancient traditions that awaken our hearts and minds and spending time with the masters who embody that wisdom. I love being in the company of genuine devotees, light-hearted people with a good sense of humor—and I love a good joke!
 
YM: Who do youlike to listen to?
R:  I've been a great fan of Jagjit Singh's voice for many years, and I've been listening recently to his track "Vakratunda mahakaya" (from his Shri Ganesh CD). We also have Sai Baba's Embodiment of Love and Israel Kamakawiwo Ole's Facing Future in our CD player. For the past week, I have also been secretly drowning in Josh Groban's incredible vocals in "In Her Eyes".
 
YM: Where can we find out more about you and buy your music?
R: You can visit our website (www.RaganiWorld.com) to read more about us, about our live events, and about the kirtan experience. At this time, we have two CD’s in our classic Kirtan Café series (Best of Both Worlds and Ancient Spirit), and we plan to do at least one more. You can find our music CD’s online at Amazon, CDBaby.com (if you haven't heard of them, they are the best place and biggest online seller of independent music CDs-- even bigger than Amazon!), iTunes, among others, and in many yoga studios and new age bookstores. You can also find information on other artists’ kirtan events in your area by visiting the International Kirtan Foundation’s website: www.KirtanConnection.com, which invites kirtan artists and venues to post their kirtan-related information and events free of charge.