A round-table discussion with Shantala
By Tom Crenshaw and Trevor Harden
Benjy and Heather Wertheimer are simply two of the most amazing and dedicated artists RockOm has had the opportunity to meet. Both lead kirtan (sacred chanting) worldwide as the duo Shantala (sometimes as a trio with Brent Kuecker) with soul-stirring vocals, sacred lyrics and exotic instrumentation. Shantala has performed and recorded internationally with such sacred music luminaries as RockOm alums Krishna Das and Jai Uttal, as well as with Deva Premal & Miten and others. In summer 2008, they were named as one of the top "Wallahs to Watch" by Yoga + Joyful Living.
Heather Wertheimer is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who combines her special love of both music and yoga to lead devotional chanting for yoga workshops and spiritual gatherings internationally. Heather's debut CD with Shantala, Church of Sky, was named by New Age Retailer as one of the top ten albums of 2004. It has been aired on radio stations nationwide. In April 2003, she and Benjy released The Love Window, a beautiful and well-loved collection of sacred chants. In 2007, they released Sri, their second popular kirtan CD, and their first live CD LIVE in love was released in 2008.
Benjy Wertheimer is an award-winning songwriter, vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist (playing tabla, congas, percussion, esraj, guitar, and keyboards). Benjy has toured and recorded with such artists as Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Deva Premal & Miten, Walter Becker (Steely Dan), and virtuoso guitarist Michael Mandrell. He has opened for such artists as Carlos Santana, Paul Winter and Narada Michael Walden. A founding member of the internationally acclaimed Ancient Future world fusion music ensemble, Benjy also toured the U.S., Canada and Japan with renowned bamboo flute master G.S. Sachdev. He has studied Indian classical music for over 25 years with some of the greatest masters of that tradition (including Alla Rakha, Zakir Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan and Z. M. Dagar). Benjy's CDs receive extensive airplay around the world and his CD Circle of Fire went to #1 on the New Age radio charts in November 2002.
RockOm recently sat down with Benjy, Heather, Brent and Kelley Boyd (owner of Savannah Yoga Center in Savannah, GA) for an informal round-table discussion on kirtan, yoga, Eastern music, the evolution of kirtan and sacred music, and much more.
Tom: Shantala just recently came from Bhakti Fest [a yoga and music festival in Joshua Tree, CA]. Tell us about your experience.
Benjy: It felt like a milestone that marked the beginning of a different level of engagement of people in this country with bhakti yoga. A lot of people were only half jokingly referring to Bhakti Fest as the Woodstock of kirtan. There's this critical mass that's being reached that is moving towards shifting the consciousness of a lot of people in this country. It was an incredible honor to be there. Bhakti Fest is a place where history is being made as far as bhakti yoga. We’ve been to a lot of yoga festivals with a lot of people present and the focus is very much on asana. In this case it was very clear the focus was on kirtan.
Heather: I don’t know how many kirtan artists where there. Some of them were well known, some weren't and some of the most well known artists weren't there. The feeling at Bhakti Fest was fantastic, so good natured, calm and friendly as well as peaceful and loving.
Tom: Yeah, we looked online and saw some photographs of the events and it seemed so intimate.
Heather: It felt personal.
Benjy: It sure did.
Tom: When and how did you two form Shantala?
Benjy: Probably as many people know us as Benjy and Heather as they do Shantala, but now that Brent is with us it really feels like we have a special kind of synergy that we’ve been able to grow over time. Now we’re writing chants together.
Tom: And Brent gets to help with Barkley [Benjy and Heather's dog].
Heather: Barkley is our inspiration.
Brent: Barkley does everything really. Everything is a manifestation of Barkley. We're just pawns. [Laughter]
Heather: We're just servants of Barkley. [Laughter]
Benjy: I was thinking I should change my name to Barkley-Das. [Laughter] It is quite interesting though, Barkley is a very important part of what we do because every day we are reminded of bhakti through him because his love is so absolute. I think there is something we can all learn through the love of a dog. It is really unswerving and truly unconditional. Secondly, very much what is at the heart of bhakti yoga for me is being in the moment and I can't think of anyone who is a better teacher of that than a dog. It's [about] 'right here, right now'; not what's happening tomorrow, not what happened a few days ago. It's 'right here, right now'.
Brent: You know how dogs love you no matter what you've done to them? It's kind of the same way that Heather talks about when we're in kirtan that no matter what we think about ourselves while we're practicing kirtan Ma is always loving you no matter what, and when you get a glimpse of that you start feeling better.
