Kula Shaker on making Govinda: ‘Crowds would sing the lyrics as, “Go cash your giro giro”’

Crispian Mills, singer

It’s not our song; it’s arsenic aged arsenic the hills. The archetypal clip I heard it was successful a Krishna temple arsenic a kid. George Harrison was the archetypal idiosyncratic I cognize of who recorded it – it’s the past way connected 1971’s The Radha Krsna Temple album. We were each surviving unneurotic arsenic a set successful Swiss Cottage, London, and that grounds got played each the time. So I had it absorbed.

The archetypal clip we played our mentation was astatine Glastonbury festival successful 1993. We’d smuggled ourselves in, successful the backmost of somebody’s van, past blagged our mode connected to the signifier successful the Hare Krishna escaped nutrient tent, which seemed appropriate. The statement with the droning chords and the chant successful the mediate beauteous overmuch happened connected the spot. We continued to play it each nighttime astatine each amusement for 2 years until we got a due grounds deal.

It’s 1 of those songs that continues to germinate and astonishment you nevertheless galore times you play it. It’s not conscionable a song. It’s a doorway into thousands of years of tradition, woven with philosophy, ontology and past encapsulating the committedness of spiritual adventure.

We’re inactive discovering things now, due to the fact that of the song’s origins. You person to person a temper of work towards it due to the fact that it belongs to the world. It’s 1 of those songs wherever the set are getting arsenic overmuch payment arsenic the audience.

As for the lyrics: Sanskrit is often called “the connection of the gods”. Why connected world would you not privation to effort that successful a popular song? Govinda is 1 of the “intimate” names of God, which translates arsenic “reservoir of pleasure”. On the whole, immoderate of the names with the prefix “Go” (meaning “cow”), similar Gopal oregon Govinda, glorifies Sri Krishna’s youthful clip arsenic the divine cowherd, who protects the cows, plays his magic flutes successful enchanted forests and steals the hearts of heavenly milk-maidens.

It ever got a absorption live. There was ne'er a beige response. One of the turning points was erstwhile we were touring our debut album, K, to a sold-out amusement successful Blackburn successful beforehand of 2,500 radical successful assorted states of intoxication with their arms successful the air, singing this past spiritual people song. I thought to myself: “God, we’re not successful power of this, are we? This has got a beingness of its own.” It was the perfect, miraculous convergence of sublime and ridiculousness, and that’s what popular euphony should be.

Alonza Bevan, bassist

We were playing astir the northbound London Camden country but besides going retired to the West Country and playing to a precise different, often precise hippy crowd. Our drummer is from adjacent Glastonbury, truthful if we could play Glastonbury Assembly Rooms alongside immoderate psychedelic sitar player, we’d leap astatine the opportunity.

We’d ever loved the hippy euphony of the 60s and 70s, and had been arsenic fascinated by Indian classical euphony and eastbound mysticism. A person introduced america to the Bengali musicians who ended up playing connected Govinda, who were a Hindu household from eastbound London.

We worked with John Leckie, who had produced the archetypal Stone Roses medium and earlier that, this superb psychedelic grounds by the Dukes of the Stratosphear. The verse is repetitive but we’d been listening to the George Harrison mentation for months, truthful it was rather casual to get down. There’s tons of the tambura – the four-string sitar from Indian classical and people euphony that gives the droning dependable – and the tabla (the manus drums) each implicit the record. We had to retrieve that we were inactive these whitey westerners, laying down our groove.

It was large to get a opus that’s wholly successful Sanskrit connected Radio 1, though I deliberation astir radical saw it arsenic 1 of those gimmicky songs. I retrieve radical astatine aboriginal gigs shouting the lyrics as: “Go currency your giro giro.”

Some aged songs you get bushed of playing live, but Govinda ever feels fresh, truthful we ever decorativeness unrecorded sets with it. It has a powerfulness that’s beyond us; we’re conscionable the vessels. All we person to bash is play and fto the beingness bash the remainder of the work.