Born 1947 (Jeffrey Kagel) · Neem Karoli Baba lineage · the Western kirtan elder · chant as practice

Krishna Das

The Western kirtan elder. Born Jeffrey Kagel in 1947 on Long Island, drawn into the bhakti stream in 1968 alongside Ram Dass (Richard Alpert), travelled to India in 1970 to sit with Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji) — the guru who gave him the name Krishna Das. Returned to the West and, after a long period of obscurity and personal struggle, began leading kirtan publicly in the 1990s. His albums — One Track Heart (1996), Pilgrim Heart (1998), Live on Earth (2000), Door of Faith (2003), All One (2010, Grammy-nominated) — are where most Western kirtan-walas first heard the form.

Every Western kirtan teacher in this body's lineage — including [Vasudev Baba](/people/vasudev-baba) — has stepped into a room Krishna Das opened a generation earlier.

Born: 31 May 1947 as Jeffrey Kagel, Long Island, New York. Renamed Krishna Das by Neem Karoli Baba in India, 1970.
Guru: Neem Karoli Baba (1900?–1973), known as Maharaj-ji — the Indian saint whose Western devotees include Ram Dass, Larry Brilliant, Daniel Goleman, Lama Surya Das, and Bhagavan Das.
Foundational albums: One Track Heart (1996) Pilgrim Heart (1998) Live on Earth (2000) Door of Faith (2003) All One (2010) — Grammy-nominated, Best New Age Album Heart as Wide as the World (2017)
Books: Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold (2010) Flow of Grace: Chanting the Hanuman Chalisa (2007)
Public anchors: krishnadas.com Wikipedia) Spotify YouTube

A note from this body

Krishna Das is a working teacher in his late seventies, still touring. His archive is at krishnadas.com. This page recognises his role as the upstream Western kirtan-elder whose work made the rooms our Ubud lineage meets in possible.

The room he opened

When Krishna Das started leading kirtan publicly in the early 1990s, there was no Western kirtan scene to step into. He built it by showing up at one yoga studio after another, leading hours of repetitive chanting in a culture that didn't yet know it could sit still that long. His low voice, his harmonium, his slow builds, his refusal to perform — the format of contemporary Western kirtan is recognisably his shape. Every Western kirtan teacher in this body's lineage — Vasudev Baba included — has stepped into a room he opened. The contemporary scene (Soulshine Bali's Bhakti in Bali gatherings, Bhakti Fest in Joshua Tree, the New Vrindavan 24-Hour Kirtans where Vasudev also appears) is the field Krishna Das ploughed.

Contributions to this body

What Krishna Das has given the Coherence Network

The upstream Western kirtan lineage. Every kirtan room in this body's graph ( Adiwana Svarga Loka, Brahma Vihara Arama, the broader bhakti-festival field) stands on the ground he prepared.
The Neem Karoli Baba transmission as posture — the guru's teaching that love everyone, serve everyone, remember God — is the substrate behind the kirtan format. Resonant with lc-sovereignty-within-oneness (many cells, one organism; the names are different doors into the same field).
Forty-plus years of low-amplitude steady devotion → lc-tending-over-producing (no urgency to scale; tend the practice; the field comes).