Gurani Anjali (1935-2001) arrived in the United States in the 1950s before the major influx of immigration from India that would follow in the 1960s. She eventually established Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville on Long Island, New York, where she taught Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophy within the context of the United States’ countercultural and post-countercultural periods. Central to Anjali's repertoire of yoga techniques were music and mantra practices which she and her students adapted to the countercultural social and historical context prevailing at that time. This chapter draws its analytical framework from the newly emerging literature outlining an Indian Ocean Ethnomusicology, to demonstrate how Anjali transported her yoga philosophy from Bengal into her new sonic environment in the United States. It shows how Anjali's universal ideas about Sāṃkhya-Yoga became entangled in this new sonic environment as her yogic lyrics merged with her students’ acoustic folk ensemble, but also how Anjali intended for her lyrics to lead students toward a transcendent experience of their social environment altogether. Thus, from an etic perspective, this chapter firmly situates Anjali’s music in its historical context, while also articulating, from the community’s emic perspective, how Anjali’s yogic music from her Indian Ocean world proposed to inculcate an experience of yoga’s higher Self, puruṣa, which was evidently “bound from within / without looking on” as the lyrics to her popular song suggest.
Gurani Anjali (1935-2001) arrived in the United States in the 1950s before the major influx of immigration from India that would follow in the 1960s. She eventually established Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville on Long Island, New York, where she taught Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophy within the context of the United States’ countercultural and post-countercultural periods. Central to Anjali's repertoire of yoga techniques were music and mantra practices. This presentation shows how Anjali's universal ideas about Sāṃkhya-Yoga became entangled in this new sonic environment as her yogic lyrics merged with her students’ acoustic folk ensemble, but also how Anjali intended for her music and lyrics to lead students toward a transcendent experience of yoga’s higher Self, puruṣa, thus transcending their social environment altogether.