Dub Kirtan All Stars was created by David Starfire and FreQ Nasty to fuse underground dance music with Yoga Kirtan, the call and response chants of devotional Eastern traditions. The ‘Dub Kirtan Allstars’ is a 10 piece live collective Sound System that aims to bring the kirtan and bass music experiences together, tearing down the boundaries between bleeding edge technology and ancient wisdom, performer and audience, the sacred and everyday life.
In FreQ Nasty’s words:
Kirtan is the form of call and response chanting traditional to many of the south Asian spiritual traditions including Yoga, various forms of Hinduism, Buddhism and others. Mostly it’s done in the west in a very traditional format of sitar, harmonium, tamboura, tablas, mrdunga or pakawaj drums, or any combo of these. The idea is to let go of our neurotic and limited idea of who we are thru the music, much like you would at a rave dancing to dope music till the sun comes up. But with the call and response vibe it makes this easier to do without drugs. It’s the same high, tho.
Kirtan is about reaching the Hindu idea of the Atman or the Buddhist idea of selflessness, or which brings an incredible experience of well being, connectedness to others and grounded-ness. You cut thru the bullshit of the daily grind by riding the music into something that is bigger than us. The difference here is that the performers who are creating the vibe here are all electronic producers and DJs, so we’re going to be experimenting with heavier beats and sub bass that will bring the club vibe to the kirtan, and the kirtan high to the club without having to gobble a load of pills. We’ve never heard it done this way and so wanted to make something fresh happen that would give people who love club music an in to a scene that is traditionally very acoustic.
