But no matter if it’s music or meditation that gets them there, the benefits can be life-changing, according to musician and yoga instructor Michael Levin.
“People need more of the kind of stuff that yoga offers, but you don’t have to do poses and roll out a mat and be with other sweaty people,” he says. “Go get with a bunch of people and sing. Everyone knows how to do that.”
That was the idea behind Jam Dass, Levin’s new kirtan-focused jam band that combines the best of both subcultures. Kirtan is a yogic form of meditation that centers around repetitive chants, often in honor of certain deities. Levin, who currently lives in rural Vermont, has experienced the power of kirtan firsthand and regularly travels to India to practice.
“There are places in India where kirtan has been going on for a hundred years and they just change the players. It’s always on. It hasn’t stopped in places,” he says, adding that a standard kirtan, like one he would lead at his own studio, is usually around twenty minutes long.
He’s also a dedicated Deadhead and has played in several Grateful Dead or Phish cover bands, most recently in one called Liquid Lobster.
On the debut Jam Dass album, Love, Jam, Remember, which was mastered locally in Colorado by Louisville's Foxy Music, the eight kirtan-inspired tunes clock in at just under seven minutes each, on average. But as is the norm with jam bands, the run times on records don’t matter when it comes to concerts.
“When we do these things live, we’ll do them to our or the audience’s exhaustion,” Levin says with a laugh. But seriously, that’s not uncommon in kirtan.
Michael Levin, seen here barefoot and jamming on stage, mixed his two passions of yoga and jam bands into his latest project, Jam Dass.
Courtesy Jam Dass
“It’s all call and response. The audience is very involved. They’re singing back,” he explains. “They’re entrained in the rhythm, and they kind of lose their sense of self in the words. Singing, moving and dancing creates the kirtan buzz, if you will.”
On a song such as “Everything,” for example, it’s easy to fall under the soothing spell of kirtan, especially with such a positive and poppy chorus, during which Levin and vocalist Melissa Rose both sing, “Everything is everything.”
Levin shares a Rumi quote that best describes the intention of “Everything” and the essence of Jam Dass: "You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in one drop."
“That’s what that song is about,” he says. “Every molecule contains the whole universe within it.”
Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia credited his band’s mystical power of spontaneously making music, or jamming off the cuff, to an unexplainable “X factor.” The magic just happened, the four-and-a-half-fingered guitarist always maintained.
By blending kirtan with the open-ended nature of playing in a jam band, Jam Dass (not to be confused with Ram Dass) is evoking that same spirit. “Kirtan takes that to a level where it really deliberately brings in, you can use any word you want, but something divine, inspirational or cosmic on a very deliberate level. The ‘X factor’ is that cosmic thing. Jerry said it, too,” Levin explains, adding that focusing on and repeating any word, even one as innocuous as “doorknob,” can have profound effects.
“A doorknob is as much everything as anything else is everything," he says, "because everything is everything."
Local drummer Steve Fox, Levin’s longtime friend and founder of Foxy Music, admits he didn’t know what to expect when he got involved with Jam Dass. “When you first hear it, it’s kind of beyond your comfort level to understand the depth of it,” he admits. “It took me longer to, as a drummer, figure out how I’m going to incorporate parts I can really play naturally and sink my teeth into. When I heard Mike’s stuff, I was like, ‘All right, let’s live with this for a while.’”
Other than Fox, Colorado slide guitarist Jason Lynn also contributed to Love, Jam, Remember. Jeff Hamilton (keys) and David Walker (bass), along with special guests Eric Maring (tabla) and Yatziv Caspi (percussion), played on the album as well.
Levin is already working on a second record, but first hopes to book a yoga fest tour this year across Vermont and Colorado, states where there are healthy, and heady, yogi and jam band scenes.
“As long as I’ve known Mike, he’s always on the edge of creativity,” Fox says.
“Or madness,” Levin quips.
But Jam Dass is following in the footsteps of other kirtan-influenced artists such as MC Yogi (hip-hop kirtan) and C.C. White (soul kirtan).
“Here’s the flag for the jam band people. We like kirtan, too,” Levin concludes. “It’s that crossover thing we’re going for.”
Love, Jam, Remember is available on all streaming platforms.
