Dave Stringer wants to help you get your om on

here aren’t enough experiences in modern life of mass ecstasy.” That’s what Dave Stringer has to say about our collective state of mind. But he’s not just talking; he’s doing something to inspire ecstasy in your town. Stringer is a Kirtan singer based in Los Angeles who initially trained as a visual artist, filmmaker and jazz musician. His life turned to devotional chanting in 1990 when he traveled to India to work on a film at a Siddha Yoga ashram. He ended up living at the ashram for a couple of years and falling in love with Kirtan; call-and-response chanting created in 15th century India and now having something of a renaissance in the West. His CDs are played in yoga studios internationally and his latest release is Divas and Devas. Stringer’s chanting appears in numerous films, including Matrix Revolutions, and he volunteers teaching meditation and chanting in California prisons. Since 2000 he has toured widely across the U.S. and Europe and his current tour includes a premier visit to Santa Cruz. GT recently spoke with Stringer about the ecstasy of chanting.  

You’ve written, “India blasted me into billions of spinning particles and then slowly reshaped me, a process that was somehow simultaneously both excruciating and ecstatic.”  

Ashrams are places where people come together with spiritual intention but the actual experience is something closer to a combination of a minimum security correctional institution, a mental institution and some kind of strange encounter group. All these people come with the best of purposes, but of course everyone arrives with all of their stuff. You have to learn how to deal with them in a spiritual context. Meaning, can you hear the truth out of the mouth of any fool?  

Often, organized religions offer sets of beliefs. Tell me about moving beyond beliefs and what your music has to do with that.

I’ve always found that belief was an impediment to the process of finding something authentically spiritual. Yoga itself, and this music that arises out of yoga, is really a method of inquiry. It keeps asking, “Is that so?” What I’m interested in is entering a place of pure experience, unmediated by cultural concepts. It’s said that; When we talk about our beliefs we end up arguing—When we sing together, we agree.

I’d like to hear about your Kirtan EEG project.

In Santa Cruz I will outfit some people with wireless EEG transmitters. Essentially we’re building them into hats and transmitting people’s brainwaves to a computer.  We want to use the resulting signal to drive visual media and some of the sound so that the chant becomes a kind of giant biofeedback device. Part of the reason I’m doing this is to know if when we chant, does it have to be a mantra like om namah shivaya? Could we chant the word “ocean” and have the same effect?  

Tell me about the movement that began Indian Kirtan chanting.

The Bhakti movement in the 15th century was a kind of revolution. The Bhaktis said, “You don’t need a priesthood. You don’t need any special set of beliefs.” They went around teaching people these simple mantras, which got put to simple melodies. The idea that anybody could be in direct contact with the divine upended the social order.  It’s still a revolutionary idea. A country full of people that are singing and dancing in ecstasy is quite different than a country of people that are dedicated to following rules and social structures.

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Dave Stringer in Santa Cruz this Sat. Night !

Dave Stringer will be leading a chanting Kirtan concert this Saturday night the 26th at Pacific Cultural Center at 7:30pm. Tickets are only $15 advance at Gateways/$18 at the door. Come on by and sing your way to bliss with Dave and an "en-chanting" Santa Cruz crowd !

Brad Anwar Silling , July 24, 2008

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