Krsna Kirtana Songs est. 2001                                                                                                                                                      www.kksongs.org

KKSongs: A Retrospect

Today, the fourteenth day of December marks the third year the Krsna Kirtana songbook has been online. Today, thinking about the songbook and the website in general and how it has been online for three years. It is remembering the activities of the songbook as well as its parent website that brings me to writing this article on memories of KKSongs.

 

The whole website concept was born on October 4, 2001, when I was a new freshman at college. One mataji who has made a website and discussion forum on her own inspired me on creating my own website. This was not the first website I owned. I had personal pages on AOL, which served merely as personal pages and nothing more. My very first page consisted of an index page which some links. First links were of my biography and Krsna Calculus, which was a PowerPoint slideshow presentation I created for students who were studying calculus and wanted a Krsna Conscious perspective on it. I knew many who were interested in such a project, so I took up the task of project Krsna Calculus. In addition, I had a small little “cookbook” on the site with some of my original recipes that I used for veggie burgers, pizzas, and other foods.

 

In late December 2001, I had been meaning to start off a website which had lyrics of many common and rare devotional songs glorifying Radha Krsna, Lord Caitanya, and Their devotees. Around my final exam time, I started off a background page, very reminiscent of Navin Kabra’s Hindi film song website. I never got time to really dwell into it at the time. I came home for winter vacation. However, that winter break was an incredible one, as I had association of devotee friends, the temple environment (Sri Sri Gaura Nitai temple in ISKCON New Jersey), and that homely environment I was familiar with. With such inspiration from devotees, learning new bhajans, and new insights in Indian music, I was charged to really start this site! I had been familiar and interested in Indian music since 1997. This combined my deep interest in Indian music as well as devotional poetry. The first page began in late January 2002. The first songs were songs found in the Songs of the Vaisnava Acaryas book. I realized that virtually everybody had access to these songs, so this site would not be as different. I purchased the book, “More Songs of the Vaisnava Acaryas” book to add lyrics of songs which are popular to the Vaisnavas, yet not as popular as the other book. February 6, 2002, I added these songs to the website. After adding these songs to the website, the traffic increased slowly. I slowly found the website on major search engines. I received sweet emails from visitors who also provided me more songs to add to the site. In addition to effectively communicate with the visitors and discuss the songs of our Vaisnava movement, I created a web forum called “Krsna Kirtana forum.” Like the songbook, it was quite popular when it was first introduced. To add more spice to the songbook, I added some more haunting yet ever so sweet songs introduced from the Golden Avatar series artists. Songs like Sabse Unchi Prem Sagai, He Govinda He Gopal He Dayal Lala from Jagjit Singh’s “Samarpan” (1983), “Mere Janma Marana Ke Sathi”, “Ehi Murari”, “He Govinda He Gopala”, “Tum Vina Meri” and “Jo Tum Toro Rama” from Laksmi Shankar, and the host of the bhajans from “Prabhupada Krpa” by Hari Om Sharan were some of the classics which had found a place on the website. The month of February, the songbook was slowly gaining popularity. The month of March blossomed even more. The month of March introduced songs rendered by His Holiness Bhakti Caru Swami. How can one forget his ever so sweet and thought-provoking rendition of the Bhaktivinoda Thakura song “Ki Jani Ki Bale Tomare Dhamete” or “Sri Krsna Caitanya Prabhu Jive Doya Kori”? In addition to these, I added a series of Bangladeshi bhajans to the pile. These included “Maribo Maribo Sakhi”, “Bhaja Radha Krsna”, “Saje Naval Kisora” and Mira Bai’s “Minoti Rakhoye Giridhari Lal.” Nrsimhadeva’s Kavaca stotram was also a special feature included in the compilation. In the spring 2002 season, the month of March might have indeed been a peak period for the website’s progress. Due to the final exam and study load in April, the progress rate slowed down a little. Nevertheless, Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s “Baul Sangit” was an unforgettable addition to the overall collection of songs. In May 2002, this Mega-mega songbook took a small break.

