Interview with Time & Space
Shubalanda - Northampton, MA/April 26, 2003

Time & Space: Namaste Wah! Thanks for doing this interview.

There is something happening with kirtan in this country. People are finding that this is an appropriate sadhana for them to investigate. A community is forming, people are joining this “kirtan” family. I thought it would be interesting to bring the Wallahs together, to review CDs, to let people know what is happening around the country and in their community, and also interview people like you who many are interested in, people who are actually living the historic “kirtan wallah” lifestyle. (The email
newsletter is at shubalananda@aol.com)

Wah!: Each group that was formed in the late 60's and early 70's, has spawned a different kirtan wallah. Osho’s devotees, Shree Maa’s devotees, Maharaji’s devotees, Siddha Yoga devotees, there are singers from each of these groups out on the kirtan circuit. And now it’s no longer about a particular group, it’s about coming together. It’s beyond the groups, and for me it’s a moment I’ve been waiting for.

T&S: What led you to follow an inner path?

Wah!: Nothing was available through my family life. Neither of my parents have a spiritual path. I was born to a college professor and a professional musician. I had a longing, even as a young child, and I didn’t know where to develop it. Having feelings of longing when you are seven, and not being able to explain it puts you on a search. So I went to Africa when I was seventeen, and lived in Africa for some time. I really enjoyed it. I stayed at a Psychic and Healing Shrine (in the hills, north of Accra, Ghana) where they train shamans and healers. They have a gathering each sunrise, where they drum and go into trance. All community problems are presented to the leaders and worked out while they are in an elevated state. There is a great sense of community. Eventually I realized that the African experience was not from this incarnation but a previous one, and wasn’t appropriate for this lifetime. I came back to New York, moved into an ashram and started doing yoga.

T&S: I heard a little bit about where music came from, because one of your parents is a professional musician...

Wah!: Yes my mother is a professional violinist. She plays chamber music, string quartets and such. When I was growing up, instead of getting together for parties, they invited people over to play music. There was this feeling that music was always in the house. Music was a great way to meet people and also a great way to spend the evening.

T&S: You were meeting all kinds of musicians from all different styles...

Wah!: Yes

T&S: Can I infer that maybe there was something missing in parental love which you searched for and it turned out to be God love, was that the connection between spirituality and music?

Wah!: I don’t think you ever find it from your parents. There is a natural generation gap. You choose your parents, and they give you the gifts that they have, but God's love you need to find on your own. You need to find a teacher, put your efforts there. It would be unfair to expect that from parents.

T&S: Can you talk a little bit about Ammachi and your relationship with Her? Do you have any good Amma stories that you could share with us. What is your relationship with Her, and how does She figure into your sense of self?

Wah!: Amma has a gift for picking up orphans, seekers who don't fit anywhere else. She doesn’t build temples, She doesn’t create organizations, She urges people to network. In most towns she urges people to have satsang in their own homes. She’s different from the other teachers I’ve met, in that She’s not trying to create an organization, She’s simply trying to uplift people in what they’re doing.

For me, I had been on another path and was basically finished with it but I didn’t know where to turn, I was living in Santa Fe at the time, and a man was taking machining lessons from my husband. He said he had been asked by his Guru (Amma) to make a CD. He was an electrician, and had no experience in the musical field. He said to Her “O my God, how am I going to do this?” Amma said, “Have devotees do the singing and hire professional musicians to build the tracks.” So my husband and I were standing around the machine shop and this fellow says “Do you know of any professional musicians who have a little bit of a spiritual background?” We all laughed because that was me. I came to Amma under the guise of helping. I came in and helped them out and realized after several years, I was the one benefitting. I’ve been helping them out every year since, doing their annual CD.

T&S: Those early CDs that came out of Ammachi’s Santa Fe satsang were you singing?

Wah!: No, not singing. The singing was done by the devotees. I was doing the tracks behind the voices.

T&S: Those are beautiful tracks Wah!, thanks.