Heather: We begin to focus more and more on the force of grace and everything that's holding us. It's so easy to step from your normal funky world of being lost in your thoughts and riding the ups and downs of your thoughts, your latest emotional swing and it's just one easy step to have a total awareness of grace with you. That's an important part of this practice that we're able to make this step into contact with a realm of beauty and sacredness and joy.
But back to your question - how did we get started in Kirtan? People just asked us to do it. I was doing some things as a singer-songwriter; that was an important part of my life. Benjy had been full time in music and had an extensive Indian classical background, so when we got together and I was teaching yoga we began to be very involved in the Anusara yoga community. Benjy played for savasana on the esraj for John Friend and John fell in love. The short story is John Friend exposed Krishna Das to Benjy's esraj music and Krishna Das invited Benjy to perform on his Breath of the Heart album. Krishna Das discovered Benjy also plays tabla so when Krishna Das needed a fill-in tabla player he called on Benjy to come to the Inner Harmony Yoga Retreat Center with John Friend. We did that for a couple of years. I just tagged along. I was a yoga teacher; I just wanted to do yoga with John and it was a bonus to be able to sing with Krishna Das. We would fill in when Krishna Das wasn't available and ended up doing music for savasana. Then people started asking us to chant and we had no idea… or intention to go down that path. Once we started, we fell in love with it.
Benjy: I feel in a very real way we were guided. It was almost like we didn't have a choice. We kept encountering circumstances starting with meeting John Friend back in 2000, going into this thing with Krishna Das and falling in love with the practice of kirtan completely, and finding place after place where that was the best way we could serve. As for my own religious background, I'm a Quaker, but I feel there's no dissonance between my Quaker roots and what I’m celebrating, especially from a Hindu-tantric perspective, which is the realm John Friend works in. There's this beautiful melding of [my Quaker roots with Hindu-tantric] and in the kirtan it’s a part of this celebratory element of yoga that's at the heart of a lot of the tantric practice.
It's quite incredible too that at this point, 32 years ago I started my practice of yoga but not asana yoga. Everyone thinks of asana right away when they think of yoga but my teachers, Ali Akbar Khan and Zakir Hussain would refer to it as nada yoga: the yoga of sacred vibration and sound. It's considered a very high yoga going back to some very ancient texts. In the process of learning from Heather when she was a yoga teacher and from John, I stated to see how this could all come together with nada yoga side by side with bhakti yoga in the kirtan practice. That's a very big part of what we always hoped to be able to share with people.
Tom: Benjy, you grew up playing classical music starting with piano?
Benjy: That's right. Yeah, my very first instrument starting at age five was piano. My parents tell me I was singing before I could talk. I played violin as well, my interest shifted, and I later started studying flamenco guitar.
Tom: How did your study gravitate towards Eastern Music?
Benjy: Well before I started studying piano my mother told me I used to always bug her to keep playing Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion. She literally wore it out. I was very much into African drumming and by junior high school I was studying Afro-Cuban drumming. In my high school years I came into contact with Indian classical percussion and it just blew me away. I had never seen anything like it and I realize, particularly when I saw the one who was going to become my guru on tablas - Zakir Hussain - when I saw him play what he could do with these two little drums was way beyond what I could ever imagine. So I knew that's where I wanted to go. As soon as I could after high school I went out to California where Zakir Hussain was living so I could study with him.
Trevor: If Drums of Passion hadn't been made we wouldn't have anything to talk about! [Laughter] Because most every single person we talk with talks about how instrumental that album was.
Benjy: Oh, there's no doubt!
Heather: [Without Olatunji's influence] so much music would have never made it over to this part of the world probably!
Tom: What's the hardest thing for Western musicians to grasp about Eastern music?
Benjy: One of the things is cultural. In Western culture, music is seen as a diversion or a source of entertainment, whereas in Indian classical music it is a spiritual path. I think some people have difficulty finding ways to reconcile themselves with that and the expectation of the sadhana of that path is mind-blowing. As an example my guru in the raga side of things, Ali Akbar Khan, would play or practice music 14-18 hours a day over the period of decades. It's very hard for us to even imagine that level of sadhana in our culture. Part of it too is because there's a very different orientation; there's a way we have to make our way in the world, or I guess you could call it a renunciation of sorts because you have to renounce the world to a degree to engage in that level of practice. What's interesting is that it's not renouncing the Divine, in fact you are trying to engage yourself fully with that essence of sound, which Ali Akbar Khan did so beautifully, which Zakir Hussain and his father Alla Rakha (who was Ravi Shankar's tabla player) did as well. They embodied the essence of the soul of music because they focused so strongly on that.
Tom: Heather, what are the unspoken elements between musicians while you're performing kirtan? What transpires that is unspoken? How do you communicate with each other while you're performing?
