
Nirmala is co-spiritual director, with her husband Dharmadas, of Ananda Sangha in Sacramento, California. At the time Nirmala when wrote the following, she and Dharmadas were living in India, helping Swami Kriyananda start Ananda’s work there. (Photo: 2000s – Nirmala and Dharmadas)
When I arrived at Ananda Village in August, 1975, I joined the apprentice program, and because I had studied piano as a child, I immediately began playing the harmonium and learning to chant. Soon I was asked to help lead chanting for the apprentices, and I got deeply involved with Master’s music and devoted my free time to chanting on my own.
A few months later I joined Ananda’s small singing group, the Gandharvas. (The Gandharvas are the celestial singers in the Hindu scriptures.) Shivani had told Swamiji, “Nirmala has a ‘true’ voice,” meaning that I could carry a tune. And so I was enlisted.
As I concentrated on Swamiji’s music, I put chanting on the backburner for several years. And later, when I got involved in chanting again, I found that my attunement had deepened by singing Swami’s music.
In the early days, copies of the music weren’t easy to come by. It was the age of mimeograph machines, and even after Xerox machines were invented we had to drive sixteen miles to town to make copies. Those precious copies were in Swamiji’s handwritten notation, Xeroxed from his originals. And because they were scarce, I learned most of the songs by asking Parvati or another singer to sing them in my ear while I sang along.
In those days the Gandharvas sang at Sunday services, which were held at the Seclusion Retreat. We would wait outside, and when it was time to sing we would enter the temple. As we were waiting one morning, a big black bear came walking on its hind legs toward us through the trees – we entered the temple a little early that morning!
In 1978, Swamiji led a nationwide lecture tour, accompanied by the Gandharvas, followed by another tour in 1979, and I went on the second tour. Swamiji often told a story about our experiences:
“The singers would start the evening program with a couple of songs, which would take about five minutes, then I would speak for an hour and a half. The singers would close the program with a song or two, lasting another three to five minutes. As I stood at the door shaking hands, people would say to me: ‘The music was wonderful!’”
Swami’s point was that the music bypasses the intellectual barriers that people raise about the teachings because it touches their hearts very directly. Even though the singing took just a few short minutes, it was very memorable.
Shortly after that tour, a group of us moved to Palo Alto to “get the music out there.” We sang in churches, schools, and for many civic groups. The group dissolved after a year or so when Ram and Dianna were asked to move to Italy to head up our work there, and so the rest of us moved back to the Village where we continued the music outreach with a small group called the Joy Singers, with Jeannie, Lakshman Simpson, Vasudeva, Tricia, and me.
We traveled up and down the West Coast giving concerts, sleeping on couches or the floors of fellow devotees’ homes. It wasn’t an easy life, but we were totally committed to bringing Swamiji’s music to a broader audience.
One dark night as we were driving to an engagement, someone in the car next to us on the freeway started gesticulating wildly to get our attention. We thought the person was drunk or crazy, so we ignored him, and then another driver started behaving the same way, and we eventually realized that the window in the tailgate of our station wagon was open and our performance costumes were flying out the back!
We pulled over and spent a hilarious half-hour dodging traffic as we gathered our precious clothing. When we got to the engagement, we found that everything was fine except for Vasudeva’s white shirt, which had a black tire track etched diagonally across the front, and we ended up with one extra shoe! But Vasudeva kept his guitar strapped in front of him the whole night, so we got by unscathed.
In 1985, I accompanied an Ananda pilgrimage to the Holy Land as the choir director. Everyone on the tour learned to sing Swamiji’s oratorio, “Christ Lives,” which he’d written to highlight the major events of Christ’s life. We wanted to be able to sing the songs in the places where those historical events had taken place, which was a thrilling prospect, but some of the people on the tour had never sung, so preparing to sing was an interesting challenge.
It was an amazing blessing to sing in the holy shrines. Even if we weren’t technically perfect, the people who heard us would often ask if we were a professional choir because we sounded so good. Devotion plus the good acoustics in the holy places made an amazing sound.
We ended the pilgrimage in Italy, where we visited the shrines of Saint Francis in Assisi, and then we stayed at our fledgling Ananda center in Como. While we were in Italy, Swami asked Lakshman Simpson and me to stay on and start the Ananda music ministry in Italy.
That winter, we lived at the center in Como where we worked with Ram, Dianna, and Kirtani as fellow members of our small singing group. It was during the cold winter, when I had to play the harmonium with gloves on, that we discovered how beautiful the guitar and harmonium sounded together. Previously at Ananda, only the harmonium was used to lead chanting. Then in the mid-1980s when Swami was exposed to the guitar chanting of the Peki group in Sorrento, the guitar started to lead chanting at Ananda, but the two instruments were never played together. In Como, we began experimenting with the marriage of guitar and harmonium, and we realized that it was a heaven-made match – the guitar stimulates devotion in the heart, and the harmonium provides the deepening vibration of Aum. And so we began the work of figuring out the chords for Master’s and Swamiji’s chants to facilitage the two instruments playing together.
