The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on , 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as an opportunity for its founder, Swami Prabhupada, to address a wider public. It was also a promotional and fundraising effort for their first center on the West Coast of the United States.
The Mantra-Rock Dance featured some of the most prominent Californian rock groups of the time, such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, as well as the then relatively unknown Moby Grape. The bands agreed to appear with Prabhupada and to perform for free; the proceeds were donated to the local Hare Krishna temple. The participation of countercultural leaders considerably boosted the event's popularity; among them were the poet Allen Ginsberg, who led the singing of the Hare Krishna mantra onstage along with Prabhupada, and the LSD promoters Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
According to author Margaret Wilkins, the Mantra-Rock Dance concert was "the ultimate high" and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era." It led to favorable media exposures for Prabhupada and his followers, and brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public. The 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was commemorated in 2007 in Berkeley, California.
Background
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (also referred to as "Bhaktivedanta Swami" or "Prabhupada"), a Gaudiya Vaishnava sannyasi and teacher, arrived in New York City from his native India in 1965 and "caught the powerful rising tide" of a counterculture that was fascinated with his homeland and open to new forms of "consciousness-expanding spirituality." After establishing his first American temple in New York City at 26 Second Avenue, Prabhupada requested his early follower Mukunda DasJoan Didion in her Slouching towards Bethlehem includes Mukunda's (referred to as Michael Grant) recollection of his initial involvement with Bhaktivedanta Swami's movement: "I've been associated with the Swami since about last July [of 1966]," Michael says. "See, the Swami came here from India and he was at this ashram in upstate New York and he just kept to himself and chanted a lot. For a couple of months. Pretty soon I helped him get his storefront in New York. Now it's an international movement, which we spread by teaching this chant." Michael is fingering his red wooden beads and I notice that I am the only person in the room with shoes on. "It's catching on like wildfire." () and his wife Janaki Dasi to open a similar ISKCON center on the West Coast of the United States.
Mukunda and Janaki met up with friends from college, who would later come to be known as Shyamasundar Das, Gurudas, Malati Dasi, and Yamuna Dasi. Teaming up with them, Mukunda rented a storefront in the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which at that time was turning into the hub of the hippie counterculture, and stayed to take care of the developing new center.
Preparation and promotion
To raise funds, gain supporters for the new temple, and to popularize Prabhupada's teachings among the hippie and countercultural audience of the Haight-Ashbury scene, the team decided to hold a charitable rock concert and invited Prabhupada to attend. Despite his position as a Vaishnava sannyasi and some of his New York followers objecting to what they saw as an inappropriate invitation of their guru to a place full of "amplified guitars, pounding drums, wild light shows, and hundreds of drugged hippies," Prabhupada agreed to travel from New York to San Francisco and take part in the event.After observing the event's sensual milieu, Prabhupada remarked, "This is no place for a brahmachari." () Using their acquaintance with Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, and Sam Andrew, founding member and guitarist of the Big Brother and the Holding Company – who were among the most prominent rock bands in California at the time – Shyamasundar and Gurudas secured their consent to perform for charity at the concert, charging only the "musicians' union minimum" of $250. Malati Dasi happened to hear Moby Grape, a relatively unknown group at the time, and she convinced the other team members to invite the band to play at the concert as well.While sources concur on the appearance of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Moby Grape at the Mantra-Rock Dance, some of them also list Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Grace Slick among the event's performing musicians. (; ; ; and )
Another leading countercultural figure, the beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, was a supporter of Prabhupada. He had met the swami earlier in New York and assisted him in extending his United States visa.Addressing speculation that he was Ginsberg's guru, Prabhupada answered by saying, "I am nobody's guru. I am everybody's servant. Actually I am not even a servant; a servant of God is no ordinary thing." (; ) Despite disagreeing with many of Prabhupada's required prohibitions, especially the ones pertaining to drugs and promiscuity, Ginsberg often publicly sang the Hare Krishna mantra, which he had learned in India. He made the mantra part of his philosophy and declared that it "brings a state of ecstasy."The following quote from Mukunda in Joan Didion's Slouching towards Bethlehem hints at the difference between Ginsberg's and Bhaktivedanta Swami's perceptions of the Hare Krishna chanting: "Ginsberg calls the chant ecstasy, but the Swami says that's not exactly it."() He was glad that Prabhupada, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other countercultural ideologues like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Prabhupada and the chanting of Hare Krishna into the hippie movement.(from the "Houseboat Summit" panel discussion, Sausalito, Calif., , ): Ginsberg: So what do you think of Swami Bhaktivedanta pleading for the acceptance of Krishna in every direction? Snyder: Why, it's a lovely positive thing to say Krishna. It's a beautiful mythology and it's a beautiful practice. Leary: Should be encouraged. Ginsberg: He feels it's the one uniting thing. He feels a monopolistic unitary thing about it. Watts: I'll tell you why I think he feels it. The mantras, the images of Krishna have in this culture no foul association. ... [W]hen somebody comes in from the Orient with a new religion which hasn't got any of these [horrible] associations in our minds, all the words are new, all the rites are new, and yet, somehow it has feeling in it, and we can get with that, you see, and we can dig that! Ginsberg agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.