Heather: Well, we've spent so much time together that we're basically joined at the hip. [Laughter] But I think that we have a common purpose as performing musicians in kirtan, which is we are supporting the energy of the group to move in particular directions, to help people have a deepening experience throughout the course of the kirtan. So we have an energetic wave that we're riding together and we're all supporting that wave. There are times that we want [the music] to move slow, deep and more inward and there are times we want [the music] to come into a much higher energetic state and we know approximately when that is going to happen, but it's a little bit different every time. Musically, Brent takes his cues off of what I'm singing but occasionally we have an eye contact that we make that we know we're going to switch parts. I use that eye-cue; Benjy and I just look at each other and we know we’re going to do another repeat. Occasionally I'll mouth one word to him but it doesn't happen very often. We're also very connected to each other. We've done this so much that we know what's going to happen and we all have a sense of where it needs to go and where it should go.
Tom: So Benjy, if Heather is entranced in a part and you know she is in a blissful state but you feel it may need to go in another direction, how do you judge what needs to happen and make a change?
Brent: You don't ever take the women out of her bliss! [Laughter]
Heather: No, he doesn’t have control of that. I do! [Laughter] But we do have subtle ways that we all push the tempo or slow down slightly.
Benjy: I have a deep sense of trust to Heather's connection this practice, so generally speaking I’m going to go with the flow that I feel happening there. That said, the degree of acceleration at any point is up to me; I'm driving it as the drummer in many cases and so figuring out where that next level should be is kinda up to me…
Heather: Yes it is…
Benjy: …And these two follow me in that. Sometimes I'm leading the chants too. There's a couple of high-energy chants that I lead and I have to figure out where that energy is for me. It's a dance. The other thing is that if Heather is going into a blissful state it is almost always accompanied by a similar state on the part of those participating in the kirtan. They are really coming into this synchronized way of being with each other. They are really tuned in and Heather is tuning into a kind of energy… I know if she's going there the group is following in her wake and I don't want to mess that up. It's such a different mindset because of the participatory elements and because it is a co-creation in a very real way with the group present.
A lot of the kind of things you would see in a performance doesn't really apply [to kirtan]. There are times I want to bring in elements of Indian classical music - for example a tabla solo - or something that's played on the esraj that is mirroring a raga that I know well. Or if we have other great Indian musicians playing with us, which we're blessed to have sometimes, to give them a moment to completely shine out in the middle of the kirtan because to me it's all part of that same expression of divine sound and devotion.
Heather: Also, we all three have a talk every day about what we're going to do for our set list. We'll talk about that for a while and then sometimes we'll often end up changing it mid-stream. The other night we were thinking of keeping the kirtan more down-tempo, but when we got into the up-tempo part Benjy said, "Let's do another up chant," because that was going to serve the group better. So we all talk about it. Anything you want to add Brent?
Brent: I think there's really one word and you touched on it a couple of times; it's all about service. I feel like, what can I do to serve directly first and foremost with what is happening with Benjy and Heather and us, as a whole, and the energy in the room? I usually play with my eyes closed so I'm mostly feeling the room as opposed to seeing the room. I feel like I can get a lot more information that way. See, it's like this… Kirtan is like a bliss-bus [laughter], no… no… dig this. Benjy is the drummer, as like the engine and the gas pedal; I’m the bass player so I'm the wheels, keeping it going; and Heather is the driver. Everybody in the room are the passengers and they're just singing on the bus. [Laughter]
Heather: That's a great way to put it! We’ll have to use that for our next tour, The Bliss Bus Tour. [Laughter]
Trevor: One of our "go-to" questions we ask a lot of people just to get their different perspectives is, "What is it about music that connects us with the Divine in a way that other things don’t?"
Benjy: There's a term that comes to us from an ancient text that embodies it completely: Nada Brahma, which is basically translated as Sound is God. The nada yoga is your effort to go so deeply into that ocean of sound, through music, that you connect with all the auspicious principles of the Divine in the music and it is considered in many occasions to be completely beyond words. The second part of it is that because music does not necessarily require words, the raw music itself, that vibration is something you can feel regardless of the language you speak in your day-to-day life. It truly is a universal language. You can evoke feelings in people at a very, very deep level almost instantaneously with music. For me, the highest compliment I could give anyone who does a soundtrack for a movie is that you don't notice it because it is so perfectly integrated with what is going on that it doesn’t stand out on its own. It's a part of an integral whole. In that way too, music can be a soundtrack for our love and devotion to the Divine.
