Music

The Best of Mahatma Das

All the recordings I did up to 2000 were released on cassette. When the cassettes were sold out, I didn’t reproduce them. When we came into the digital age, I contemplated putting everything on CD. Rather than incur the time and expense of doing this, and considering that these recordings had already been widely distributed, my engineer Krsna Caitanya suggested I do a Best Of Mahatma Das recording by making a compilation of all my music and putting it on one CD.

I took two or three of my favorites off each cassette recording and then had them digitally re-mastered. In order to fit the largest number of songs on the CD, some of tracks are only partial cuts of the song.

1)    Mangala Carana (from Heart and Soul)
2)    Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya (from Our Only Shelter)
3)    Bhagavad-gita (from Stay High Forever)
4)    Brahma-Samhita (from The Brahma Samhita)
5)    Siksastakam (from Heart and Soul)
6)    Prayers of King Kulaksekhara (from Our Only Shelter)
7)    Live Kirtana (from Stay High Forever)
8)    Live Kirtana (from Stay High Forever)
9)    Maha mantra (from Heart and Soul)
10)  Maha mantra (from Your Life Will Be Sublime)
11)  Krishnafest Kirtan (from Higher Dimensions)
12)  Maha mantra (from Our Only Shelter)
13)  Maha mantra (from Your Life Will Be Sublime)
14)  Maha mantra (from Heart and Soul)

Brahma Samhita and Isopanisad  (Mahatma Das)

1) Brahma Samhita Sanskrit
2) Brahma Samhita English
3) Isopanisad Sanskrit
4) Isopanisad English


The Brahma Samhita was recited by Lord Brahma at the beginning of creation in his mature stage of realization. It describes his vision of Krsna and the spiritual world.

You can find these prayers at:

http://www.dharmakshetra.com/sages/relaization%20of%20brahma.htm

I am chanting verses 29 through 59. I keep the original Sanskrit meter and add chords and instrumentation. It is such a powerful and mystical prayer that when I perform this live I notice how people are especially enchanted by it. I think they sense that it is not of this world (or maybe that it is taking me out of this world as I chant it).

This production actually came about by accident in 1989. In my home I would sometimes chant the Brahma Samhita while playing chords on the harmonium. Since I found it so enchanting to use these chords, while working on another project, Our Only Shelter, I took a break and recorded this chord progression for fun while my engineer was out.

By the time he returned I had the basic tracks recorded. Working on Our Only Shelter was tedious and time consuming, and since we both really liked what I had just done with the Brahma Samhita, we thought we would work on it for awhile as a diversion. (At that point, we had no intention of making it into a full project). Miraculously, we finished the music in a few hours. We loved it so much that we decided right there that I should sing the verses and release this as a separate production.

The next week I recorded the vocals, and since Dravida was living in San Diego at that time, he was kind of enough to read the translations.

I have never worked on a recording project that happened so effortlessly. And this is the funny part: it became my most popular recording.

Since it takes about forty minutes to recite the Sanskrit and English, it left room for another track. As a new devotee, we would often chant the Isopanisad, so I thought it would be nice to record all the verses to the melody we used to use. My idea was that by making the music attractive, devotees could repeatedly listen to it, and by doing so they would automatically memorize the verses.

As I said, the interesting thing about this production is that it became the most popular recording I ever made. I continually meet devotees who tell me how much they like the Brahma Samhita and how they always listen to it, play it for their Deities, etc. The funny thing is that its popularity so overshadowed my other music that many devotees don’t even realize I have five other recordings.

I travel a lot and it’s common for devotees to ask, “Are you the Mahatma Das who sings the Brahma Samhita” (as if I were some rock star or something)? It’s funny how a recording we did to divert ourselves from our work on Our Only Shelter became so popular.

Krishna Caitanya, the engineer (Bhakta Chris at the time), played an integral role in arranging and mixing the music.

CHAITANYA CHANDRA - "I discovered many of these 400 year old songs in India & Bangladesh and have now introduced them to the West. The album was my offering for the 500th anniversary of the appearance of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal, India, in 1486. Sri Chaitanya was the incarnation that spread the chanting of Krishna kirtan all over India. This is a lovely album because the songs have georgeous raga melodies. Some of the songs end with the chanting of Krishna kirtan.I am including 2 bonus tracks for this CD, including a rare melody sung by His Holiness Vishnujana Swami. Also included is a raga melody I recorded in Estonia in 2002. May the listeners be blessed by the pure spiritual emotions evoked in these songs!"

HARI-NAM-ANANDA - Due to the success of Vaiyasaki Das’s previous live album, Kirtan Rasa, many people requested another live album. This collection of kirtans is a digital recording of a live Sunday evening kirtan at London’s Bhaktivedanta Manor on the appearance day of Lord Nrsimhadeva in 1998. The style of kirtan on this CD originates in the Gujarat province of West India. The mood of this style of kirtan, known as Dhoon is particularly joyous and upbeat. You can experience the mood of 500 devotees chanting with an ecstatic feeling that transports the listener to a higher realm of consciousness.Hari-Nam-Ananda reaches the divine realms through satsang of call-and-response kirtan. Vaiyasaki Das takes you in a rhythmic blissful explosion of the Names of God with the best Gujarati musicians. It’s amazing!

After the release of Our Only Shelter in 1989, I had been doing a lot of live kirtan with a synthesizer and drum machine and had come up with new material. So I was anxious to record another CD. I had the opportunity to connect with Krsna Caitanya Prabhu as both of us were on the East Coast (the producer of Our Only Shelter) and asked if he would help me produce this CD. He was the engineer behind Our Only Shelter and I didn’t feel I could produce anything without him.

