Dave Stringer

The Los Angeles Times has declared the experience of chanting with Dave Stringer to be  “a departure from ancient kirtan. Stringer’s performance shaped the experience into a far more compelling musical encounter.” Kirtan (pronounced keer-tahn) originated in India, and is currently experiencing a worldwide renaissance as a participatory live music experience. Stringer has been widely profiled as one of the most innovative artists of the new American kirtan movement in publications as diverse as Time, Billboard, Yoga Journal and In Style.
 
Stringer’s sound marries the transcendent mysticism of traditional Indian instruments with the exuberant, groove-oriented sensibility of American gospel, and he is regarded as one of the most gifted singers in the genre. Stringer, who is also an accomplished composer and multi-instrumentalist, has a special ability to bring people together and inspire them to sing. His work intends to create a modern and participatory theatrical experience out of the ancient traditions of kirtan and yoga, open to a multiplicity of interpretations, and accessible to all.
 
Initially trained as a visual artist, filmmaker and jazz musician, Stringer had his formative experiences with chanting when film editing work brought him to the Siddha Yoga ashram in Ganeshpuri, India in 1990. A subsequent period of residence at the ashram laid the foundation for his continuing study of the ideas, practices and music of yoga.
 
Since 2000, Stringer and a diverse ensemble of accompanying musicians have toured North America and Europe tirelessly, developing new venues for music, and expanding the audience for kirtan. He has introduced chanting for the first time to many seemingly unlikely cities, and through his consistent touring, has been instrumental in the development of a number of thriving local kirtan communities. He has also served as a volunteer teaching meditation and chanting to inmates at a number of correctional facilities in the United States.
 
An articulate and engaging public speaker, he probes the dilemmas of the spirit with a wry and unorthodox sense of humor. Stringer frequently works in tandem with internationally celebrated yoga teachers, creating music for workshops led by John Friend, Shiva Rea, and Gurmukh, among others. Of particular note has been his friendship and collaboration with yoga teacher Saul David Raye, with whom he has created a number of recordings.
 
Based in Los Angeles, Stringer has produced varied recordings with other celebrated World musicians including Azam Ali, Vas, Axiom of Choice, Rasa, Suzanne Teng, Shaman’s Dream and the Open Door Orchestra. Chant artists Donna Delory, Suzanne Sterling, and Girish went on to launch their own careers in the genre after spending time in Stringer’s performing and recording ensembles. His voice also appears on numerous soundtracks, including the blockbuster film Matrix Revolutions and the video game Myst. The CDs he has produced under his own name, “Brink”, “Japa”, “Mala” and “Divas & Devas”, are heard in yoga studios throughout the world.

Kirtan 

Kirtan is a folk musical form that arose from the devotional Bhakti yoga movement of 15th century India. The primary musical feature of kirtan is the use of call and response, a figure that also deeply informs Western bluegrass, gospel music and jazz. The form is simple: a lead group calls out the melodies and the mantras. The crowd responds, clapping and dancing as the rhythms build and accelerate.

The intention of Kirtan is consciousness-transformative, directing the singers to vanish into the song as drops merge into the ocean. Sanskrit is the mother tongue of many modern languages, and a kind of periodic table of elemental sound meaning. The mantras are primarily recitations of names given to the divine. But perhaps the true understanding of the mantras can be found in the sense of unity, well-being and timelessness that they elicit. The mantras quiet the mind, and the music frees the heart. Ecstasy is both the process and the product.

The Bhaktis wrote ecstatic love poems, and went around singing all the time. They saw the expression and form of the divine in every direction they looked. Their message was simple: Cultivate joy. See the divine in one another. They taught Sanskrit mantras to common people using simple melodies, accompanied by handclaps and finger cymbals and drums. The Bhaktis had no use for orthodoxy. They saw the expression and form of the divine in every direction they looked. From this perspective, even music that cannot be characterized as traditional can still be expressive of the Bhaktis' original intention.

Mantras are intended as a tool with which the spirit can release itself from the prison of attachments that the mind creates. It's not unfair to say that the chanting of mantras is intended to be a completely mindless activity, since the intention of chanting is to create an ecstatic state of awareness that is beyond mind. Yoga doesn't ask us to believe, it asks us to practice, examining our experience until we can witness the truth in the book of our own heart. No one else can read it for us, or tell us what it means. Ultimately, whether mantras are ancient wisdom or psychological metaphor or complete nonsense depends on the intention and experience of the participant.

Artist Statement

"India blasted me into billions of spinning particles and then slowly reshaped me, a process that was somehow simultaneously both excruciating and ecstatic. I can't begin to claim complete knowledge about all of the layers of history and philosophy and theology represented by the mantras I learned to chant while I was there, but I can attest to their power. I'm not a Sanskrit scholar and not always a particularly focused practitioner, but I am deeply committed to the process of inquiry that the practice of yoga suggests.

I do know that my sustained encounter with mantra chanting has acquainted me with a state of expansive stillness and conscious repose, and that this encounter has irrevocably shifted the course of my art. I once read that Thomas Jefferson took a copy of the Bible and cut out the parts that most resonated with him, then reassembled his selections into a work that reflected his own way of saying his prayers. I suppose it is fair to say that as an artist, I am engaged in something of a similar process with yoga. I don't know exactly where the journey I am making ends. I'm just trying to report honestly from where I am.

One of the things that interests me most about kirtan is how the responsory aspects of it blur the distinction between performer and audience. I was trained as a visual artist and as a jazz musician, so the lens that I view kirtan through is informed by the perspectives and concerns of the art world. I didn't start out as a devotee or a bhakti, I became involved with chanting when I was hired to go to India to make some films for an ashram. I was an outsider trying to comprehend what it was that I found so compelling about kirtan, and this outsider perspective has continued to inform and enable the ways that I introduce chanting to the uninitiated.

Kirtan is rooted in a very old and profoundly joyful Eastern tradition. But I don't know that it is possible for me to be traditional. I'm a Westerner, and I can't help but bring my own cultural biases with me. My intention, however, is be authentic, in the sense that what I am doing originates in my heart. Yoga points toward awareness of the essential oneness of things, so from this perspective, to align the individual-dissolving Eastern tradition of kirtan with the individual-expressing Western traditions of gospel and jazz and rock music is no contradiction, as they both arise from the same impulse toward expressing what is ecstatic and liberating and transcendent. "