Kalanjali of Chinmaya Mission, Los Angeles

Kalanjali is the cultural arm of Chinmaya Mission Los Angeles to support Art, music, and culture of India.

Under the initiative of Swami Ishwarananda, the resident Acharya of Chinmaya Mission Los Angeles, Kalanjali was launched on July 3, 2012, with objectives that include : 1) To promote Art, culture and music of India 2) Collaborate and integrate our local communities using Kalanjali as one of our mediums. 3) Encourage highly talented local artists and less known visiting artists to showcase art, music and culture of India.

Since its inception, we have taken a fast track approach to the above goals, we organized many programs by the legends of music, music workshops, introduced dance forms like Kathak, Odhissi, Kuchipudi to our audience. We showcased highly talented young artists, and hosted many local artists. Where we stand today, Kalanjali has achieved the status of a premier organization to support art and culture of India. This is based on the number of requests we receive from both domestically and from India to perform on our stage.

Kalanjali is not just a group organizing music. We are constantly making efforts to collaborate with local artists, social groups, and organizers locally and within USA to bring very high quality productions and concerts within the reach of our local communities. Our goal is to create many varieties of programs as we continue to roll out future events.

In the constant pursuit of service to our community, we are proud to state that Kalnajali has now become yet another front of Chinmaya Mission Los Angeles, similar to its well established “BalaVihar” like programs. Through Kalanjali, we are able to attract general public, people of all ages, students, local community of artists and teachers of music, and past members of Chinmaya Mission. Our standing with local communities continues to get stronger through our persistent approach.

As a part of our Service, and to the extent possible, we always welcome local artists as our guests; allow all children, and student community to attend our programs at no cost. Recognizing the aging community of Indian origin, we place special attention to invite, encourage and facilitate aging seniors to attend the events free of cost and give them preferred seating in the house.

Looking ahead, our future activities include, continuing development of website Kalanjali.info with features that help the cause, looking into the ways to reach out and engage our aging communities andhelpthem to attend our events. We are also investigating the feasibility to provide a more casual platform under Kalanjali banner to help highly talented artist whose names are not yet appeared on any bill boards or charts. With the help of additional funding through donations, and through creative collaborations, we would like to bring major productions to Kalanjali stage, continue to diversify the genre of programs which go beyond music and dance.