04/09/98 - 1733

Karma at Tramps: Deafening Rock, Quiet Krishnas

USA (VNN) - (The New York Times 4/5/98) Jesse McKinley from The New York Times reports:

The scene at Tramps, a club on West 21st Street, last Sunday night resembled that of a hardcore rock concert, with slam- dancing fans and wildly hirsute musicians tearing at their instruments and the eardrums of the crowd.

There was, however, a difference: the presence of a group of Hare Krishnas, wearing their salmon-colored linen robes and skullcaps and quietly passing out food and Hindu literature amid the raucous din.

They were the guests of honor at the concert, a benefit given by about a dozen bands for Hare Krishna Food Relief, a soup kitchen run out of a tiny Krishna temple at 48 Avenue B.

"The vibe was good and the bands were all into it," said John Joseph, 35, the event's organizer and a former member of a punk band, Cro-Mags. "Everything came together, just like karma."

The event raised some $12,000 for the group, which expanded into a second storefront on East Fourth Street last month. That new space will be used to expand the feeding program run by the group, whose leader, Kaprindra Svami, says it provides food for about 300 people at three weekly feedings in Tompkins Square Park.

"We are serving on a small scale, but we are not very proud of our small scale," said Mr. Svami, 59. "We want to serve everybody."

The group's current headquarters is a clean but crowded room, with an altar, a computer and bedding mats for the four members who sleep there. In the back is a cramped kitchen lined with pots, buckets of dried lentils and spices.

The Hare Krishna movement, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, has often been criticized by anticult groups as using brainwashing.

But Herbert L. Rosedale, the president of the American Family Foundation, which monitors cult activity, says he thinks the Krishnas have "made significant changes in attitude" in recent years. "There's generally more openness," he said. "They seem to be improving in that way."

Mr. Joseph, who has been a follower of Krishna since 1981, says the concert was his way of helping the Avenue B group "to the next level."

"The vedas say sound vibration is the most potent force in the world," he said. "And hardcore creates some pretty intense vibrations."JESSE McKINLEY