The “double clap”

“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 40

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Another kīrtana innovation is the “double clap.” Instead of clapping hands to the standard 1-2-3 beat, at set intervals you clap hands twice in quick succession.¹

This fancy maneuver may work well as part of a choreographed cultural presentation. But for normal kīrtana, where do we want to have our minds—on fancy clapping or on the sound of the holy name?

In a Vyāsa-pūjā offering to Śrīla Prabhupāda, Jaya Gaurāṅga Dāsa wrote:

So many times you corrected me while doing different things. Like the time I was sitting at your lotus feet while the Gurukula boys were having a kīrtana, and I was clapping my hands trying to create some intricate beat to follow. You were so kind and merciful to me at that moment; you didn’t have any physical strength because of so much fasting, and yet, you turned to me and took the trouble to tell me “No, not like that, like this,” and showed me how to clap my hands in a proper way.

“One, two, three” you calmly said while showing me with your own hands how to do it.²

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Notes:

1 At my kīrtana seminar in Māyāpur I learned that the Māyāpur bhakta leaders were teaching this to the new bhaktas.

2 Śrīla Prabhupāda Tributes, 2020.