Heather: I would add that when we’re making music it vibrates our whole body, it resonates inside of us. It resonates in the heart area and as you know, it also releases chemicals [and causes] interactions in the brain.
Benjy: There’s a wonderful book out called This Is Your Brain On Music that is actually from a neuro-scientific vantage point about what happens in the brain when people are engaged in either playing or listening to music. To grossly oversimplify it one of the points is there is no other activity outside of being engaged in music that engages more parts of the brain simultaneously.
Trevor: Speaking to what you just said about music engaging different parts of the brain and enhancing other activities, there is some debate about asana practice and whether or not you should accompany it with music. What are your general thoughts on this?
Heather: I’d like to get Kelley's [Boyd, owner of Savannah Yoga Center] opinion on that. Kelley?
Kelley Boyd: It goes right back to what Heather and Benjy were talking about which is the practice feels totally different when there is music playing. Sometimes some moments do call for no music. There's plenty going on internally. I think that music is a beautiful addition to an asana practice. You can engage people in a different kind of way with music in their practice depending on the songs that you play, the message you want to convey to your students. I've heard of stories where students listen to a particular kind of song for 10-20 years and then they heard it in a yoga class and they picked up on specific words and it really opens something up for them.
Heather: Brent teaches yoga as well. Anything you want to add about yoga and music Brent?
Brent: I don't use music, except for savasana yoga. For me I would love to have musicians in the room playing with me and reading the energy of the room, supporting what is happening. So often I find unless I've spent hours and hours on a play list it's not in sync with the mood or actions in the class that I am intending and feeding. It’s a personal thing. I don't want to be teaching something that is more introspective and have some rockin' music just because the play list didn't happen to sync up.
Benjy: One of the great blessings in our lives is that for a decade or so now Heather and I have been providing live accompanying music for John Friend's yoga classes with as many as 800 people in a class. He is like a conductor and we are this orchestra that needs to be able to stop on a dime. For example if he needs to stop and give a technical instruction we are happy to stop playing because it would be totally distracting. If the flow changes we need to be able to turn and completely shift that.
Tom: Where are you going as a group and as individuals? What does the future hold?
Heather: We have a really fun and meaningful focus coming up for our 2010 tour in many cities across North America. We’re going to be doing events that we're going to be calling "Unity in the Community" which means we're going to be bringing together different groups at yoga centers, different non-profit groups and church groups to work together to do fund raising for local and regional charity causes. We love doing fund raising events and helping others through our events. For example, we sold handmade African necklaces for about a year and raised $17,000 for Ugandan women and children. So it's really powerful what you can do in the course of your offerings.
Brent: I'd just like to close by offering one thing. What kirtan is and what we're doing is truly an experience of the heart because you don't get done listening to any kind of music and say, "Wow, that just made my brain feel good." You don’t hear that. People say they actually felt something [in kirtan]. We are transported into our heart and what we find there is good, blissful, amazing. What we can say by this on a universal perspective is that at the essence of our self and at our heart there is just goodness.
Heather: I agree and to add to your really good question Trevor about how music gets us closer to the Divine. I think part of it is when you come together with a common intention, as groups and as individuals, we can consciously create that experience together and it's beautiful. We're just opening a doorway into something that can sweep us along. It's really beautiful.
Trevor: And that communal aspect is representative of a Divine thing going on because it's bringing people together.
Benjy: For sure.
Heather: Absolutely. That's why it was so powerful at Bhakti Fest with 2500 people coming together with a common intention. I really believe it ripples out into the world.
Benjy: Can you imagine what it's going to be like in 10 years? I am really excited to see what is happening. Culturally as asana [hatha] yoga has taken hold here in this country and you see many styles represented many of them are very new even though some of the yoga practices go back 5000 years. There are new practices being invented every day. We’re finding in kirtan a complete expansion of the definition of the term. That is happening in large part because of the melting pot culture that we're part of here in the States whereas someone [elsewhere] may not know how to deal with mantra or how to celebrate in kirtan but they totally resonate with reggae. It's like the opening of a doorway that many people might not have known and that's part of what we hope to facilitate in what we do. There are so many different kinds of kirtan now available for people. It's really exploding and I think it's a beautiful opportunity for more and more and more people to find that connection to the Divine.
LINKS:
www.shantalamusic.com
Shantala Amazon link to latest CD available on Amazon
The audio from our informal roundtable discussion with Shantala comprises this week's audio podcast episode. Topics include the difference between Eastern and Western musical training, how musicians communicate, playing music to accompany yoga, connecting with the Divine through song and much more.
Who are the The Mayapuris? They are an eclectic group of talented musicians who share their love of the sacred culture of kirtan through their music.
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