For most people, when they are told that they should fast on a certain day or give up certain foods as a sacrifice to God, they think of it as a burden and spend the entire day thinking of all of the good foods that they are missing and they think about the ways that they have inconvenienced themselves for God. Strange isn’t it? Fasting means that a person has a level of commitment to God and to their worship and still something as minimal as giving up a few choice dishes counts as an inconvenience? What to speak of the things that we as people as God for everyday.

For one family, a fasting day was turned into a celebration, and they invited everyone that they knew to join in and to chant, dance and sing throughout the night with them as they celebrated everything that is wonderful about God. The Raval family has a house in upstate New York and they decided to do 36 hours of continuous kirtan on a day of fasting from certain foods. Using this as the premise, a kirtan festival was created in their house with wonderful little deities and enthusiastic kirtaniyas.

The morning of the program, the family woke up at 5am to begin the continuous kirtan. The chanting continued all day and into the evening when Gauravani arrived. Chanting with the enlivened devotees, it seemed very possible that no one would ever tire of doing such wonderful kirtan and that the night shift wouldn’t be a problem at all.

I arrived with my brother at about 11:30pm and heard the sound of the kirtan all through the house. When I entered the room where the kirtan was being held, one could literally feel the energy pulsating outward into the rest of the house. Gaura was leading and every person in the room was singing along. I sat down and happily picked up my kartals. As the night went on my brother and I sang taking turns leading with other devotees until about 4am. I found myself feeling really sad that I had to leave, but knowing that it was something I had to do because we had a kirtan program at the East Village Temple the next day.

It was so easy when I was doing kirtan to want to stay up all night, to be happy enough in that kirtan that there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to do. It was wonderful that this program took place on a Friday night. All of the busy work week slid right off like water off of a lotus petal. I felt relaxed and calm and ready for the weekend full of kirtan. I felt as though my life was turning into one big kirtan festival and that is exactly the way I like it.

Acyuta Gopi is a member of As Kindred Spirits and a powerhouse kirtan leader in her own right. Browse the Downloads page for some of her transforming kirtans.

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• 01 Banku Bihari – Hare Krishna (613)
• 02 Unknown – Hare Krishna (530)
• 03 Nama Ras – Hare Krishna (664)
• 04 Unknown – Hare Krishna (413)
• 05 Gaura Vani – Hare Krishna (431)
• 06 Keshavacarya – Hare Krishna (492)
• 07 Gaura Vani – Hare Krishna (444)
• 08 Acyuta Gopi – Hare Krishna (627)
• 09 Ananta Govinda – Hare Krishna (452)
• 10 Unknown – Hare Krishna (405)
• 11 Acyuta Gopi – Hare Krishna (535)
• 12 Unknown – Hare Krishna (360)
• 13 Harinamananda – Hare Krishna (483)
• 14 Keshavacarya – Hare Krishna (395)
• 15 Childrens Kirtan – Hare Krishna (479)
• 16 Gaura Vani – Hare Krishna (462)