Prabhupada’s Transcendental Musicality

In the beginning, in the summer of 1966 at 26 Second Avenue, Swamiji played the one-headed bongo drum in leading the kirtana.  We had about three pairs of karatalas, and they were played by the boys.  One-two-three, one-two-three.  Later a friend donated a big size khol (an Indian wooden drum with straps and pegs, different than the clay mrdanga).  Swamiji began playing that, and you can hear it on the Happening record album kirtana that was produced in December of 1966.

Occasionally he would play a brass gong with a wooden peg, sometimes the khol, but mostly karatalas.  He was a very artistic karatala player.  He would play the fast two beats of the three-beat rhythm by holding the cloths very tightly, but on the third beat he would relax the cloths and slide a kind of “splash” sound almost akin to what a jazz drummer does with his cymbal.  It would produce a lively, melodious ring, and then he would tighten the cloths again for the first two beats of the rhythm.  He played variations of this method, sometimes playing almost four beats or clashing the cymbals in a clopping way on the first two beats.

The devotees loved to hear him play and to sing along in kirtana with him.  Such a simple time-keeping musical instrument, and yet he played it like a maestro.  Now almost anyone with a sense of rhythm can passably play the karatalas and some kirtaneers play them even more complicated than Prabhupada did, but there was not— and will not be–anyone who played them as sweetly and rhythmically as he did.  He often participated with the karatalas while his disciples lead the kirtana in the later years.  Yet in the beginning at 26 Second Avenue, Prabhupada led all the kirtanas.  It was unthinkable that a kirtana could take place without him leading.  It was like a holy rite that only he could perform.  He did it with great concentration and loudly.  He would keep the same tune and tempo, only gradually speeding up after a half-hour.  He did the same thing two or three hours continually when he chanted on Sundays at Tompkins Square Park.