Kirtan Beyond Tradition: How Western Musicians Reshape Chanting

Dave Stringer describes an unlikely path into kirtan—hired by an ashram to edit videos after appearing in someone's meditation—and how a year and a half in India taught him yoga philosophy while nine-year-olds taught him chanting. The real struggle began when his Western impulse to express individuality collided with the Eastern principle of dissolving ego into collective sound. Rather than abandon either tradition or innovation, Stringer brought professional Western musicians into the kirtan world, expanding the musical form while wrestling with institutional gatekeepers, the tension between harmony and unison, and what it means when people mishear mantras and find their own spiritual meaning in the mistake.

How Did a Hollywood Worker End Up as a Kirtan Singer?

Stringer's entry into kirtan reads like spiritual accident. He was working in Los Angeles when someone he had helped find a job called with an unusual proposal: an ashram in India needed a video editor and filmmaker. The woman told him she had meditated on who to recommend—and he appeared in her vision. "That seemed preposterous and ridiculous to me but at the same time strangely compelling," Stringer recalls. He accepted, expecting a short assignment. Instead, he spent a year and a half at the ashram, initially editing spiritual talks by various teachers into condensed versions for yoga beginners. This work gave him an intensive education in yoga philosophy and tradition, positioning him as the "perfect person to digest that" material precisely because he had no prior expertise to unlearn.

During this time, Stringer also taught at a village school the ashram operated. An old harmonium sat in his classroom, and the nine-year-old students—all fluent in Sanskrit chants—became his first teachers. "Basically a bunch of nine-year-olds taught me kirtan," he says, "which was kind of an unorthodox way of dealing with it but a very joyful one." This unconventional training grounded him in the felt experience of chanting before he encountered the doctrinal and institutional dimensions that would later create friction.

What Happens When Western Musical Ego Meets Eastern Dissolution?

The ashram eventually invited Stringer to participate formally in group chanting, and this is where the real education—the difficult one—began. He encountered a fundamental philosophical opposition: "In Eastern music the idea is to get rid of yourself. In Western music the idea is to express yourself." Ecstatic traditions in the West celebrate the soloist, the individual voice, harmony singers in choirs. But in Indian music, particularly kirtan, the goal is the opposite. "You're asked to completely give up, you know, me, mine, and any need of individual expression. The idea is to join your voice into a much bigger oneness."

For Stringer, trained unconsciously in Western musical values, this collision created constant friction. He kept breaking into harmony—a natural instinct in Western gospel and soul traditions—only to encounter resistance. Indian music has no concept of harmony in the Western sense; the aesthetic principle is that voices merge and blend rather than layer into chords. "To break into harmony it seems perfectly spiritual," Stringer notes wryly, "so we had to deal with a certain tension."

Beyond musical differences, Stringer encountered what he calls "the church lady"—"a universal fact of like all spiritual organizations." This is the institutional gatekeeper, usually given some authority but little actual knowledge or attainment, charged with enforcing rules. No matter what you do or how you progress, Stringer observes, "you're going to have to tangle with the church lady who no matter what you do is going to tap you on the shoulder and say well currently this is not the way that we're doing it." For him and others, this dynamic brought up deep material. "It's not a pretty process," he says. At one point, he recalls, there was "a volcano of rage about every restriction that I was put in." Yet he also understood the ashram's purpose: "What the ashram was trying to do was to train me to serve the chant, and that was a beautiful thing. The outcome of that was beautiful. The process of that was extremely messy."

Why Did Stringer Invite Professional Western Musicians Into Kirtan?

While still in India, Stringer had begun imagining how to advance the art of kirtan itself. "From an Indian perspective they already kind of had their style. I had to come back to Los Angeles to start to propel that style along." Rather than try to perfect the traditional form, he chose a different path: he invited professional Western musicians—friends who stood outside the yoga world—to collaborate on kirtan music.

