![]() ![]() ![]() We never talked about that evening after I returned to my home abroad, but the deep and expansive feeling that came over me that night stayed quietly with me. It was a harmonious uplifting moment with everyone turned toward the altar in one sacred intention. That night, there was a gathering for the whole village where others from the community ranging in age from young kids to elders took turns leading the chants and everyone responded. My aunts, my mother, and cousins seemed to know this practice, and though my sisters and I didn’t know the meaning of the words we were singing, we quickly caught on. The family would gather around and follow his instructions by singing back the line that he chanted in response. It happened very naturally around my grandfather’s harmonium (a wind pumped reed organ). My first experience of kirtan, a form of call-and-response musical chanting, pronounced keer (sounds like peer) – thun (sounds like the first syllable of thun-der), was as a girl of 9 years on a summer vacation in my grandfather’s home in the south-western Indian coastal village of Bekal. The practice of chanting, or kirtan, is an exploration into understanding the answer to that very question.Ĭhanting and repetition of the Divine Name has been my practice and life Path since 1996, but as I trace this path back, I see where there have been signs pointing me in this direction earlier on… ![]()
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