page_title: Mantra-Rock Dance
section_title: Event
hierarchical_section_title: Mantra-Rock Dance / Event
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, CA. March 2011.
context_page_description: The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness as an opportunity for its founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta 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 LSD promoters Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
  The Mantra-Rock Dance concert was later called "the ultimate high" and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era."
context_section_description: The Mantra-Rock Dance was scheduled on Sunday evening, January 29, 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."
  After a short address by Prabhupada, Ginsberg sang "Hare Krishna" to the accompaniment of sitar, tambura, and drums, requesting the audience to "[j]ust sink into the sound vibration, and think of peace." Then Prabhupada stood up and led the audience in dancing and singing, as the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Moby Grape joined the chanting and accompanied the mantra with their musical instruments. The audience eagerly responded, playing their own instruments and dancing in circles. The group chanting continued for almost two hours, and concluded with the swami's prayers in Sanskrit while the audience bowed down on the floor. After Prabhupada left, Janis Joplin took the stage, backed by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and continued the event with the songs "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Ball 'n' Chain" late into the night.
caption: The Avalon Ballroom (pictured) served as the Mantra-Rock Dance venue. Photo: March 2011
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