Wah!: The responsibility for engineering and producing the annual CD was eventually given to a man who lives here in LA. He also ended up producing my latest album called Opium, done with Macy Gray’s band and some of Alanis Morrissette’s musicians. The Ammachi English Bhajan CD’s are like listening to “my history.”

T&S: It’s a good history. All those Santa Fe Bhajan tapes were a clear cut above the standard “English Bhajan“ tapes.

Wah!: This is how Amma works. She brought us all together to work in a selfless way. It's unusual. Not everyone has had an experience like this. Most musicians get paid, or get some kind of image enhancement, and the Amma CD was never like that. Everybody worked on it in a very thorough way, and nobody got any credit. There are no musician's credits, no vocal credits, nothing. But still we had to work it out ~ who sang lead, how the arrangement was, and so on. It exposed everybody’s egos.

T&S: A lot of those early Ammachi tapes were actually kirtans which she was incorporating into her satsang as She was building Her own portfolio of bhajans that She and Her musicians had written. Is that how you got more into the Kirtan form, or was there another source?

Wah!: When I started doing Yoga at age 17, we were supposed to do extended meditation, either hour long meditations or two hour long meditations, so I asked if I could make a tape recording of mantras. Instead of singing them monotone, I sang a melodic version and put it on a tape. This allowed me to sit at sunset and put the tape on, and not have to watch the clock or anything. When the tape was over, my meditation was over. So even as a young adult, I was making music with mantras. I think what Amma did was kind of freed things up. It didn’t have to be perfect, the energy could shift, the tempo could shift, the music was dictated by the energy. So for me it grew into a really improvisational style. I was working with a lot of Jazz musicians at the time, and they were very comfortable with that
improvisational approach.

T&S: How is that versus the more orthodox kirtan wallahs who feel that part of the experience of kirtan sadhana is doing it in classical raag and taal and sitting straight on your cushion. Some people might say you need to have that “Indian” feel in order for the kirtan to work.

Wah!: I studied for 5 years with one of Ravi Shankar’s disciples, Roop Verma. I went to Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio and Roop came out there to teach raga to any musicians who wanted to learn. We were asked to learn on our instrument of choice. So I learned on Violin. We had bassoon, french horn, guitar, quite a wide variety. And I also learned on voice and continued to learn ragas for a number of years, even after I graduated.

T&S: So you digested that traditional style.

Wah!: Well, I went into it. I think it’s proper to understand the technique of ragas to see the music as worship. Every note is a deity. You come to the music with a respect that each note you sing evokes an energy. The way you go up and the way you go down is defined, you can’t just do whatever you want, because it will change the energy. So with a respect for that you can move forward into something that is perhaps more improvisational. I think the ragas are really important to study so you can know where the music is coming from, and what the purpose of the music is.

T&S: I hear in your style so many different influences, I hear Jamaican, Indian, African, I even hear Appalachian sounds and some Memphis thrown in. I am wondering how that style evolved. I know you spent time in Africa, you studied Indian music... What did you listen to as you were coming up musically?

Wah!: Jali Musa Jawara (Gambia), and Bhai Chatter Singh (India), and Bob Marley (Jamaica)... yeah, CD KRISHNA has a lot of Bob Marley in it.

T&S: I read somewhere that that Reggae is really an Indian folk style?

Wah!: It’s called Bhajanee style. Bhajan is the folk music of India, and yes it does resemble some of the Jamaican beats. At some point in your life, I think you just let go, and all of the things you have learned and experienced come together. You open your heart, you release it all, you look at it. It’s kind of strange maybe, having it all out there like that, but there it is.

Even OPIUM changed my style. After working with pop musicians from Macy Gray's and Alanis Morrisette's bands, it changed my approach yet again. Incorporating the whole pop style forced another period of growth for me. The new CD we're working on (JAI JAI JAI) sounds like Natalie Merchant doing Sanskrit. Whatever we’re working on, whatever we’re listening to, it just seeps into who we are and it naturally comes out in our singing and expression.

