Only the Perfect Remains
I just got back from Northampton, Mass., where I attended a performance by Shantala. I wrote about the group in a review of their album The Love Window last year.
They came through the area last October when I was in Germany. I was sorry to have missed them, since The Love Window is one of my favorite new-age CDs. I was glad to discover that they were coming back.
I could have seen them closer to home. But my friends Steve and Beth, who live in the Northampton area, are also Shantala fans. I gave them a copy of The Love Window while Beth was pregnant and it was the first music their child Olin heard when he was born. I was hoping that we could attend the concert en famille.
Olin is now a year old, just about to walk, and beginning to verbalize intelligibly. Unfortunately, he was too wound up after dinner out (still a new experience). He couldn’t settle down by concert time, so only Steve and I attended.
The performance was held in The Yoga Sanctuary, a beautiful yoga studio in the center of town. As Steve and I entered, we passed a group of blissed out yoga students--Shantala had played for their class. That was a fair omen of what we too could expect.
The touring group consists of Heather and Benjy Wertheimer, who sing and play acoustic guitar and a variety of Indian instruments, from tablas to the esraj, a fretted, bowed sitar-like affair from northeast India. Benjy recently released a CD that features the latter, Voice of the Esraj, which I’ll soon be reviewing here.
Tuesday night’s performance was a Shantala speciality: Kirtan, a form of devotional chanting in Sanskrit, using mantras and ancient Vedic texts going back thousands of years. In Kirtan, the lead singer, usually Heather, who has an effortlessly clear and natural voice, performs a line of the chant and the audience sings it back.
The first few times through, the music is tranquil and meditative. But the tempo gradually speeds up, often climaxing in an ecstatic tabla solo by Benjy. Then comes a moment of silence and the opening meditative music returns.
When the chant is finished, there’s no applause. We all sit in silence, feeling the energetic presence in the room as we absorb the musical and spiritual journey we’ve been on, noting how we’ve changed. This was my first Kirtan experience, and it was profoundly transformational, a transcendent musical experience.
All of the chants originated in the seventh center. Some came from a level of lower 7 (awe of God, the sublime) that I’ve newly discovered. It lies right at the border between the sixth center (visionary) and the seventh (expanded consciousness). I call it soul invocation. The purpose of such music is to connect us to the soul as a gateway to the divine.
Devotional singing often targets middle 7 (love of God). As the tempo increases, we move to praise, spiritual joy, and finally ecstasy, all characteristics of upper 7.
The new experience for me in attending this concert was the participatory aspect. I suppose that someone looking in from outside could see Kirtan as something like singing spirituals around a campfire, in Sanskrit instead of English. But I was moved in a way that never occurred in summer camp or singing hymns in church.
I can’t remember a time when I’ve sung for two hours straight. I used to be a boy soprano. But my voice once cracked during a solo in front of a large church congregation. I was so embarrassed that I avoided singing after that. By the time I got to college, my voice was so disconnected from the rest of my musical abilities that I never could read the notes of a melody line I was supposed to sing, or sing it on pitch.
On Tuesday night, I found that I could sing effortlessly, and not just on pitch. I was also able to match some of the elaborate ornamentation of Heather’s chanting. I was amazed at how clear and flexible my voice got, and how free of self-consciousness I was. This was a healing in itself.
I also had a number of unusual inner experiences during the evening. The first came at the opening, when we were asked to sing Om three times to the accompaniment of an Indian instrument I don’t know the name of. It was something like a hurdy-gurdy, producing a wonderfully buzzing drone in which the buzzes went through long swells of increasing and diminishing intensity. Swells like this are capable of producing an expanded state of consciousness almost instantly, and maintaining it indefinitely.
As we added our voices to the drone, I felt completely one with that sound for the duration of a breath. Then there was a long slow breath in preparation for the next Om.
I felt as if I was dissolved into a universe of sound, what the Hindus call Nada Brahma (“Sound is Lord”). When I sang, I was completely one with this universe, and the sound was inside of me. When I paused for the breath, the sound was all around me, embracing me.
