Mantra-Rock Dance
1967 counterculture music event / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.[1] It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as an opportunity for its founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to address a wider public.[2] It was also a promotional and fundraising effort for their first center on the West Coast of the United States.[3][4]
The Mantra-Rock Dance featured some of the most prominent Californian rock groups of the time, such as the Grateful Dead[5][6] and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin,[7] as well as the then relatively unknown Moby Grape.[8][9] The bands agreed to appear with Prabhupada and to perform for free; the proceeds were donated to the local Hare Krishna temple.[3] 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.[3][10]
The Mantra-Rock Dance concert was later called "the ultimate high"[4][11] and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era."[3] It led to favorable media exposures for Prabhupada and his followers,[12] and brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public.[10] The 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was commemorated in 2007 in Berkeley, California.[13]