 

In August 2002, the songbook was awakened by the search of more songs. In order to allow easier viewing of the songs, I had to redo the page of the songbook opening page. The opening page originally had all of the song titles listed on the main page. Realizing that this will be a daunting task for me and the viewers to view and search, I made it in such a way that songs could easily be found by clicking the appropriate letter of the first word of the song, instead of scrolling up and down the page. I was deciding on which should be the first set of songs to study. Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s “Gitamala” was the first one to start off the new season. While reading the texts to the Gitamala, I truly found it upsetting that these beautiful antique gems were not found in any major Vaisnava songbook. I guess that is why I approached Gitamala first. In September 2002, I approached the Saranagati and Gitavali books by Bhaktivinoda Thakura. After finishing these two books, I was planning to start on Prarthana by Narottama Das Thakura. Schoolwork and other circumstances put that assignment temporarily on pause. October through December 2002 were really slow months for the site. However, some very nice stotrams were contributed and were very well liked. I remember in December 14, 2002 (the first anniversary of the songbook), the song totals reached to a whopping 377 songs! Within that statistic, songs from Vaiyasaki prabhu’s “Hari Nama Ananda” were included. With Vaiyasaki prabhu’s help, he provided the lyrics of “Mirar Prabhu Eso Giridhari” from his album “Divya Lila.” Bilvamangal Thakura’s Govinda Damodara Stotram was also included. To this day, I will say that 2002 was the most glorious year in the history of the songbook so far. As far the overall site is concerned, Krsna Calculus slowly progressed. I had a small journal on that site, but as it was abused, I removed it. I intended on having a raga and tala database on the site. However, with the work involved for the songbook, the tala and raga database was unnoticed by the viewers and me.

 

In the New Year, 2003, a new surge took a while to kick in. However, it was not fruitless. February had more people contributing songs, rather than searching for songs. March and April 2003 opened doors for some of Rupa Goswami’s Stavamala, Raghunatha Das Goswami’s Stavavali, and Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura’s Stavamrta Lahari to make their presence into the songbook. Also, Lord Caitanya’s prayers to Lord Rama and Lord Siva were included. Some popular Hindi and Braja-bhasa bhajans found their way into the songbook. With Lord Krsna’s mercy, the songbook made a very important landmark in May 2003 with 433 songs! It was truly so much more than I could possibly ever imagine! The 2002-2003 of the songbook was a glorious one, like the year before.

 

Keeping up with the success of May 2003, the 2003 to 2004 was predicted to be one of the best ones, at least to me. In order to fit more songs, I had made a new account with geocities. In order to transfer all of those files to the new account, it would have been a long and dreadful task! But, somebody’s got to do this! As I was almost half way complete with the transferring process, my good friend from Pennsylvania, who is the webmaster of the Pandava Sena U.S. website, Abhijit Bhattacharjee, had me reconsider options. The whole site has been in HTML. Abhijit suggested new plans on converting it to PHP. It sounded like a great idea. As a result of working on upgrading a new website, the geocities site, where the entire songbook idea was borne, was no longer being updated. In fact, you’ll still see statistics from May 2003. With help of one of my good friends, Nikhil Sreenath, founder of NOLS, assisted us with web hosting. The songbook was renamed KKSongs, or Krsna Kirtana Songs. We also have been blessed with our own domain, www.kksongs.com. There are so many wonderful things to say about this site, which I am sworn to secrecy. Abhijit has been very committed in working on this site. Even though we started from September 2003 and it is now a little more than a year later, I am very eager to see this site’s release. The future site currently has a little over 900 devotional bhajans in a wide variety of languages. After hitting the 900 mark in April 2004, I decided to take a pause temporarily in the song search. I have been focusing on the upkeep of my own website. Today, on the third anniversary day of songbook, the KKSongs project, I pray for Krsna’s mercy to accept this project as a humble offering to Him. All glories to Prabhupada’s sankirtana movement! All glories to all Krsna Conscious musicians, poets, artists, readers, philosophers, scholars, craftsmen, cooks, and devotees!

 

*** Since this time of the publication of the author, the new domain name is www.kksongs.org with a different server. ***