After three rounds of feeling inside, and embraced by, the universe, and then having the universe inside me as I chanted, I could well understand why the Hindus say that Om is the sound of the Absolute: how All That Is has its origin in this sound.
And that was only the beginning. Not long after the call and response chanting began, I felt a deep memory arising within me. I’d done this before, in another life. It was more than a memory, though. The whole self that I was then wanted to come in and take over, as if to say, “Here, let me show you how to do this.”
It was strange sensation. Tears of recognition came to my eyes. At the same time, my throat began to close up, as I felt pangs of fear over setting my ego aside and letting the past life come through. After a brief struggle, I found a balance in which I could allow myself to be guided by the past life into the heart of Kirtan without losing my identity in the process.
There was another notable moment, during a later chant, in which I began to feel something like liquid bliss pouring into my head at the crown chakra. This chant alternated lines in Sanskrit with others in English, which translated them. As long as we were singing in Sanskrit, the bliss poured in. The moment we switched to English, it stopped. All the power seemed to drain out of the words.
I’ve often heard it said that Sanskrit is a magical language in which the sounds not only stand for the realities they express, but also literally bring them into being. Now I understood what this idea means, from inside. It’s as if English merely points and tells, whereas Sanskrit embodies the fundamental essence of things.
The performance ended with the chant that’s also the final cut on The Love Window, about perfection. I love the zen-koan-like line that translates: “Take the Perfect away from the Perfect, and only the Perfect remains.” That's a great definition for a transcendent musical experience, as this concert was. The music was perfect. I was perfect. When the music was over, the perfection remained.
Afterwards, I had a chance to introduce myself to Benjy and Heather--wonderful, warm, open-hearted people. They knew of my review of the The Love Window and are preparing to release several more CDs of devotional chanting in the next year or so. I can hardly wait to get them, and will certainly review them here.
Here’s a link to Shantala’s touring schedule. I drove a hundred miles to see them. It was well worth it. Look them up if they come within range of your hometown.
They came through the area last October when I was in Germany. I was sorry to have missed them, since The Love Window is one of my favorite new-age CDs. I was glad to discover that they were coming back.
I could have seen them closer to home. But my friends Steve and Beth, who live in the Northampton area, are also Shantala fans. I gave them a copy of The Love Window while Beth was pregnant and it was the first music their child Olin heard when he was born. I was hoping that we could attend the concert en famille.
Olin is now a year old, just about to walk, and beginning to verbalize intelligibly. Unfortunately, he was too wound up after dinner out (still a new experience). He couldn’t settle down by concert time, so only Steve and I attended.
The performance was held in The Yoga Sanctuary, a beautiful yoga studio in the center of town. As Steve and I entered, we passed a group of blissed out yoga students--Shantala had played for their class. That was a fair omen of what we too could expect.
The touring group consists of Heather and Benjy Wertheimer, who sing and play acoustic guitar and a variety of Indian instruments, from tablas to the esraj, a fretted, bowed sitar-like affair from northeast India. Benjy recently released a CD that features the latter, Voice of the Esraj, which I’ll soon be reviewing here.
Tuesday night’s performance was a Shantala speciality: Kirtan, a form of devotional chanting in Sanskrit, using mantras and ancient Vedic texts going back thousands of years. In Kirtan, the lead singer, usually Heather, who has an effortlessly clear and natural voice, performs a line of the chant and the audience sings it back.
The first few times through, the music is tranquil and meditative. But the tempo gradually speeds up, often climaxing in an ecstatic tabla solo by Benjy. Then comes a moment of silence and the opening meditative music returns.
When the chant is finished, there’s no applause. We all sit in silence, feeling the energetic presence in the room as we absorb the musical and spiritual journey we’ve been on, noting how we’ve changed. This was my first Kirtan experience, and it was profoundly transformational, a transcendent musical experience.
