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<\/center><\/p>\nBy Patita Pavana Dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n ISKCON Kolkata\u2019s debut musical album Krishna Sudha Ras released on the eve of 50th Anniversary of Srila Prabhupada leaving to West has won most prestigious GIMA (Global Indian Musical Awards) Award for the year 2016 under \u201cBEST DEVOTIONAL ALBUM\u201d category<\/p>\n The album contains 10 songs, all of them are either Vaishnava Bhajans or the Hare Krishna maha mantra tracks except for one which is composed to glorify Srila Prabhupada. The track was named as \u201cTribute to Srila Prabhupada\u201d, since the album is a memorial to the historic Jaladuta Yatra. The album is targeted mainly towards the main stream music market and for those listeners who are not much familiar towards ISKCON. It features 6 singers and 6 music directors, most of them are highly rated professionals like Sonu Nigam, Shankar Mahadevan, SP Balasubrahmaniyam, Rickey Kej (Grammy Award 2014 Winner), Bikram Ghosh, Akriti Kakkar to name a few. The album was jointly produced by ISKCON and STRUMM, one of the leading production house in the Devotional music industry. Patita Pavana Das(CFA) and Chakradhari Das(IIT Graduate) were involved in this project.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough we have huge collection of bhajans and kirtans available for spiritual seekers, they are mostly confined to ISKCON stalls and in the music players of the devotees\u201d says Chakradhari das. \u201cWhen I visited all the major music shops across Kolkata as a part of the research, I didn\u2019t find a single album belonging to ISKCON or even Hare Krishna maha-mantra while there are so many albums from other spiritual organizations or solo spiritual albums. It broke my heart to see that there are so many devotional music lovers outside but we have hardly any presence there, although ISKCON is the best in it and known for it. So, we thought it would be a good idea to come up with one album primarily targeted towards mass outreach and that would be a wonderful offering to Srila Prabhupada on his 50th Jaladuta Anniversary\u201d he further adds.<\/p>\n The album was launched on the day of \u201cJaladuta Yatra\u201d celebrations on 13th August 2015 in Kolkata in the presence of many senior leaders of ISKCON. The event which was attended by many politicians, VIPs, more than 25,000 people across 120 countries was a huge hit and it attracted great appreciation from both devotes and common masses alike.<\/p>\n Upon release, the album turned out to be an instant hit and topped the charts in ITunes. And it remained amongst the Top for many weeks. Especially 3 tunes in the album became enormously popular. \u201cWhat thrilled me the most in this entire episode is that the Tribute song to Srila Prabhupada found place in the most popular tracks of the year in ITunes\u201d, says Patita Pavan Dasa. \u201cInitially we thought the lyrics for glorifying Prabhupada could be outsourced to someone best in the industry since we wanted this track to be the best. Later we felt that someone who has really received the mercy of Srila Prabhupada could glorify him the best. And we asked one of the brahmachari in our ashram to come up with a poem explaining the mood of Prabhupada while boarding Jaladuta and he came up with something so special, so special that we all realized Srila Prabhupada has accepted our project, else such a lyric wouldn\u2019t have been possible\u201d, shares these 2 devotees, who are serving in the role of council members of ISKCON Kolkata management.<\/p>\n The album was generously endorsed by Sonu Nigam and Shankar Mahadevan, who shared 4 tracks amongst them. These 2 are amongst most followed personalities in entire India in social media and they expressed their happiness having associated with ISKCON project and having sung the Hare Krishna maha mantra. Their posts in facebook requesting all their fans to hear Hare Krishna maha matra from the album became viral and it attracted so much appreciation from 1000s of music lovers.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, spreading the holy name and spreading the glories of Srila Prabhupada are the two objectives of this album, and we are extremely pleased with the outcome\u201d says RadhaRaman Das, General Manager of ISKCON Kolkata, who is the chief advisor and inspiration behind this project. \u201cThe album successfully distributed the holy name. It established ISKCON\u2019s strong foothold in main stream music industry. It has fulfilled all the objectives that we have set for ourselves. Even at a personal level, I find this album as one of the best in my list and I keep hearing it and share it with others whenever possible\u201d, he further adds.<\/p>\n The album was nominated for GIMA awards a month ago around March in the Best Devotional Album category competing with hundreds of other albums by some of the biggest names in the industry. \u201cWhen we received the mail mentioning about the nomination, we just couldn\u2019t believe ourselves. We know how difficult it is and that too we got it in our debut album itself. And since it is our offering to Srila Prabhupada on the 50th Anniversary, emotions associated with the album are also quite high. We prayed for the best and today we have received the call from the co-producer that our album \u201cKRISHNA SUDHA RAS\u201d has finally won the award! It is ISKCON\u2019s success and the Holy name has found itself once again to share Their mercy upon one and all\u201d says Patita Pavana dasa. \u201cI am happy that I can find our ISKCON\u2019s album in all major outlets now! And with this award, we hope ISKCON can penetrate more in devotional music field and thus the holy name would spread further\u201d he concludes<\/p>\n Devotees who want to purchase this album in bulk can contact us at sankirtan@iskconkolkata.com. This album is available in all the leading stores across India.<\/p>\n (For more information about GiMA Awards, visit www.gima.co.in)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The album contains 10 songs, all of them are either Vaishnava Bhajans or the Hare Krishna maha mantra tracks except for one which is composed to glorify Srila Prabhupada. The track was named as \u201cTribute to Srila Prabhupada\u201d, since the album is a memorial to the historic Jaladuta Yatra. The album is targeted mainly towards the main stream music market and for those listeners who are not much familiar towards ISKCON. It features 6 singers and 6 music directors, most of them are highly rated professionals like Sonu Nigam, Shankar Mahadevan, SP Balasubrahmaniyam, Rickey Kej (Grammy Award 2014 Winner), Bikram Ghosh, Akriti Kakkar to name a few. The album was jointly produced by ISKCON and STRUMM, one of the leading production house in the Devotional music industry. Patita Pavana Das(CFA) and Chakradhari Das(IIT Graduate) were involved in this project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26420,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26418\/revisions\/26420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hare](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-ITWzDTj48JA\/VxClQCSgRKI\/AAAAAAAAayw\/Pr7eJ3LQbGc\/s0\/2016-04-15_10-24-32.jpg\")
By Patita Pavana Dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n