Hey Remember Us?!

We’re that group of Krishna kids that were dancing and chanting with you some time ago and somehow you signed up to our Enewsletter. Yeah, we’ve been slacking on the newsletter but not without a good excuse. While the members of the Mayapuris aren’t flying around the world with Kirtan capes on, we lead semi-regular lives (except for Kish who never takes his cape off). Vrinda and Vish are busy expanding the Mayapuris troupe: they’re expecting a baby in August.  Bali is in pharmacy school getting ready to deal drugs and his wife Dhanya just graduated in psychology so she can provide much needed counseling to the rest of the group. Meanwhile of course Kish continues to be Kirtan Super-Man.

In between these alter-ego lives, Kirtan continues to be the eternal thread that holds us together. We just returned from touring the North-East. We had a Kirtan Rave Party at Rutgers University in New Jersey with 700 wild dancing students and faculty (glow-sticks and all) and then we took part in the Spring Ecstatic Chant Weekend at OMEGA in upstate New York. In between, we played at Yogamaya in New York City. It’s so much fun to travel with the crew including Gaura Vani and play kirtan together every evening. We’re very grateful to all the kind yoga studio owners, festival coordinators, and hosts who take such good care of us while we’re on the road.

Now, we have some exciting projects coming up that we’d love to share with you:

- A Recording Studio: we are building our own recording studio in our hometown of Alachua, Florida. The studio is called “The Hanuman House” and is practically completed. Our vision is to have a facility where we can streamline our projects which include: albums, music videos, recording collaborations, festival organization, and empowering conscious youth. We need your support for this project, especially since we are now collecting recording equipment. We need mixers, microphones, monitor speakers, cables, mic stands, and a variety of recording paraphernalia.  If you have any equipment you’d like to donate or would like to give a monetary donation for this project, please contact Vish or Kish. In return, we will send you presents!

-Retreats: we love hanging out with fellow bhaktas and kirtan enthusiasts, so we’ve organized a few retreats that are coming up this year:

Himalayan Adventure, India – Going to the Source of Two Holy Rivers. Vish is facilitating a group tour to India, June 20-July 2. Early Bird Special $2500 extended til June 1st. Don’t miss this escapade to the sacred and picturesque mountains! Find Out More or Sign Up!

Thanksgiving Kirtan Retreat – Thanksgiving is a beautiful time in Florida. We are proud to be hosting a 4 day retreat in our hometown, Alachua FL. We’ll show you around to our favorite spots, go swimming in the beautiful crystal clear fresh water springs, eat healthy vegetarian food and do yoga and pranayama. Each member of the Mayapuris will offer unique workshops on The Art of Kirtan and Bhakti Yoga. The culmination of the retreat will be a deep immersion into kirtan, taking part in the annual Festival of the Holy Name. Listen to kirtans from the past festivals. Sign Up

Kirtan Camp with Jai Uttal and Vish: finally, at the end of the year, join Vish and Vrinda (and their soon-to-be-born-newborn baby) in Costa Rica for Jai Uttal’s Yoga and Kirtan Camp at the beautiful Blue Sprit Retreat Center. Jai and Vish will lead us in the ancient practice of Kirtan, or chanting, the heart and soul of devotional yoga. Together they will guide us in a heart- opening adventure through breath, movement and sacred sound, blending these traditions in a deep and playful way.  Find Out More

For more updates visit: www.mayapuris.com

The Mayapuris Official Music Video

MRIDANGA MUSIC VIDEO TO PREMIERE ON YOGAJOURNAL.COM MAY 19TH

Cross-over world music sensation and performance art troupe, The Mayapuris are to release a music video to showcase the title track of their hit album Mridanga (2010) which reached #7 on the iTunes world music chart the first week of its release. The video imbibes the dual nature that makes the Mayapuris unique: spunky and youthful with a new spin on the centuries-old chant culture of ancient India, kirtan. Their instrument of choice: the mridanga drum, a hand instrument invented over five hundred years ago as a portable and powerful alternative to the inner sanctum temple drums .

“Why the obsession with the mridanga?” asks Krishna Kishor (vocalist, flutist, drummer), “It was invented by Chaitanya, who revolutionized kirtan by bringing it out from the temples and into the streets for everyone to take part in. Through him we want to keep the revolution going. So…got to keep drumming.” In the video The Mayapuris are joined by The Temple Dancers consisting of Visvambhar’s wife Vrinda and his sister Ganga both of whom studied the ancient art of Bharatnatyam in South India.

