Mantra-Rock Dance
The poster asked people to bring cushions, drums, bells, and cymbals. The headliners were the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin. But the real star was a 70-year-old Indian swami in saffron robes who had arrived in America from Calcutta two years earlier with forty rupees and a trunk of books. The Mantra-Rock Dance, held in January 1967 at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, was the event that introduced the Hare Krishna movement to the American counterculture, and it may have been the strangest and most sincere concert the Summer of Love produced.
The Swami and the Scene
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada arrived in New York in 1965, a Gaudiya Vaishnava teacher who caught the rising tide of a counterculture fascinated with India and open to new forms of consciousness-expanding spirituality. After establishing his first American temple on Second Avenue in Manhattan, Prabhupada sent followers to open a center on the West Coast. They rented a storefront in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which was rapidly becoming the hub of the hippie movement. To raise funds and attract attention, they decided to hold a rock concert and invited Prabhupada to attend. Using connections with Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, and Sam Andrew, guitarist for Big Brother and the Holding Company, they secured major acts who agreed to perform for free. Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet who had learned the Hare Krishna mantra in India and declared it brought a state of ecstasy, agreed to introduce the swami.
Three Thousand in the Ballroom
The concert was scheduled for a Sunday evening, a day the Avalon's impresario Chet Helms thought would draw a thin crowd. He was wrong. By 8 p.m., nearly 3,000 people had packed the hall to capacity, and latecomers waited outside for vacancies. Admission was $2.50. The audience was offered prasad, sanctified food consisting of orange slices. Hells Angels stood at the back of the stage as security. After a short address by Prabhupada, Ginsberg began singing the Hare Krishna mantra to the accompaniment of sitar, tambura, and drums, asking the audience to sink into the sound vibration and think of peace. The chanting continued for almost two hours, with the audience dancing in circles and playing their own instruments. It concluded with the swami reciting prayers in Sanskrit while the audience bowed on the floor.
Then Janis Took the Stage
After Prabhupada left the building, Janis Joplin stepped up, backed by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and drove the concert into the night with The House of the Rising Sun and Ball and Chain. Timothy Leary was in the audience. So was Owsley Stanley, the LSD chemist. The event bridged two worlds that had been circling each other: the psychedelic rock scene and the Eastern spiritual movements that many in the counterculture were exploring. Author Margaret Wilkins called the Mantra-Rock Dance the ultimate high and the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era. Whether or not that ranking holds, the concert achieved something remarkable: it made the Hare Krishna mantra part of the counterculture's shared vocabulary, adopted by hippies and Hells Angels alike.
Reverberations
The Mantra-Rock Dance brought Prabhupada and the Hare Krishna movement to national attention. His followers began appearing on San Francisco radio station KFRC. Prabhupada chanting in Golden Gate Park became a regular sight. The event demonstrated that spiritual sincerity and rock-and-roll excess could share a stage without either losing its integrity, at least for one evening. In 2007, a free commemorative event marking the fortieth anniversary was held at People's Park in Berkeley. The Avalon Ballroom, at 1268 Sutter Street near Van Ness Avenue, no longer hosts concerts. But the intersection of ancient devotion and electric guitar that took place there in January 1967 remains one of the defining moments of San Francisco's counterculture.
From the Air
The Avalon Ballroom was located at approximately 37.79°N, 122.42°W, at Sutter and Van Ness in San Francisco. The building still stands in the city's Western Addition/Cathedral Hill area. Nearest airports: SFO (KSFO, 11 nm south), Oakland (KOAK, 11 nm east). Golden Gate Park, where Prabhupada frequently chanted after the concert, is visible as a large green rectangle to the west.