As for the choice of venue, the team considered both the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, finally settling on the latter as its impresario, Chet Helms, appeared to be "more sympathetic to the spirit of the concert" and agreed to let it be used for a charity event. Artist Harvey Cohen, one of the first ISKCON followers, designed a Stanley Mouse-inspired promotional poster with a picture of Prabhupada, details of the event, and a request to "bring cushions, drums, bells, cymbals." To generate interest among members of the countercultural community of Haight-Ashbury, Mukunda published an article entitled "The New Science" in the San Francisco Oracle, a local underground newspaper specializing in alternative spiritual and psychedelic topics. He wrote:
The Haight-Ashbury district is soon to be honored by the presence of His Holiness, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who will conduct daily classes in the Bhagavad Gita, discussions, chanting, playing instruments, and devotional dancing in a small temple in the neighborhood. ... Swamiji's use of the Hare Krishna Mantra is already known throughout the United States. Swamiji's chanting and dancing is more effective than Hatha or Raja Yoga or listening to Ali Akbar Khan on acid or going to a mixed media rock dance.
Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Prabhupada, who was scheduled to arrive from New York on , 1967. When the swami arrived at the San Francisco Airport, 50 to 100 hippies chanting "Hare Krishna" greeted him in the airport lounge with flowers. A few days later the San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "Swami in the Hippie Land" in which Prabhupada answered the question, "Do you accept hippies in your temple?" by saying, "Hippies or anyone – I make no distinctions. Everyone is welcome."
Event
The Mantra-Rock Dance was scheduled on Sunday evening, , 1967 – a day of the week that Chet Helms deemed odd and unlikely to generate substantial attendance. Admission was fixed at $2.50 and limited to door sales. Despite the apprehensions of the organizers, by the beginning of the concert at 8 PM an audience of nearly 3,000 had gathered at the Avalon Ballroom, filling the hall to its capacity. Latecomers had to wait outside for vacancies in order to enter. Participants were treated on prasad (sanctified food) consisting of orange slices and, regardless of the prohibition on drugs, many in the crowd were smoking marijuana and taking other intoxicants. However, the atmosphere in the hall was peaceful. Strobe lights and a psychedelic liquid light show, along with pictures of Krishna and the words of the Hare Krishna mantra, were projected onto the walls. A few Hells Angels were positioned in the back of the stage as the event's security guards. Prabhupada's biographer Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami thus describes the Mantra-Rock Dance audience:
Almost everyone who came wore bright or unusual costumes: tribal robes, Mexican ponchos, Indian kurtas, "God's-eyes," feathers, and beads. Some hippies brought their own flutes, lutes, gourds, drums, rattles, horns, and guitars. The Hell's Angels, dirty-haired, wearing jeans, boots, and denim jackets and accompanied by their women, made their entrance, carrying chains, smoking cigarettes, and displaying their regalia of German helmets, emblazoned emblems, and so on – everything but their motorcycles, which they had parked outside.
The evening opened with Prabhupada's followers – men in "Merlin gowns" and women in saris – chanting Hare Krishna to an Indian tune, followed by Moby Grape. When the swami himself arrived at 10 PM, the crowd of hippies rose to their feet to greet him respectfully with applause and cheers. Gurudas, one of the event's organizers, describes the effect that Prabhupada's arrival had on the audience, "Then Swami Bhaktivedanta entered. He looked like a Vedic sage, exalted and otherworldly. As he advanced towards the stage, the crowd parted and made way for him, like the surfer riding a wave. He glided onto the stage, sat down and began playing the kartals."
Ginsberg welcomed Prabhupada onto the stage and spoke of his own experiences chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. He translated the meaning of the Sanskrit term mantra as "mind deliverance" and recommended the early-morning kirtans at the local Radha-Krishna temple "for those coming down from LSD who want to stabilize their consciousness upon reentry," calling the temple's activity an "important community service." He introduced Prabhupada and thanked him for leaving his peaceful life in India to bring the mantra to New York's Lower East Side, "where it was probably most needed."