T&S: Great musicians chant in their own language. Duke Ellington said, “Everyone prays in his own language and God understands them all.”

Wah!: Yeah. Great Musicians are Great Musicians, and that is a divine expression, for sure. Listening to a great Qawalli group, you just sit there and appreciate it. It's so amazing! For the kirtan artist, I think it’s a matter of continuing to perfect the style, the musicianship; that will make whatever style comes forward great. I don’t think it matters what the style is, as long as you've got chops.

T&S: You mean the heart, the bhava?

Wah!: No, I mean musical skill. There are people out there leading kirtan that haven’t had the chance to study musically, and they haven’t had a chance to perfect their instruments, whether it’s their voice or whatever
they’re playing, tamboura, or guitar, whatever it is. I think it’s really important to have some musical skill to bring to the table because it gives you that much more capability.

T&S: Do you see the kirtan leader as a servant in a way, developing these skills and techniques in order to facilitate the kirtan experience for others?

Wah!: Look at Ammachi. She sits there and channels divine energy; She uses the music to transmit that out to the audience. The band, the swamis and everybody who is backing her up, they really practice. Who gets to play tablas is really a big deal. They work on their musicianship. There’s a real thirst for knowledge and I think that’s important.

T&S: Some people approach kirtan as a spiritual practice, a form of sadhana. Some sages say that kirtan can take you all the way to one-pointedness and samadhi. Could describe your experience of kirtan as a spiritual practice, and what practices might you suggest to people who want to approach kirtan from that angle? And have you seen how kirtan is practiced in India and
could you tell us a little bit about it.

Wah!: There are three spiritual practices in my life,. One is hatha yoga, one is kirtan, and the other is meditation. I think all three are important. I joke with people “Do yoga until you get injured, then chant until you lose your voice, and then sit quietly and meditate.” I think all three of those practices are important.

Kirtan by itself is an acceptable path, and any path can take you there. But because you store experiences in your body, yoga is necessary to break up the blockages and release them. Chanting and meditation are also good practices. If chanting is your path then you’ll know it is your path. You won’t be able to do anything else.

T&S: Do you recommend a formal approach, or based on inspiration. In other words, do you get up at 6AM and chant Krishna for 45 minutes or do you chant as the desire comes?

Wah!: I think different sadhanas are appropriate for different times in your life. When I was young, living in the ashram, we did 2½ hrs of practices before the sunrise, and then we did some more practices for 2 hours when the sun set. We all worked regular jobs during the day. Most ashrams have a group practice before the sun rises, and they also have some sort of sunset program. The discipline of that will give you an experience. You have to be disciplined about some things in order to gain the full benefit. As you go through your life, there’s going to be different schedules appropriate for different times. After my daughter was born, I continued all of my practices in addition to having a child. I became depleted. I had to give it up and after fifteen years of doing this certain practice in this certain way, giving it up wasn’t easy. But, to release it is sometimes necessary. Buddha was only able to renounce it all after he mastered it. He was one of the greatest yogis of all time, and after he mastered it, then he said, Now I release it. You can’t renounce something that you haven’t had.

Our sadhana now is our touring. Every night it's chanting. If it's 8 PM, we must be chanting. Yoga and meditation happen in the morning whenever we wake up.

T&S: Have you lead kirtan in India, can you tell us what that is like?

Wah!: My experience of singing in India is though the temples. That’s the way it is organized. If I compared it to the temples here, I would compare it to the gospel churches... “You hear the house band over at The Westside Church? That band is HAPPENING!, You've got to go check it out” And you go just to get the energy of the band. The temples in India are just like that. There’s competition for having the best slot, for being the best kirtan group or bhajan group or whatever.

