Kirtan
music—it’s not just for yoga anymore. Many new listeners still come through the
doorway of Bhakti yoga, but the audience for the call-and-response chanting has
grown into something bigger and more broadly based. Both listeners and
musicians explain what the music means to them in Georgia Wyss’s Mantra: Sounds into Silence (trailer here), co-directed
by Wari Om, which has several upcoming screenings at the Rubin Museum of Art,
featuring special live kirtan performances.
For
most avid listeners, kirtan music helps take them out of themselves and
immerses them in a collective music-making experience. For the most part, they
identify with the Vedic and Sikh traditions, but Buddhists are also
represented. In fact, the most intriguing sequences feature the Venerable Lama
Gyurme, the preeminent Tibetan Buddhist teacher in France, as he is accompanied
by Jean-Philippe Rykiel, a French jazz musician who has lately adapted himself
to world music contexts.
Frankly,
we would have preferred to see more forms of experimental cross-pollenated
kirtan, such as the hip-hop fusions of MC Yogi and the C.C. White’s aptly named
Soulkirtan conception, which is indeed powerfully soulful. The music just seems
more alive when it evolves and travels, at least according to our jazz ethos.
Nevertheless,
the music is often striking and the scenery is quite picturesque. Yet, one of
the most compelling performances is Jai Uttal’s San Quentin concert arranged by
the prison’s Buddhist priest, Susan Shannon. Clearly, the music affects the
audience deeply, which is all to the good, considering if there is a list of
places that could use a greater sense of transcendent peace, San Quentin would
surely rank towards the top. You also have to give Uttal (who has worked with
Don Cherry and Bill Laswell) credit for tearing up his set, like he was playing
to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.
We
would have enjoyed hearing a little more about the musicians’ influences and creative
processes, but we go in for that kind of musical inside-baseball stuff. Regardless,
the film is lovely to look at and listen to, while always making an effort to be
accessible to a wide spectrum of viewers. Recommended for world music listeners
and students of Eastern religion, Mantra:
Sounds into Silence screens at the Rubin Museum on 3/16, 3/17, 3/18, 3/21,
3/22, twice on 3/24, and twice on 3/25.
