Five years ago Dave Stringer was one of the first kirtan artists to visit Corvallis, and last month over Easter weekend he came back to town for an incredible weekend of kirtan. His band had a stellar lineup of musicians & they were mostly from Oregon — Johanna Beekman was featured on harmonium & vocals with Kavita Kat McMillan on response vocals, David Watts on bass, Julie Southwell on violin, George Beekman on percussion, and our son Jesse Stern on tabla! The Unitarian Church was full on Friday night, and Dave & the band just rocked the roof off — I’ll never forget how all our voices just blended into one mighty voice as we sang together.
The band went to Portland for a kirtan Saturday night, then came back to Corvallis for two services on Easter Sunday with UU minister Jill McAllister & a workshop on Sunday afternoon. What a weekend! Dave was off to China after his visit here, and from what he’s told me the kirtan scene in China sounds pretty interesting — I’ve become really curious about how it started & why it is thriving. Dave has given me some names, so I’m going to be contacting them this week to get some information, I’ll let you know how that progresses.
This edition of the podcast features some of the chants Dave did at his Friday night kirtan. Here’s the link to the entire kirtan on YouTube, and here’s the link to the Sunday service at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. And as long as we’re doing links, here’s one to the film documentary I narrated about the early history of Las Vegas I tell you about in the intro to the podcast!
Now we’re looking forward to Shantala with Mikey Pauker, they’ll be here on June 14. I’ll tell you about that in the next edition of the podcast. Until then, my friends. Namaste.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:21:05 — 74.3MB)
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