The band’s ties to mridanga and kirtan run deep. All three of them attended boarding school in India where they learned the fundamentals of mantra music. Naming their group after the holy village of Mayapur, where the kirtan movement started, the Mayapuris returned home to Florida before signing to Mantralogy, a division of Equal Vision Records, in 2009. The title track of their first release, “Mridanga,” is the rhythmic instrumental composition that, when performed live, is a dance as well as a drum ensemble. It was an aspect that the band wanted reflected in their video.“We wanted it to have the energy and impact of our live performances,” says Kishor, “But with a twist.”

Gaura Vani and Rasa Acharya, who are both longtime friends of the band members and co-owners of their record label, Mantralogy, had ties to the movie industry and were eager to bring a fresh visual representation of the artform to the Mantra Music scene.“The Mayapuris are vibrant and fun people,” says Acharya who, alongside Vani, produced and directed the video, “It would be hard to not capture their spirit on camera.”

Visvambhar, lead-vocalist and drummer says, “I believe in kirtan. I believe people naturally want to give something–to sing and partake in mantra chanting. I see the Mantra Music scene growing every day in a big way. The video will add a new dimension to all of it as we begin to recognize chant culture as something much bigger than music.”

The video will premiere May 19th on YogaJournal.com and will later be viewable on YouTube, Facebook, Mayapuris.com and Mantralogy.com.

I was sitting in our big white van cruising through the streets of LA, when Gaura, who was driving and eating and talking on the phone (always multitasking!), threw the question to us over his shoulder, “hey guys, how would you like going to Australia?” Need I make our unanimous answer explicit?!

When Australia sent out initial feelers to Gaura, they were thinking to bring him and maybe one more person, that’s it. Ultimately there was six of us! Due to a combination of Gaura’s love for all of us and his insistence that we come, and the Aussie organizers giving in to Gaura’s “demand”.

And so it happened, that six of us stepped out of the airport coming to Australia for the first time. It didn’t take Vish and Gaura long to figure out that now we’d done kirtan on every continent (save for Antartica).
It’s an amazing thing when total strangers met for the first time and immediately feel bonded. This was the case with the Australian crew that brought us over, took care of us, and traveled with us through the country. I didn’t feel that I was among strangers at all. Maybe our goal, or interest, in kirtan simply took over and connected us on a higher level.
Before we arrived Sitapati, the main organizer, sent us a forty-page playbook, indicating every show, every meal, basically every detail. We were quite blown away by such detailed pre-planning. The person behind such meticulous planning had to be a seasoned older gentleman. When Sitapati met us at the airport, I think everyone of us asked him a version of the question, “Who are you?” Because we simply didn’t expect the force behind such a major tour to be our age.

And this turned out to be one of the many sweet things about the Australia tour. The guys who brought us out there were not rich people dipping into large bank-accounts. They hustled to get us over there, called everyone they knew with the idea, collecting funds as one person here and there would donate. There was a real grassroots feel to it.

We did around ten shows and one 24-hour kirtan during the fourteen days we were there. But because the organization was seamless and our reception so enthusiastic, we did not feel drained or tired but enthused and inspired. So many Aussies love kirtan! I was delighted by Janardan in Brisbane, Tina in Sydney, Krsnagraja in Melbourne, to mention a few. Notably, this enthusiasm was not limited to experienced kirtan-singers like the above, but to those completely new to it.

“Is there anything bad about Australia?” I kept asking our hosts as we drove through the beautiful country side from Brisbane to Sydney, then Sydney to Melbourne.

I was particularly happy when Sitapati, who had never seen The Mayapuris and As Kindred Spirits play together, commented that “We couldn’t imagine you without each other. You complement each other so well. ” His observation highlighted something I’d been reflecting on for a while. Gaura and As Kindred Spirits are melodic, sweet as honey, soulful, while we are passionate and fierce, with an edge that would border on aggressive without the soothing vibe of our kindred spirits. We feel so blessed to be singing, dancing, and serving together.

And being Down-Under only made it more dreamy and surreal. Did we dance with Kangaroos? No, didn’t even see one (though Gaura did chase a wallaby up a hill with his iPhone for a close-up) But everyone we did kirtan with put a kangaroo’s jump to shame, as they reached their arms high in the sky, jumping high, spirits soaring! Singing the holy names!

