“Kirtan is the chanting of sacred mantras.
It’s like prayer. It’s like rock and roll.
You can listen. You can sing. You can dance.

At its heart, kirtan is a form of worship--
celebratory, devotional, ecstatic.
At one level, it is the chanting of Hindu names for God.
At another level, it is the sounding of mantras 
that activate the highest energies within us--
love, courage, connection, faith, spiritual vision.

Much of kirtan is call-and-response:
The lead singer chants a phrase,
and the participants sing the reply.
It is a sharing between performers and participants
that allows pleasure and joy to guide us to
beauty and inner stillness.
The point is not musical perfection,
it is immersion in a community of song.

Kirtan can be a refuge in times of trouble.
In the Ramayana, it is said,
“When all is in ruins, chant Ram.”
I take that to mean that when we are broken,
the vibrations of these chants can return us
to the rhythms of love.”
--Kenneth Robinson