That summer we sang for a Blood Bank event in a small village called Veglio near where we were living. It was an evening performance on an outdoor stage, and I remember how we were introduced – in Italian, of course – as “Ananda! They don’t eat meat! They don’t drink alcohol! They don’t have children!” These American yogis were indeed an oddity!
Because it was the height of summer and the brilliant spotlights seemed to be the only illumination for miles around, every flying insect in the country seemed magnetically drawn to land on us! It was sheer tapasya to keep still, keep smiling, and keep singing with all the crawling, buzzing, and tickling. Those insects were out for our blood at the Veglio Blood Bank! Sometimes singing for God is martyrdom.
Later that year the Ananda Europa center moved from Como to its permanent home in Assisi, and during my time there we continued to build the music outreach, touring with various singing groups throughout Italy and Germany.
In early 1988 I returned to Ananda Village where I led several small Joy Singers groups. I also got deeply involved with chanting again, and it became the focus of my personal sadhana. Our chanting group created a book, Chants for Guitar and Harmonium, that mapped out the chords for many of the chants so that both instruments could play together harmoniously.
We enjoyed many happy sessions with Swamiji to confirm or fine-tune our chord choices. The book gradually evolved, and it took a big step in the late 1990s with the help of Lakshman Heubert, Jeannie Tschantz, and a devotee in the Southwest, who helped put the music into the Finale notation program.
It was a deeply blessed time in my life. Once or twice a week from seven to nine in the evening we would hold a singing rehearsal to work on Swami’s songs, and then we would chant together late into the night and early morning, figuring out the chords that would work best. It was thrilling work – our chanting group was invited to lead meditations and kirtans and we would go anywhere, anytime for the opportunity to chant.
I remember a particularly cold, snowy Saturday morning when we’d been asked to lead a meditation starting at five at the Seclusion Retreat, six miles away.
In the pre-dawn darkness, we piled into our rickety van that didn’t have a heater and we headed up the slippery road. When we got to the temple it was stone cold, and as we began chanting I noticed that one of my friends was hitting a wrong chord on the guitar at the same point in every repetition. I couldn’t understand it, since he was an excellent guitarist. I glanced over at him and realized that his hand was frozen and he couldn’t form the chord! The effort and sincerity he was putting forth to play the guitar in the cold filled me with such joy that I experienced a rush of energy up my spine!
At about that time I was asked to lead the music ministry at Ananda, and I spent several years focused on creating programs for special events. The music overlapped with other entertainments, including Reader’s Theatre performances of stories by the British humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, a favorite at Ananda.
We created theatrical vignettes from Autobiography of a Yogi and from the Bible, Swami’s music, the Festival of Light, and other sources to celebrate holidays, the masters’ birthdays and mahasamadhis, themed weekends, week-long programs, and so on.
We performed excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays to highlight Swami’s Shakespeare songs – for example, a vignette from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” around the song “Fairies’ Lullaby.”
We had lots of fun acting out other songs – “Hawaiiana” performed by an Ananda member who had studied hula dancing, “Dracula’s Castle” with two ladies in black capes as vampires, “Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto” with kimonos and Japanese umbrellas, “It’s Time to Go to School” with singers dressed as ducks in sailor suits, just as Swami dreamed the song as a child, “The Philosopher and the Boatman,” “If You’re Seeking Freedom,” and so on. It was great fun!
The story I’ve heard most often in my years as a choir director is a simple one, it’s often told with varying details: “I almost didn’t come to rehearsal tonight because… (fill in the blank). But then I managed to get myself here and I’m SO glad I came! I feel much better, more in tune, and happier!”
The experience of Swami’s music flowing through us is an unfailing recipe for raising our energy and feeling inspired again.
Peter Schuppe was in charge of the music at the Ananda center in Seattle, and in 1991 he invited me to lead a music weekend there, and shortly after we were married. We lived in Seattle until 1994, when we returned to the Village at Swami’s request to start Crystal Clarity Design, helping to publish Swamiji’s books and music.
For the next nine years we continued to be deeply involved with the music, including a Christmas group, “The Victorian Singers.” The Nevada County Chamber of Commerce had called Ananda in 1980 to say they were starting a Victorian Christmas event and wanted to know if Ananda had a caroling group that could perform. I started the group that year and directed it for many years. It continued while I was in Italy, and after Dharmadas and I went to India in 2003. It was great fun for everyone involved.
We also led Ananda’s Joyful Arts Ministry at Ananda Village, until Swamiji invited us to come to India to help him start Ananda’s work there.
So far, in India, our singing groups have performed at Swamiji’s major speaking events, and we’ve performed excerpts from his play, The Peace Treaty. We’ve performed Wodehouse plays and we’ve sung regularly for satsangs and Swami’s TV programs. Still, much more is needed to help develop the music in India.
Ananda’s music gives people a priceless way to develop attunement with this path. Along with chanting it provides a powerful foundation for the devotee’s spiritual life. It has been our great blessing to work with Swamiji’s and Master’s music, and we strongly encourage everyone to take advantage of this wellspring of divine joy. Oh, devotee, come join the choir!