What more can I describe than this? Millions of opulences are of no use to me, my only wish is to have these pastimes constantly appear in my mind.

-Vrinda

Gaura Vani & As Kindred Spirits and the Mayapuris are currently touring all around Australia. Our hosts have provided free live streaming audio from all the events. To listen, sign in at WorldSankirtan.net.

The Mridunga – Our Favorite Drum

If there wasn’t the Mrdunga, there would be no such thing as the Mayapuris. We feel that it’s the best drum in the whole universe, especially for kirtan. That is our happy bias. Today we play other instruments, like tabla, flute, harmonium, etc, but the mridunga was the first instrument each of us, the Mayapuris, learnt to play. Actually, my mother played mridunga often when she was pregnant with me, so I began to learn the rhythms from within the womb. The first mridunga I played was a nicely decorated Quaker Oatmeal box, with a strap attached to it. Kish practiced on a wooden block for years, because his little arms couldn’t reach both sides of the mridunga. In fact, Kish’s dad remembers him playing on one side, ti ti ti, then crawling to the other side, ta ta ta.

There is a mridunga pranam mantra that I learnt from my teacher, Bablu Mashai, whom I studied under from the age of ten. We would chant thismantra before each class to offer respects. The mantra begins by offering respects to Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the founder of kirtan, who also invented the mridunga five-hundred years ago. Earlier they played big heavy wooden drums. Instead, the mridunga makers used the clay from the nearby banks of the Ganga to create a light-weight drum. “Mrid” means clay and “anga” is body, so literally clay-body. It’s the primary instrument in Gaudiya Vaishnava kirtan, the kirtan of Western India, the style that our music is rooted in. Bhaktivinode Thakur, a scholar and poet from the Gaudiya tradition, says, “When I hear the sounds of the mridunga, all my worries, all my problems and sorrows fly away like crows at the sound of thunder, and my heart dances in ecstasy.”

Another interesting point of the mridunga is the range from the small, high side to the larger, low side. There is a symbolism inherent here as well; the sweet sound of the high side represents the feminine energy, or Radhe, and the low, bass side is the masculine energy, Shyam. Practically speaking, it’s a very dynamic drum. It can be played very softly and sweetly with lots of intricacies, and also very loudly with full vigor and passion. You can sit with it, dance with it, walk, and twirl with it. It’s the heart-beat of the kirtan.

- Vishvambhar

The kirtan movement was inaugurated in Mayapur, which lies along the banks of the Ganga in West Bengal, India. This special place is very close to our heart. My brother Bali and I studied and lived in the ashram there, Vish lived there with his family, and Vrinda was four the first time her parents brought her all the way from Sweden. Even now when we go to Mayapur, there is a feeling of having gone back in time, five-hundred years ago, to the time when Caitanya Mahaprabhu danced in kirtan through the villages. The story of how kirtan started is one we relate to quite a bit. Initially, the kirtan movement started surreptitiously. The doors were open only to Caitanya’s intimate associates who gathered together blissfully singing the night through. They dove deep into the essence of the holy names. This was the secret “nocturnal school of kirtan.” Eventually, Caitanya, full of compassion for the lost souls in the world, brought kirtan out into the streets of Mayapur and eventually all of India. Everyone was encouraged to join in this kirtan, which caused quite a revolution in the caste-divided India.

We love the history of kirtan because we’ve been singing at home and in our temples for many years before the idea of becoming kirtan-musicians even crossed our minds. Unknowingly, we’ve spent all our life doing kirtan, preparing in a sense to do what Mahaprabhu did, go out into the world and share this singing, this dancing, this happiness!

We were also quite inspired early on by the Manipuri drummers from Manipur, who have a well-developed style of dancing and seemingly flying with their drums. Once we had our mridunga-techniques down, we spontaneously began dancing with our drums, and the name “Mayapuris” manifested from this joint love of the mridunga-dance and the place Mayapur.

-Kishor

The story behind our first official photoshoot is actually pretty funny. To see the entire picture story click on the link below. (Read along each photo so you get the full picture=)

http://www.facebook.com/mayapuris?v=photos&ref=profile#/album.php?aid=106470&id=134692904547

Profile Page: facebook.com/mayapuris

Fan Page: facebook.com/The Mayapuris