There’s also the more informal situation when you go to someone’s house... They’ll say “O please sing us a bhajan. Won’t you make some offering of music” and you might say, “O no thank you, I really don’t play” but they won’t take no for an answer! When you go to somebody’s house they say “Please offer a song, a blessing” and then, you know, there you are, having to offer some kind of song or share your worship on an informal basis with the people.

T&S: In a sense, God has given you a gift, which is to facilitate this energy through your voice and spirit. Part of the responsibility of having the gift is to share it.

Wah!: Yeah, take someone like Amma. She leads music, and hugs people, and it almost doesn’t matter what She’s doing, it's the transmission of the uplifting energy. She gives to everybody.

T&S: Just sitting in the room you experience that.

Wah!: Well. It’s important to know that you can’t pick who you will help.

T&S: a very wise statement.

Wah!: Did you see Mother Theresa’s interview in Time Magazine (her very last interview)? Her interviewer said, “What do you think about having fed the poor, having fed all these people?" And Mother Theresa said, "I am not feeding the poor." The interviewer was perplexed, "Who are you feeding?" "Jesus" was the answer. To her, the person accepting the food was not “the poor” it is Jesus. If you do it for your Lord, your Beloved, people will get what they are supposed to get.

Yes I have a responsibility to share, but it’s also an opportunity for the people leading to evolve. You can only be a student for so long. As I move into the role of teacher, the rules change. How I interact with people, that also changes. Many things I have experienced have come about only because I am in the role of teacher. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. There’s no reason for me to say it. I sat in a room for 15 years by myself, just listening, getting to a certain place, and now I'm talking with you, talking with new seekers, people who have been on other paths. I learn something from it. The first stage is when you perfect something ~ where the discipline comes in, where knowledge and learning comes in. And then at some point in your life you graduate, and whatever you’ve learned, you have to give back. Everybody is at a different point in their life, but before you die you will get to a place where you have to give back. For me it as uncovered all kinds of aspects of myself that needed to be worked on.

T&S: I know you’re off to Chicago next week, you seem to be traveling the world. How, in the context of that traveling, do you stay centered and present at each kirtan. Is there a practice that you use.

Wah!: I always pray to the deities before we start. It’s the deities that do it, I am just their vehicle. Keeping your attention focused is very important because you are allowing yourself to be utilized for the group. As far as keeping myself together, I use a combination yoga and chanting and meditation when I'm on the road. You know, sometimes my band members are not into yoga, and I have to take that into account too, like find a YMCA and take everybody swimming. That’s sometimes a more appropriate choice for the group than taking them to a local yoga center.

T&S: So you travel with different musicians at different times. You probably have a large group of people you call on.

Wah!: After I worked on the Opium CD, things opened up a little bit more. I had more contacts. We now have a lot of different musicians that travel with us. It's good. It's forced me to get my chops up to a different level. I play electric bass; I communicate with the drummer through my rhythms, melodies, and eye contact. There’s a whole unspoken language that’ s going on. To establish it with new drummers all the time is very good training.

T&S: It’s a wonderful dialog.

Wah!: Yes, but on the days when the dialog is falling apart, and the drummer is just not getting it, you’ve got to have some chops, some musical skills, to be able to lead the rest of the band to the place where you want to go.

T&S: Chuck Berry just turns his volume up and pretty soon all you can hear is him.

Wah!: (Laughter) Well that’s one way to do it.

T&S: I'd like to get some general perceptions from you about what’s happening in this country with kirtan. It seems like so many Westerners have adopted chanting the way they’ve taken to hatha yoga. It’s happening all over the place. How come it’s become so popular and why do people seem to enjoy it so much in the West?

Wah!: I don’t think any of us really know. When I was managing Krishna Das, at first we had like 30-40 people in the audience. By the time I left, about 3 years later, we had 300-400 people.

T&S: That must have been an amazing experience to go through that.

Wah!: Once you reach a certain turning point, it multiplies exponentially. Touring with him was a very unique experience. Because he just stays with the practice, he sticks to a certain intention. The only reason he’s doing it is to have the practice. The fact that there are people practicing with him is always a surprise.