With his help, and the help of Bhakta Mike, one of the Krsnafest musicians, we squeezed ten days from our schedules to put this CD together. My intention was to make something both for devotees and the New Age market, as New Age music was popular at that time (and still is). So the music is especially mellow and relaxing.

We took the music we had generated and brought it to a local studio where I sang the vocals. This was the first CD I recorded without any background singers, not because I wanted to but because I didn’t have the time to arrange for singers (it takes time to find good devotee singers, get them in the studio and record them).

While working on the project, the engineer would tell us, “‘He Govinda” keeps going through my head (that’s a line I added to Govinda Jaya Jaya).” If after listening to Heart and Soul for a few days, “He Govinda” continually goes through your head, I will consider this project a success.

Mahatma Das, Titiksava Karunika, Bhakta Mike  and the Krishnafest Band

Orginial westernized maha upbeat maha mantra melodies performed live by the Krishnafest Band and chanted by Mahatma Das and Titiksava Karunika.  Produced in 1992.

I joined Krsnafest in 1992 when daily devotees were chanting on the mall in Washington, DC. Each day hundreds and hundreds of high school kids would chant and dance with the devotees. How did this happen? We were doing upbeat kirtan with keyboards, guitars and drums and this naturally attracted them. Plus, the Krsnafest brahmacaris were expert at encouraging people to chant and dance. The kids loved the kirtans and would often say it was the most amazing thing they had ever done. Naturally they would ask if we had recordings of what we were playing. So we took a day and made a live recording of the main kirtans we were playing at the mall that season.

Titiksava Karunika spent a few weeks with Krsnafest that year so we were fortunate to have him sing and play guitar on this recording. He also helped with the recording along with Tapasya. The production was then given to Bhakta Mike (who also leads one kirtana) who took care of the mastering and the production of the cassettes.

Gunagrahi Maharaja is on drums, Dhirodatta  on bass, Dwija Mani and Titkasava Karunika on guitar, Bhakta Mike, Sankarsana, and myself play keyboards. All these devotees chant as well as Badarayana and Sacinandana.

The production fully imbibes the spirit of Krsnafest live in Washington, DC, a program that attracted thousands of young people to Krsna consciousness with its lively kirtans and dynamic presentation of Krsna consciousness.

KIRTAN RASA - During my European tour of 1995, I was fortunate to visit many diverse centers where Kirtan was popular. I was especially eager to chant with the devotees in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as I had heard that they were extremely enthusiastic. These Kirtans were recorded live at a Sunday Love Feast program in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The musicians were local devotees and the "choir" chanting in response was comprised mainly of the guests
attending the center that Sunday. There was no rehearsal beforehand, and I was unaware that I was being recorded! So I was impressed to hear how attentively and accurately the crowd sang along as if we had been together for years. The recording was so expertly done that the ecstatic mood of that Sunday afternoon has been completely captured. I am sure the listener will also experience the blissful mood we all shared that day! 

Produced and arranged by Vaiyasaki Das
Copyright 1996 Per Sinclair. All rights reserved.
Kirtan Rasa - Produced and arranged by Vaiyasaki Das. Copyright 1996 Vaiyasaki Das (Per Sinclair) All rights reserved. All arrangements and compositions copyrighted.

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Sung by Mahatma Das

 

Original and traditional melodies for the maha mantra and other prayers sung by Mahatma das and accompanied by mellow westernized contemporary orchestration. Produced in 1989.

1)    Pranams to Srila Prabhupada, Panca-tattva mantra, maha mantra
2)    Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya, maha mantra
3)    Prayers of King Kulashekara, maha mantra (verse and translation below).
4)    Maha mantra

In the late 80’s major breakthroughs were being made in music technology. Synthesizers were able to play sounds of real instruments and be controlled and manipulated by computers in ways only previously imagined. At the same time, multi-track recorders were becoming commonplace. These breakthroughs became impossible for me to ignore, and I bit the bullet and invested in some synthesizers, a computer, music software and an 8-track recorder.

Since this was just the beginning of the era of computers controlling synthesizers, there were all kinds of bugs to workout. As we set up our studio, we spent endless hours getting everything to work. We even had to buy a second computer to run a new software program because we ran into so many glitches with the original software we were using. It’s was both agony and ecstasy. The ecstasy was that we could do things never before possible. Now from our studio we could create multi-track orchestrations to frame the maha mantra. But the agony was getting everything to work. It was common for us to spend hours on the phone talking to technicians helping us troubleshoot. It got so bad that on many occasions Krsna Caitanya wanted to quit (along with chanting the maha mantra, we often chanted the mantra, “stupid computer”).  But we persisted, finally worked out the kinks, and in the end were able to produce a nice recording.

Having a full orchestra play the backing for a kirtan had long intrigued me.  Now I had a shot at it, albeit without a real orchestra. The orchestrations are quite simple, but they add the mood I wanted to create.

On the third song, the Prayers of King Kulasekhara, I use the same melody Srila Prabhupada used to chant this song. The kirtan following this prayer is one of my all-time favorites. While chanting, I tried to enter the mood of King Kulasekhara who was praying to remember Krsna at the time of death.

Surprisingly, many mothers have told me how much their children love this recording and how it calms them down (it is very mellow). In fact, several mothers told me that they use this recording to put their kids to sleep at night.


Prayers to King Kulasekhara

kåñëa tvadéya-pada-paìkaja-païjaräntam
adyaiva me viçatu mänasa-räja-haàsaù
präëa-prayäëa-samaye kapha-väta-pittaiù
kaëöhävarodhana-vidhau smaraëaà kutas te

"My Lord Kåñëa, I pray that the swan of my mind may immediately sink down to the stems of the lotus feet of Your Lordship and be locked in their network; otherwise at the time of my final breath, when my throat is choked up with cough, how will it be possible to think of You?"