Most of these musicians knew no Sanskrit and had no yoga background. But they brought something essential: familiarity with gospel, funk, and soul traditions—musical forms that were, like kirtan, participatory and ecstatic. Stringer used this common ground to reconceive kirtan. "We started to conceive of kirtan as another form of gospel or funk or soul, one that was participatory." This move was radical because it foregrounded a different set of values: musicianship, arrangement, groove, and the Western idea of expression—things the ashram had asked him to transcend.

At first, Stringer apologized to professional musicians for the simplicity of kirtan. But as he examined it more closely, he realized it was far more demanding than he initially suggested. "When you start to look under it, it's a very elastic and very challenging musical form, particularly the way that I practice it." The chants speed up over time, which means musicians must continuously rearrange the piece to maintain musical interest. Western drummers, for example, are trained to lock into a groove and hold it steady. But in kirtan as Stringer practices it, "the whole idea is to move the groove and to keep changing it." This created what he calls "a very interesting problem" for excellent musicians accustomed to different rules.

The result: by bringing professionals into the studio and on stage, Stringer created a challenging experience "for everybody." He hopes he has "done something to expand the musical lexicon of kirtan in the process," though he acknowledges it is "hard to say" what the long-term impact will be.

What Is the Role of Meaning in Mantras?

One of Stringer's most provocative observations concerns what mantras actually mean. "It's hard to say what these mantras mean, and in fact they're meant to take us beyond a place of meaning," he explains. This intentional elusiveness attracts him: "Their nonsensical quality is one thing that attracts me to them." Mantras work through sound and vibration, not through semantic content. "There are things that can't be conveyed perfectly by words," Stringer notes.

This insight shapes his approach to lyrics. His first album, Brink, includes wordless passages—not invented language, but "a spontaneous outpouring." People write him regularly claiming to know the exact words he sang in these sections, asking what he meant by particular phrases. His response: "I didn't write any words. You're reporting back to me on the words that you heard in your own head." Rather than insist on correct pronunciation or interpretation, Stringer asks a deeper question: what if the "mishearing" is itself the point?

He considers a provocative compositional strategy: release wordless recordings first, collect what people think they heard, then record new versions using the words listeners projected onto the sound. This would be "another way of composing things," one that honors the imagination and inner experience of the listener rather than enforcing doctrinal precision.

What Does It Mean When Someone Mishears a Mantra?

Stringer recounts a telling example. Someone heard "Ganesha" (the elephant deity invoked for removing obstacles) as "gonna party on." Rather than dismiss this mishearing as a failure of devotion, Stringer asked himself: "What am I supposed to say to that? How am I supposed to touch that? You can't say that's wrong because this person was having a great experience." The person who heard "gonna party on" had their own spiritual opening; the person singing "Ganesha" had theirs. Both are valid.

This non-dogmatic stance disturbs some practitioners. "I realize some people are probably thinking that I should be, you know, my God, he's not terribly devotional about this." But Stringer responds from both Buddhist and yogic standpoints. The Zen saying "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" suggests attachment to forms can become an obstacle. From yoga, the real work is not perfection of external technique but the quality of surrender you bring to whatever you're doing—whether it's a pose in asana or singing in a room full of people.

Where to go from here

Stringer's experience suggests several directions for anyone exploring kirtan or sacred music practice. First, understand that the collision between Western and Eastern values in chanting is not a problem to solve but a creative tension to explore. The impulse to express individuality and the goal of ego-dissolution need not be enemies; instead, they can generate new forms.

Second, recognize that institutional gatekeeping—the "church lady" phenomenon—exists in all spiritual communities and is worth examining rather than simply resisting. The ashram's intention to train Stringer to serve the chant was beautiful; the messy process of discipline and restriction had real value, even if it provoked rage.

Third, consider what happens when you invite trained musicians from outside a tradition into sacred practice. Rather than diluting authenticity, this can expand the musical and spiritual vocabulary available to practitioners. The tension between tradition and innovation mirrors the tension between ego and dissolution—worth holding rather than resolving.

Finally, Stringer's stance on mishearing and misinterpretation raises a crucial question for any contemplative practice: Is the goal to enforce correct understanding, or to create conditions where each person's interior experience is honored? There may be no single answer, but the question itself is worth sitting with.