By Ratna bhusana dasa
Isan prabhu has just written the amazing history of the development of the Balaram Mrdanga and I would like to add to that, having been a part in the project for over 35 years.
In March of 1977 my brother, Manu priya dasa, was helping to build the first Ratha yatra carts in Los Angeles, working under Lalitanatha dasa who was taking direction from Jayananda prabhu. Manu wrote to me and said “you are a carpenter why don’t you come help us build these carts”. He included some photos of the beginning stages of the cart construction. So I packed up my things and drove from North Dakota to LA to help build the carts.
After that first Ratha yatra Karandhara asked Manu priya, who was an accomplished airbrush artist, to work with Isan on the mridangas. His job was to be making custom airbrushed drums. That part didn’t work out that well, people wanted too many individual versions, not just a few standard styles. So Manu priya stayed on at the drum shop anyway and just assisted Isan in making drums. They made a special drum for Srila Prabhupada, with a mural painted on it by Ramadasa Abhiram dasa. That drum is still in Srila Prabhupada’s room in Vrndavan.
I would visit the shop often and enjoyed the association of Isan who was older and wise and stood up for me sometimes when it was hard being a new devotee in a large temple like LA..
Manu priya was helping to work out some of the bugs of first mrdangas, one of the main problems was putting the rubber gab on the mylar, non stick drum head. The were pouring the rubber directly on the heads and it didn’t adhere well so there was a ring of epoxy put around the outer edge to help it stay on. I found out only a year ago, when I went home for a visit, that Manu had consulted an old friend of ours, Joe Kramer, who was a drummer, about how to get the rubber to stick better. I mentioned making drums and Joe said ” oh , you are still making those drums” and he told me that Manu had called him and asked about it. He told him that he would try roughing the heads some first and use some kind of rubber or plastic adhesive.That is what they did and it greatly improved how the rubber would stay on the heads, eliminating the epoxy ring.
Isan had been wearing saffron for the time that I knew him and was living as a vanaprasta. I didn’t even know that he had a wife who was a devotee and a young daughter. But, one day she came to Los Angeles and requested that he come back to the family and help raise their daughter. I believe that was the main of multiple reasons he decided to leave LA and thus the Balaram mrdanga making was put totally in the hands of Manu priya. Manu then trained a few devotees in different aspects of making the drums, mixing and pouring rubber in the molds for the bumpers, drilling and installing threaded inserts etc. I helped when I could as did Mahamantra dasa, Krishna Kata, Janananda and later Sura dasa, when he was running the BBT mail order dept.
Going back a little, I have had conversations with some of the devotees involved before my time. John Matlick was working at Spiritual Sky incense, he was an engineer and designer. He told me that Rsabdeva, who was in charge of Spiritual Sky asked him to help Isan. At first the plan was to make the drums with leather heads but that wasn’t working out so they made some drawings and went to Remo Drum co to get some sample synthetic heads. John Matlick said they held a contest in the temple to see the best sounding drum and used those dimensions for the Balaram drum. Karandhar told me that he was financing the project with ISKCON property division funds. He said that Isan was not fully satisfied with the drum but on Karandhars insistance they started to sell them. It is not clear to me at what point it happened but according to Ranadhir who worked at the BBT , the project was not moving at Spiritual Sky so the BBT mail order dept took over and financed the rest of the project and they set up a shop in the back of Randadhir’s apartment building at 9715 Venice blvd, around the corner from the LA temple. Ranadhir said that is how the BBT came to be the sole distributor for the Balaram Mrdangas. Indrapramad dasa, who did layout and design for the BBT designed the logo for Balaram mrdangas and Duryadona guru dasa wrote an instruction manual on how to play the drums.
So now around 1979 sometime, the whole project was in Manu priya’s hands. His health was bad, he had diabetes from the age of 4 and his kidneys failed after joining the temple. But he was in no way and invalid. He produced large amounts of drums that were shipped all over the world. He was always looking for ways to improve the drums. He got many samples of different brands of rubber and tested them, he got heavier hardware for holding the straps. The logo stickers they had printed were expensive and not durable so we made silk screens and printed them ourselves on metallic gold vinyl. The bumper molds were rubber and didn’t come out very nice so Manu made drawings and had a machine shop make two
piece polished aluminum molds, which I still use today. They cost $1000 back in 1979.
Manu took one of the regular size drums and cut a section out of the center and put the halves back together to make a child’s size drum.
There were always problems with suppliers changing or going out of business, so he had to often look for new products and test them to keep things going. At one point Remo Drum Company, who made the blank heads said they moved some of their operations to Taiwan and could no longer make the small heads. Jananandan and Manu priya went to meet with the Remo co and the president and founder of the co, who was the first one to make synthetic drum heads, personally met with them and said he like the drum and they would figure out a way to still make the small heads here. I also met Remo D Belli once in Laguna Beach, CA. We had set up festival on the beach there and I saw an old man, dressed in a white suit like he just got off a yacht, playing with a mrdanga on the side of the stage. I went over to talk to him and he said “my company makes the heads for these drums”. He seemed delighted with the drum and gave me his card.
Manu priya continued to produce the Balaram mrdanga’s until March 1, 1992. On that day he finished making eight large and four small mrdangas. I was cooking the Sunday feast for the LA temple that day, I still do. After cooking I would usually bring some prasadam over to Manu’s apartment and take with a couple devotee friends and my wife Isanah dd. This time Manu was not there, I asked our friend and neighbor Jiva Carana dasa if he knew where Manu was, he said that Manu asked him to go to the store with him but Jiva was busy so he didn’t go. I came back an hour later and Manu was still not there. I went to look for him in case his car broke down or something. I went to the closest grocery store and saw his car parked by the door. As I was walking to the door of the store I saw his crutches in the passenger seat. I went over to the car and Manu priya was slumped over and his body cold, He was gone. He had made drums for the world wide devotee community until his last breath. He always strove to keep the best quality and improve when he could.
He made over thirty six hundred drums in thirteen years. I have one of the drums he made that last day.
After that, Sura dasa requested that I take over making the drums and I accepted. In the last 23 years I have made around
twenty five hundred drums, ten today. I try to keep up same standard of quality and keep up with orders. Mostly things
don’t change, except occasionally when a supplier will go out of business or change their product and we have to adapt.
Ys
Ratna bhusana dasa, ISKCON Los Angeles
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