All of the chants originated in the seventh center. Some came from a level of lower 7 (awe of God, the sublime) that I’ve newly discovered. It lies right at the border between the sixth center (visionary) and the seventh (expanded consciousness). I call it soul invocation. The purpose of such music is to connect us to the soul as a gateway to the divine.
Devotional singing often targets middle 7 (love of God). As the tempo increases, we move to praise, spiritual joy, and finally ecstasy, all characteristics of upper 7.
The new experience for me in attending this concert was the participatory aspect. I suppose that someone looking in from outside could see Kirtan as something like singing spirituals around a campfire, in Sanskrit instead of English. But I was moved in a way that never occurred in summer camp or singing hymns in church.
I can’t remember a time when I’ve sung for two hours straight. I used to be a boy soprano. But my voice once cracked during a solo in front of a large church congregation. I was so embarrassed that I avoided singing after that. By the time I got to college, my voice was so disconnected from the rest of my musical abilities that I never could read the notes of a melody line I was supposed to sing, or sing it on pitch.
On Tuesday night, I found that I could sing effortlessly, and not just on pitch. I was also able to match some of the elaborate ornamentation of Heather’s chanting. I was amazed at how clear and flexible my voice got, and how free of self-consciousness I was. This was a healing in itself.
I also had a number of unusual inner experiences during the evening. The first came at the opening, when we were asked to sing Om three times to the accompaniment of an Indian instrument I don’t know the name of. It was something like a hurdy-gurdy, producing a wonderfully buzzing drone in which the buzzes went through long swells of increasing and diminishing intensity. Swells like this are capable of producing an expanded state of consciousness almost instantly, and maintaining it indefinitely.
As we added our voices to the drone, I felt completely one with that sound for the duration of a breath. Then there was a long slow breath in preparation for the next Om.
I felt as if I was dissolved into a universe of sound, what the Hindus call Nada Brahma (“Sound is Lord”). When I sang, I was completely one with this universe, and the sound was inside of me. When I paused for the breath, the sound was all around me, embracing me.
After three rounds of feeling inside, and embraced by, the universe, and then having the universe inside me as I chanted, I could well understand why the Hindus say that Om is the sound of the Absolute: how All That Is has its origin in this sound.
And that was only the beginning. Not long after the call and response chanting began, I felt a deep memory arising within me. I’d done this before, in another life. It was more than a memory, though. The whole self that I was then wanted to come in and take over, as if to say, “Here, let me show you how to do this.”
It was strange sensation. Tears of recognition came to my eyes. At the same time, my throat began to close up, as I felt pangs of fear over setting my ego aside and letting the past life come through. After a brief struggle, I found a balance in which I could allow myself to be guided by the past life into the heart of Kirtan without losing my identity in the process.
There was another notable moment, during a later chant, in which I began to feel something like liquid bliss pouring into my head at the crown chakra. This chant alternated lines in Sanskrit with others in English, which translated them. As long as we were singing in Sanskrit, the bliss poured in. The moment we switched to English, it stopped. All the power seemed to drain out of the words.
I’ve often heard it said that Sanskrit is a magical language in which the sounds not only stand for the realities they express, but also literally bring them into being. Now I understood what this idea means, from inside. It’s as if English merely points and tells, whereas Sanskrit embodies the fundamental essence of things.
The performance ended with the chant that’s also the final cut on The Love Window, about perfection. I love the zen-koan-like line that translates: “Take the Perfect away from the Perfect, and only the Perfect remains.” That's a great definition for a transcendent musical experience, as this concert was. The music was perfect. I was perfect. When the music was over, the perfection remained.
Afterwards, I had a chance to introduce myself to Benjy and Heather--wonderful, warm, open-hearted people. They knew of my review of the The Love Window and are preparing to release several more CDs of devotional chanting in the next year or so. I can hardly wait to get them, and will certainly review them here.
Here’s a link to Shantala’s touring schedule. I drove a hundred miles to see them. It was well worth it. Look them up if they come within range of your hometown.