T&S: You mean he’d be doing it anyway

Wah!: I don’t know if he’d be doing it anyway, but it has helped him have a consistent practice. He often said if people didn’t show up, he’d just go home and watch The Sopranos. We anchored into the practice and it really is just about the practice. Not everybody is into it as a lifestyle. Nor should they be, but if they find something out of it they can use, that's good. If all they do is put on CD’s and chant in the car, well, then there'll be a lot less road rage in the world.

The boundaries have dissolved. The chanting scene has dissolved boundaries, not just between the groups that were set up in the ‘70’s (Sivananda, Muktananda, Satchidananda, etc.), but also in what style of yoga you do, all the ways we see ourselves and identify ourselves with what we’re doing. The chanting has the ability to dissolve that and let everybody hang together.

T&S: And that’s good

Wah!: I believe that’s very good.

T&S: Is OPIUM your first CD which is more song oriented?

Wah!: No, I did an album in 1998 called Transformation, which was patterned partly after Jai Uttal’s work, it had some English in it, and some chanting. It was eclectic, a lot of different styles, the chanting was alongside some rock and roll. The album panned. I learned then that the chanting and the pop have to be separated. Each album has to have a unique and uniform intention. OPIUM is all English, no chanting in it at all. We called it OPIUM because it’s the refined tinctured version of the meditative energy. If you took the chanting and you boiled it down and the only thing you had left was a few drops of the energy, then I feel you'd have OPIUM.

T&S: You take the music and build it up with different colors, but the paint is from the same source.

Wah!: Yes. I remember a reviewer saying “OPIUM left me in a trance-like ethereal state..." He got it, but he knew nothing about meditation.

T&S: Did you have a specific message or vision for the CD? Was OPIUM about creating a meditative state in people who don’t meditate?

Wah!: When I got together with the producer, Herb Graham, Jr., we just listened to music, started finding musical styles I liked, talked about lyrics. All my training in meditation was not useful with Herb. The pop musicians were not hip to meditative traditions. They knew the pop world.

T&S: Herb was your voice from that other world.

Wah!: Right, so I would say things and he would go “Big Momma…what are you sayin,” so I had to bring my writing to another level.

T&S: He was asking you to make it more personal.

Wah!: Exactly. I was asked to write about my life from a very personal level. Because my life was meditatively oriented, it still had that perspective. For me, it wasn't “Get out of this house” (Shawn Colvin), it was like "If I tell you to get out of this house, we will lose what we've worked towards." (Lose Everything) Rather than concentrating on the anger, I went to the grief. The anguish that comes when you’re in a really difficult place in relationship, when you have to work it through. It’s kind of talking about those life issues. Maybe from a deeper level, I don’t know.

T&S: What’s happening now, are you working on a new CD?

Wah!: We're working on a new kirtan CD (JAI JAI JAI). While touring, I wrote some new songs, and we all enjoyed playing them. After chanting Durga and some other new tunes, people wanted to buy a CD and take it home. We were just improvising, but one thing leads to another. I felt an obligation to put some of the songs on a CD for people.

T&S: Some of your kirtans are so beautiful, your Hare Krishna on Savasana, really moves me, it’s so beautiful. I would like to learn it with your permission. My last question... In terms of how things are developing for you, my Swami suggests we make 5 year 10 year plans, set goals, etc., do you look at your life in that way, where do you see yourself in 10 years.

Wah!: I don’t. I don’t have any plans. I’m trying to listen. I listen for what I should be doing and in what direction I should be going, I don’t plan, I live. Day to Day…Some days I get a “hit”, I call them hits, it’s as if my Guru came up and hit me on the side of the head. Like with Krishna Das, there was no question. And even at the point where I said “I call it quits, I don’t like him anymore”, I still wasn’t allowed to quit. My life is so guided, that even if I make plans, they get changed. So now I don‘t make plans anymore, I just listen.